The continuing frustration of Movie Editing.

My friends think I am on the verge of holding a premier to my holiday videos, I have spent the last two weeks bungling between video editors and the last 3 days actually editing... one afternoon's performance on a 3 week trip. Already I have uploaded 3 movies to YouTube and linked them to FaceBook. One particular movie, started in iMovie has been worked on for the last 2 years, its less than 5 minutes of footage, but its now sitting in iMovie until I have the inspiration.

Why all the bungling? Software and video codecs are the main issues. Software, as you know it took me quite some time to find the right package to edit this footage, and to be honest I'm still having some troubles. iMovie 6 HD is crashing every 5 minutes, and the other piece of software I got my hands on, which is brilliant, is also complex and is taking me some time to learn. This software is Final Cut Express, which is in demo mode on my Mac and I'm seriously considering buying because its more complex that iMovie 6, but it offers more control a nicer interface and more refined output. I may have the Help menu open while I work, but with Final Cut Express I am having a BALL working. I even splashed out (when you dont have a job, any purchase thats not survival related is splashing out) on a DV connector for my Macbook to a 19inch Monitor we had sitting around not doing anything, So now I have the 13 inch screen and a 19 Inch screen to work on. Very Happy.

The only issue, and its only been one so far is that, after 3 hours of editing last night, I left the machine to render a movie. I came back and the machine had gone to sleep, on opening Final Cut, the machine CRASHED. That was it, and yes, I hadn't saved, yes, I lost everything... well 3 hours of everything. I was pissed, mostly at myself for not saving before the render. Idiot.

So for a very Brief look of one of my efforts of the past few days, see below.



There are more here, constructive comments are always appreciated.