Cheap Video Editing Software

[Luscia]

I am looking for a decent video editing progam that doesn't make my wallet feel pain. I know Adobe Premire and Sony Vegas are two of the best around, but the price tag on them is way beyond my budget for something I am only doing as a hobby. I was looking into Movie Studio, but can't find much about them; in particular the reviews for Movie Studio 13 on Amazon are kinda split, but also confusing as far as star ratings go as the DLed version has lower scores than the hard copy. Any advice is welcome, I just really wanna get away from Movie Maker to see if I can make something a little more crisp and tight.

[LantisEscudo]

Vegas Pro and Premiere Pro are the best available, but as you mentioned, can be pretty pricy. However, both offer lower-cost versions with reduced functionality as well.

The Vegas family has Movie Studio for about $50; I'm personally not familiar with it, though.

The Adobe family has Premiere Elements for $80 or as a bundle with Photoshop Elements for $120. I have used Elements, and it's a perfectly functional program for editing AMVs. It has a couple quirks that can be annoying, but with some practice, can turn out excellent work (several of the videos that have made the finals over the past few years were made in Elements).

Both of them have 30-day free trials avalanche, so I'd suggest downloading the trials and seeing what works for you and your editing style and workflow.

You can also look at LightWorks, it's a "free" open source editing program (base version free, lots of functionality locked under $60/year subscription fee), but I really can't recommend it. It's very idiosyncratic, and doesn't support a lot of important media formats (or at least didn't the last time I looked, two years ago).