Best DAW for video editing?

[Jagwah]

Hi guys,

Hoping to get some rather specific advice here so I'll explain the angle I'm coming from and hopefully I can get some good suggestions.

Firstly, I'm a big Reason user and have no intention of changing that. If possible, I'd like to branch out to another DAW only for video editing tasks (please note - not video scoring) and continue to keep everything else here in Reason.

I will be doing all kinds of slicing and dicing to do with audio / video synchronization - hence the need for a DAW with a few dedicated features. There isn't a need for many features, just the ability to cut / resize / reposition sliced clips on a grid with a set tempo.

I am already familiar with Sony Vegas and the way the sequencer can be set to a tempo and I can do this type of work with it, but surely a DAW with a few video features would be better? Open to suggestions here.

Is anyone familiar with editing synchronized video in another DAW or Video Editing Software and care to share your experiences? This stuff can be a lot of fun and it would be great to expand to a better workflow with some new tools.

I'm on PC so Logic is not an option.

Any suggestions appreciated, cheers!

[jam-s]

Ableton Live can do some basic video editing and is quite a nice companion to Reason. Not sure if Bitwig can also do video edits, but I guess google/youtube might have an answer.

[antic604]

Not sure if Bitwig can also do video edits

No, but I don't think it's a good idea to edit videos in a DAW?

Does the OP edit audio in Premiere or Final Cut?

[selig]

As I understand it, this will be tough to do accurately. With around 30 ms resolution for the video vs micro-millisecond resolution for the audio, video will not cut well to the beat if cutting on frame boundaries. And there’s no way around editing on frames in video that I’m aware of.

Some suggestions I’ve heard in the past are importing a click track to have a visual cue for where the beats fall, as most edits will be a compromise as to choosing to edit slightly before or after the beat (and choosing manually may give more control).

Hypothetically, if you were to force every video edit to a musical grid, there would be overlap or gaps between video frames that would be unacceptable (if technically possible to do so) if not impossible, right?

So the choice is to edit on video frames and have the music timing shift slightly on every beat, or separate the video/audio keeping the music timing accurate and getting as close as possible on the video.

Or am I missing something here?


Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk

[jam-s]

You can also use a BPM for the audio that is fit to the FPS of the video:
https://www.deviantart.com/inferno988/a ... -424778748
edit: or this one (without flash): https://www.fransabsil.nl/htm/eventhit.htm

[bxbrkrz]

Hi guys,

Hoping to get some rather specific advice here so I'll explain the angle I'm coming from and hopefully I can get some good suggestions.

Firstly, I'm a big Reason user and have no intention of changing that. If possible, I'd like to branch out to another DAW only for video editing tasks (please note - not video scoring) and continue to keep everything else here in Reason.

I will be doing all kinds of slicing and dicing to do with audio / video synchronization - hence the need for a DAW with a few dedicated features. There isn't a need for many features, just the ability to cut / resize / reposition sliced clips on a grid with a set tempo.

I am already familiar with Sony Vegas and the way the sequencer can be set to a tempo and I can do this type of work with it, but surely a DAW with a few video features would be better? Open to suggestions here.

Is anyone familiar with editing synchronized video in another DAW or Video Editing Software and care to share your experiences? This stuff can be a lot of fun and it would be great to expand to a better workflow with some new tools.

I'm on PC so Logic is not an option.

Any suggestions appreciated, cheers!

You could give Davinci Resolve 15 a try? It's free if you don't need the 3D option. It is not a DAW, but why not.

[selig]

Hi guys,

Hoping to get some rather specific advice here so I'll explain the angle I'm coming from and hopefully I can get some good suggestions.

Firstly, I'm a big Reason user and have no intention of changing that. If possible, I'd like to branch out to another DAW only for video editing tasks (please note - not video scoring) and continue to keep everything else here in Reason.

I will be doing all kinds of slicing and dicing to do with audio / video synchronization - hence the need for a DAW with a few dedicated features. There isn't a need for many features, just the ability to cut / resize / reposition sliced clips on a grid with a set tempo.

I am already familiar with Sony Vegas and the way the sequencer can be set to a tempo and I can do this type of work with it, but surely a DAW with a few video features would be better? Open to suggestions here.

Is anyone familiar with editing synchronized video in another DAW or Video Editing Software and care to share your experiences? This stuff can be a lot of fun and it would be great to expand to a better workflow with some new tools.

I'm on PC so Logic is not an option.

Any suggestions appreciated, cheers!

You could give Davinci Resolve 15 a try? It's free if you don't need the 3D option. It is not a DAW, but why not.

Resolve is great - I use 14 studio right now but may switch to FCP for editing (and stability).

But Resolve pretty much IS a DAW, for those who don't know, integrating Fairlight audio and providing fairly advanced audio editing tools and plugin support. BUT, no edit to tempo grid AFAIK.

[bxbrkrz]

You could give Davinci Resolve 15 a try? It's free if you don't need the 3D option. It is not a DAW, but why not.
- - -

Resolve is great - I use 14 studio right now but may switch to FCP for editing (and stability).

But Resolve pretty much IS a DAW, for those who don't know, integrating Fairlight audio and providing fairly advanced audio editing tools and plugin support. BUT, no edit to tempo grid AFAIK.

Yes.
That video may be more appropriate for the OP than the one I posted earlier.
Can't beat the price, even at $300.

[wireless]

You guys beat me to this recommendation....

I'm a relatively new user of Resolve 15 and have been blown away by it. I spent a long time reviewing the options specifically for green-screening backgrounds for video recording and concluded that this was the option for me. To date I've been focused primarily on using it for video editing but am well aware that this latest version has integrated Fairlight which is targeted at handling the audio side of things. Certainly well worth a read on Fairlight at https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/pro ... ciresolve/
and also have a look on the internet and youtube for tutorials.

Be warned that there is a steep learning curve, but my take is that this is kind of similar to getting into Photoshop (or Reason) for the first time in that this will be a long term relationship for me and hence the time investment will pay off.

Good luck Jagwah

[Faastwalker]

I'm not an expert on this by any stretch. But my initial thought was why would you edit video in a DAW as opposed to a dedicated video editing software? I also use Sony Vegas. I love it. Was so easy to get in to. I have Adobe Premiere as part of the CC subscription. But I struggled with this. Clearly a very powerful tool but I didn't find it as intuitive as Vegas. I need to spend more time learning Premiere. But for now I tend to export from Reason as wav, import into Vegas & then edit to the audio, render completed edit out of Vegas. Job done

[NekujaK]

I'm a longtime user of Vegas Pro and have edited dozens of music videos for myself and other clients, plus a handful of short films and documentaries, so my natural recommendation would be Vegas Pro. I've never had any issues synching audio to video. Vegas also offers a great time-stretching algorithm for those rare situations when you need to squeeze a few extra frames out of a piece of music. Or you can turn off Quantize to Frames and freely position video clips on the timeline without having to worry about frame boundaries, if necessary.

Vegas originally started life as a DAW, before it grew into an NLE, so the overall workflow is very familiar and intuitive to anyone coming from the music production world. It supports VSTs, multi-track audio, audio bus routing, and is capable of handling most mixing and mastering tasks.

One of the things I love about Vegas Pro (among many) is that you can throw just about any video and audio formats at it, and Vegas can have them all coexist happily on the timeline without a hiccup.

[selig]

I'm a longtime user of Vegas Pro and have edited dozens of music videos for myself and other clients, plus a handful of short films and documentaries, so my natural recommendation would be Vegas Pro. I've never had any issues synching audio to video. Vegas also offers a great time-stretching algorithm for those rare situations when you need to squeeze a few extra frames out of a piece of music. Or you can turn off Quantize to Frames and freely position video clips on the timeline without having to worry about frame boundaries, if necessary.

Yes, BUT you cannot edit continuous video cut to a musical grid without giving up SOMETHING, as you have to edit on frame boundaries or end up with a constant frame rate for export. You'll either end up with double (or dropped) frames, or with music slightly out of sync. I'm no expert but I can't see how you can end up otherwise, right?

What I mean is, you can't stretch a frame so it's 1.5 frames long because you have to play (export) 1 frame per frame of video in the end. Even with audio, you always end up with a constant number of samples per second in the end...

[NekujaK]

Yes, BUT you cannot edit continuous video cut to a musical grid without giving up SOMETHING, as you have to edit on frame boundaries or end up with a constant frame rate for export. You'll either end up with double (or dropped) frames, or with music slightly out of sync. I'm no expert but I can't see how you can end up otherwise, right?

What I mean is, you can't stretch a frame so it's 1.5 frames long because you have to play (export) 1 frame per frame of video in the end. Even with audio, you always end up with a constant number of samples per second in the end...

Technically, you're absolutely correct. When I mentioned time-stretching, I was referring to stretching the audio to fit a particular scene, which means the audio is stretched to meet frame boundaries. But I would only recommend doing this if the audio is off by a few frames, so the stretch is not obvious.

In terms of positioning video clips between frame boundaries, there will definitely either be dropped frames our double frames, which is why I rarely do it. I was just pointing out it was possible, and of course, if you do it, you need to be careful of dropped frames or gaps. But an occasional doubled frame is usually not noticeable to the viewer, such as when performing 2:3 pulldown during 24fps to 30fps upconverting.

[Oquasec]

Protools/Ableton/Studio one/Cubase/Nuendo I think.
All of them are good so it's a crapshoot actually trying to say one is better than the other at this point everything works

[ProfessaKaos]

To edit audio to video I recommend Pro Tools. You can import OMF files straight into it.

[Jagwah]

Not sure if Bitwig can also do video edits

No, but I don't think it's a good idea to edit videos in a DAW?

Does the OP edit audio in Premiere or Final Cut?

If you are synchronizing video to beats per minute and only need a few basic video editing features, it makes all the sense in the world to use a DAW in my opinion.

[Jagwah]

I'm not an expert on this by any stretch. But my initial thought was why would you edit video in a DAW as opposed to a dedicated video editing software? I also use Sony Vegas. I love it. Was so easy to get in to. I have Adobe Premiere as part of the CC subscription. But I struggled with this. Clearly a very powerful tool but I didn't find it as intuitive as Vegas. I need to spend more time learning Premiere. But for now I tend to export from Reason as wav, import into Vegas & then edit to the audio, render completed edit out of Vegas. Job done

I like Vegas a lot as well and found the transition extremely smooth, just wondering what else is out there and if people have found better experiences.

I want to use a DAW because I am synchronizing to beats, even 1/16th beats if the situation arises. I'm not scoring here, video and audio will be edited together, one will not necessarily be finished before the other.

[Jagwah]

As I understand it, this will be tough to do accurately. With around 30 ms resolution for the video vs micro-millisecond resolution for the audio, video will not cut well to the beat if cutting on frame boundaries. And there’s no way around editing on frames in video that I’m aware of.

Some suggestions I’ve heard in the past are importing a click track to have a visual cue for where the beats fall, as most edits will be a compromise as to choosing to edit slightly before or after the beat (and choosing manually may give more control).

Hypothetically, if you were to force every video edit to a musical grid, there would be overlap or gaps between video frames that would be unacceptable (if technically possible to do so) if not impossible, right?

So the choice is to edit on video frames and have the music timing shift slightly on every beat, or separate the video/audio keeping the music timing accurate and getting as close as possible on the video.

Or am I missing something here?


Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk

The editing I'm interested in doesn't need to be so precise as to be thinking about milliseconds etc. I'm getting into animating too and I have used the frame per second calculation method and it just never works precisely unless you restrict yourself to something like 60 or 120 beats per minute. The idea is to have frames hit so close to the beat that we really couldn't tell if it's falling milliseconds either side of the beat but will basically register as a hit on that beat.

It will be good once I have some work to share but from that point I won't be needing help and suggestions about these things.

I will definitely check out Da Vinci Resolve but I could very well just stay with Reason and Sony Vegas, just wanted to put some feelers out and see what else is out there. Thanks for your thoughts

[Jagwah]

Thanks everybody.

For the type of editing I want to do a sequencer that can be set to a tempo is pretty important. Judging by what's been said here and a quick google Da Vinci Resolve doesn't have this feature and the work around is to zoom in on an audio waveform and find beats that way. I May be far better off sticking with my current Reason / Sony Vegas combo as I'm not hearing any great reviews or anything about other options.

Thanks again for your input and suggestions.

[Faastwalker]

I'm not an expert on this by any stretch. But my initial thought was why would you edit video in a DAW as opposed to a dedicated video editing software? I also use Sony Vegas. I love it. Was so easy to get in to. I have Adobe Premiere as part of the CC subscription. But I struggled with this. Clearly a very powerful tool but I didn't find it as intuitive as Vegas. I need to spend more time learning Premiere. But for now I tend to export from Reason as wav, import into Vegas & then edit to the audio, render completed edit out of Vegas. Job done

I like Vegas a lot as well and found the transition extremely smooth, just wondering what else is out there and if people have found better experiences.

I want to use a DAW because I am synchronizing to beats, even 1/16th beats if the situation arises. I'm not scoring here, video and audio will be edited together, one will not necessarily be finished before the other.

Which version of Vegas are you using? I've not upgraded for a long time, partly because I subscribed to Adobe CC through my workplace & was intending to use Premiere CC. But I just couldn't get on with this so I went back to my old version of Vegas. I think it's Vegas 13. We're up to 15 now & of course Sony no longer puts this out. I think it's still Magix, although it's hard to shake the Sony Vegas name as everyone is so used to it. I've just been reading up on Vegas movie Studio 15, which is a hell of a lot more affordable than the Pro version but looks incredibly feature packed. Might have to pull the trigger on this one. Sounds like they have really made some good improvements;

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/vegas ... r-encoding

[demt]

the completely mindblowing resolume avenue 6
has midi ,synced bpm and loads of other features this video is for avenue but alleyway is completely the same apart from adding live projectors

[selig]

As I understand it, this will be tough to do accurately. With around 30 ms resolution for the video vs micro-millisecond resolution for the audio, video will not cut well to the beat if cutting on frame boundaries. And there’s no way around editing on frames in video that I’m aware of.

Some suggestions I’ve heard in the past are importing a click track to have a visual cue for where the beats fall, as most edits will be a compromise as to choosing to edit slightly before or after the beat (and choosing manually may give more control).

Hypothetically, if you were to force every video edit to a musical grid, there would be overlap or gaps between video frames that would be unacceptable (if technically possible to do so) if not impossible, right?

So the choice is to edit on video frames and have the music timing shift slightly on every beat, or separate the video/audio keeping the music timing accurate and getting as close as possible on the video.

Or am I missing something here?


Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk

The editing I'm interested in doesn't need to be so precise as to be thinking about milliseconds etc. I'm getting into animating too and I have used the frame per second calculation method and it just never works precisely unless you restrict yourself to something like 60 or 120 beats per minute. The idea is to have frames hit so close to the beat that we really couldn't tell if it's falling milliseconds either side of the beat but will basically register as a hit on that beat.

It will be good once I have some work to share but from that point I won't be needing help and suggestions about these things.

I will definitely check out Da Vinci Resolve but I could very well just stay with Reason and Sony Vegas, just wanted to put some feelers out and see what else is out there. Thanks for your thoughts

DaVinci is free, and a powerful tool with great audio features too. Worth checking out for it's color and automation tools too, and Fusion integration as well (I used Fusion to create my Selig Audio video logo, btw).

I would think a click track would be indispensable for a visual reference for this type of work, no?

I'd love to see examples of what you come up with, sounds very cool IMO.

[kitekrazy]

Wait for one of those Humble Bundle deals where you can get Vegas Pro Edit pretty cheap. The only success and ease I ever worked with video in a DAW was Studio One v2. Cubase is suppose to be really good. I'm one though who doesn't like trying video in a DAW. I avoid it as much as possible.

[Jagwah]

I like Vegas a lot as well and found the transition extremely smooth, just wondering what else is out there and if people have found better experiences.

I want to use a DAW because I am synchronizing to beats, even 1/16th beats if the situation arises. I'm not scoring here, video and audio will be edited together, one will not necessarily be finished before the other.

Which version of Vegas are you using? I've not upgraded for a long time, partly because I subscribed to Adobe CC through my workplace & was intending to use Premiere CC. But I just couldn't get on with this so I went back to my old version of Vegas. I think it's Vegas 13. We're up to 15 now & of course Sony no longer puts this out. I think it's still Magix, although it's hard to shake the Sony Vegas name as everyone is so used to it. I've just been reading up on Vegas movie Studio 15, which is a hell of a lot more affordable than the Pro version but looks incredibly feature packed. Might have to pull the trigger on this one. Sounds like they have really made some good improvements;

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/vegas ... r-encoding

Yeah I'm on Pro 13 and as soon as I clicked on your link I wanted to upgrade, it's looks very smooth and I bet there's a ton of new features. At the same time 13 does everything I want to do that I know about so far.

I have a very old Magix Music Maker and I would be surprised if that was merging with Vegas as I thought it was pretty weak as a DAW but I really haven't spent much time with it to be honest. Terrible idea to lose the Vegas name whatever they are doing.

[Jagwah]

the completely mindblowing resolume avenue 6
has midi ,synced bpm and loads of other features this video is for avenue but alleyway is completely the same apart from adding live projectors

Unfortunately Resolume is just too 'live' for the work I'm interested in. Everything I need is there except a damn sequencer that will let you automate parameters. I have requested this as a feature, years ago, maybe it's just not in their intended direction.

Otherwise for its intended purposes this is a really cool video software that anyone here could make use of if they want some video to go with their audio work. Thanks for sharing