Silvia Bluejay

I now have clapboard GAS. 😱😎

We're dealing with so many bands here, that if one did break up, the others would make up for its disappearance! In Tier 1 areas. Always do tier 1 areas. 😉

That's sort of my point, when I rejected the crippled version of Premiere (now uninstalled from my machine). It will all depend on how much money we choose to throw at this particular exercise.

This, almost verbatim, is what we said to each other.

GAS by another name...

Thanks @Dad3353, I'm dropping the whole matter in Hubby's lap. I think I'm going to stand back and watch from now on.

I agree, but I'm against having to do the trimming, which Pro would save me.

Done that search and found a lot of advice on MANUALLY doing the work? Not automatically. And don't mention the dropping of snippets in the main video... 😉

The snippet you drop in the main video under Elements overwrites the whole of the remaining main video. Even if the snippet is 30 frames and the main video is 10 minutes long. Horrible and stupid. Edit: the only other option is to insert instead of overwriting, which leaves you with having to trim afterwards.

@BigRedX, I see your point, but Jack took early retirement to dedicate himself to music and any other hobby he has - that may well include preparing videos for his bands. I'm lucky enough to be semi-retired, so I've also got time to do these things, assuming they're not too frustrating. I am already the bands' official photoshopper... Given the current dearth of gigs, and especially of paid gigs, it wouldn't be fair to ask the bands to stump up for a pro to do a very simple job - we're not trying to make a George Michael video here - that we can do ourselves if we have the patience to try some software and learn to use it. @EBS_freak, thanks for that. While our machines aren't quite state-of-the-art, mine at least has a passable 16GB of RAM, a decent hard disk, Windows 10, lots of external storage, and seems to cope all right with anything I've thrown at it so far. I don't mind waiting, say, 3 minutes instead of 1 to save a file, as long as it saves correctly and the program has enabled me to do what I wanted to do with the video. Current state of play: Jack is testing one of you guys' suggestions on his machine, while I've spent the last hour tinkering with Premiere Elements and have decided that the damn thing is so crippled it's not worth having. What we basically want to do is have one main video, sync its audio with a better quality external file if available, and overwrite a few frames of the main video, here and there, with snippets from a different camera. That means we need quick or automatic audio syncing, and a decent overlay feature that only overwrites the same number of frames on the main video as those contained in the snippet we add. Can I do either in Premiere Elements? Can I hell. Both features are very much available in the Pro version, but emphatically not in Elements. It's the equivalent of having to buy proper Photoshop, as opposed to Elements, if you wanted to get rid of a photo's background, or do something equally basic. Total bust, not worth spending a penny on. If Jack ends up not being impressed with any of the free software he's testing, the next decision we'll have to take is whether we're going to want to do enough video work on the bands' material to justify me getting an effing subscription* to effing Premiere Pro. 😉🙄😄 * Pro doesn't seem to be available as a desktop-only application. Anyone know otherwise? Many thanks to all of you who are giving us advice and patiently reading our rants on here!

I'll leave that task to hubby then. It's something I absolutely hate doing.

Got that Paul - unfortunately it's a major PITA for what we need to do, because the audio/video sync is again only manual. However, at least it's free.

@wateroftyne, it didn't go well I'm afraid. You must have Premiere Pro rather than Elements I think? I right-clicked on anything I could right-click on, and quite a lot of options came up, but Synchronise wasn't one of them. In Elements you apparently can't sync video and audio automatically, as it says here.

Ooo, sounds interesting. We occasionally want to use a video of the band playing a song - audio and video are as recorded live by a DSLR - and replace the audio with a better recording of the same song (say, the audio from the desk). If I can do what you say, that'll be brilliant. I imagine, though, that I have to cut the live video to exactly the same length as the audio? Thanks

My experience of video editors is that they are built on the concept of a sequence of video frames, rather than being able to detect patterns of any kind. It's the soundtrack (as a separate sequence of data contained in the video file) that could be analysed that way, assuming the video already had audio you want to replace. You would need an audio editing program for that, though.

In fact, the software did complain at Jack when it realised it was being installed on Win 7...

OK, state of play so far is as follows: - No, we're *not* getting a Mac, sorry again. (I used Macs a few years ago, when I did design work for a book publisher, on their machines. Lovely things, but I really couldn't see all the fuss, they worked as well or as badly as PCs - depending on the situation - and the software was practically identical.) - @Happy Jack has a good PC but it runs on Win 7 (by choice; he may have to review that). He finally got DaVinci Resolve to open on the correct, functional module. We'll try and test it in the next few days. - I downloaded Adobe Premiere 2021 free trial from my own Adobe account, and played around with it a bit. Read the Help, created a couple of Guided test files, and liked the way it works. The main problem is that I find video work intolerably dull! Synching video with an external audio source is doable, but so tedious. I much prefer working on photos, posters, banners and similar in Photoshop, bless it. I will probably end up buying the Premiere + Photoshop bundle just for the updated version of Photoshop...

Which of the applications on this page?

I'll do the free trial, then probably upgrade to both, since Photoshop is one of my main staples, and I've got version 15. Many thanks to all! 👍🙏

Yup, just noticed that too. Just over £70 for both 2021 programs. I may be tempted.

Fair enough, you do seem to use a lot more expensive packages than I do, or even used to do when working as a technical translator and editor. I've logged into my long-forgotten Adobe account and been offered Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, both 2021 versions, for just over £130. There's a discount for upgrading, but I need to check if it requires you to already have both programs (I've only got one). Assuming I like Premiere, that purchase would be doable. I will have to do a free trial run of Premiere first, though, as I have no idea if I would get along with it as nicely as I do with Photoshop.

Yes, my post was tongue-in-cheek. The main reason I was, and still am, uncomfortable with subscription is the constant need to be online - even if these things do allow you to do some work offline and upload it later - and for the remote server to always be up and working fine when I need it. I never had trouble upgrading from one expensive package to a better version of the same, because upgrading used to be far, far cheaper than buying from scratch, at least in my experience. I've never done video work, but in my previous working life I used to run big and complex specialised translation databases on highly specialised translation software: all very expensive but mostly just the first time. Same with old-time versions of Microsoft Office etc. Unfortunately I'm in the losing camp, as now everything has to be online and updated via the internet, from Windows 10 to all other operating systems and applications. I will never be equally comfortable with them as I was with the old-fashioned way.

Will check it out. *luddite mode on* I'm not paying for the Creative Cloud as I'm an aficionado of having the bleedin' program on the bleedin' hard disk, none of this subscription shite, thank you very much... *luddite mode off* 😂

@adamg67 I'm checking out Shotcut.