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Video editing package with good speedup support

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins

EF2
Joined
Jun 22, 2005
Messages
194
Location
Twin Cities, MN
The biggest Achilles heel of any editing software I've used is a limitation on speed-up for time lapse purposes. A limit of 4x just doesn't cut it, and I'm tired of saving at 4x, load, repeat, until I get my desired speed.

I've seen that Adobe Premier Pro has an awesome limitless timelapse, but of course, it's extremely expensive. What I'm looking for is something similar in a consumer package. Up to 50x or 100x, and as a bonus one that autofits the clip into a certain time length. Any suggestions? Will Premier Elements allow this?
 
Editing Software

If money isn't too terrible of an issue, I'd look at Final Cut Pro for the Macintosh side, or I even like editing on Avid for Windows. Both programs are very easy to work with and totally customizable.
 
I've seen a version of Vegas in the past, but it only went up to 4x also. I haven't checked out Avid, but it looks pricey. No Mac here either.

Thanks for the suggestions. I can't really justify paying $300+ for the luxury of flexible time lapsing, so I'll be sticking with the grind.
 
Avid Liquid is what I use. For the most part it is a solid piece of software. I did have many problems with it during the Storms of 2007 project (mostly authoring problems) but I worked those out.

Here is what I did for time lapse video before I was given Liquid. I used Studio and it only allowed time lapse speeds up to 5x. I rendered the clip to a .avi file @ 5x. Then imported that rendered file back into Studio and rendered it again @ 5x giving me 10x. Repeat as necessary. So without getting in to the technical encoding and quality, it looks just as good but just extra steps.

Mick
 
There's a 30 day demo of Premier Elements, so I checked it out this afternoon and it can indeed do unlimited speed up as well as fit a clip into a time limit. Perfect! And at $100, it's just right.
 
My method of working with long timelapses is simply importing the video into a program like VirtualDub, exporting a fraction of the frames as image files, then bringing them back in and assembling them into an avi file. A bit more hassle but it's a completely free option and should work with all editing programs.
 
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