Starting from scratch-Please Help

[Brittany0719]

Hi everyone,

I have been given the oportunity to start a media ministry at our church. Pastor and I have spoken and we have to the funds to buy a new computer and whatever software we need. We are basically looking for promotional software. We are looking to:

1. Create commercial's/pro-mo clips for the different ministries
2. Import video, pictures, other media files (youtube video) and such
7. Ability to animate words

I am familiar with AVID, this is software used by many colleges even Universal Studios for their editing. It is an extremely pricey program. I am looking for something similar but less expensive.

I know we will deffinately need an external hard drive, what should I be looking for?

Please any imput you have would be greatly appreciated!

God Bless,

~B

[sempei13]

For Mac, the Final Cut Studio suite rocks! This is what I use.

For PC, Vegas is a good mid-level package. A lot of people swear by Adobe Premiere and the much cheaper Premiere Elements.

Paul

[[Director] drew ryan]

One big question is what platform you will work on, Mac or PC. There are great programs for both platforms, but some are not cross platform.

As far as an external hard that also will depend on what platform.

[wesgay]

You can do almost everything you would ever want to do with a 15" inch MacBook Pro and Final Cut. If you have the money, get Final Cut Studio. If not, Final Cut Express is great. I've used FCE for almost 3 years for everything from long multi camera shoots to a quick one camera commercial.

But as Drew said, all that depends on whether you want to go Mac.

[JereNet]

If you want to use Windows, I use Pinnacle (now Avid, but the cheaper name) Studio 12 Ultimate (there is a more recent version, but I'm not upgrading because I don't need to). I haven't really messed around with animating words, but I know there are ways to do it. As far as a hard drive, if you're going to be using a lot of space for videos, look at a Drobo. drobo.com They have many different versions, and even NAS if you want to set up a network. I think the features and simplicity outweigh the little bit extra you'll be spending up front.

[ruikuanli]

just want to share my softtwares:

for Videos - After Effects and Power director 8
for dowloading vidoes - youtube downloader or orbit
for worship software - Easy worhsip 2009