Video Editing Software Suggestions

[EyeKhan]

Any suggestions on a decent software package - stable, easy to use, fun features - for uploading from digital tape, editing and outputing to various file types? Must run on windows 7. I had an old versoin of Sony's software but I lost the serial number and its time to update anyway. Not sure I want to go Sony again...

[Bitter Jeweler]

What don't you like about Sony Vegas?
I tried Adobe Premier(?), but found it was not as intuitive or as easy to use. That may be because I was already used to Vegas.

[littlelolligagged]

What are you trying to do with your video? The windows video editing software is fine if you aren't trying to do a hell of a lot with it. I've never tried doing anything too complex with it, but how exciting does home video of your children need to be, anyway?

edit: Eeep, bad grammar. I need moar koffeeeeeee

[Ominous Gamer]

I've never had any complaints with Movie Maker, but all I do is splice videos, and add a bit of subtitling. Then again, I've only used it a handful of times.

Movie Maker examples via the baby:

[Bitter Jeweler]

If he's used Vegas, he won't be downgrading to Movie Maker. LOL

[Ziggy Stardust]

I only know one I used ages ago, but they're sure to have updates. Ulead VideoStudio <version>

I'm a total video editor noob, but I could work with this easy.

[Illusions]

Adobe After Effects is good too, but expensive. It can also output to a bunch of different formats as well, although you might get better results from outputting an uncompressed lossless file in whatever your chosen format is, and then letting a dedicated compressing and encoding software like Sorenson Squeeze handle those things, and outputting it in different formats...Squeeze is also expensive as well though...

[EyeKhan]

Regarding my needs, they are simple. My wants, on the other hand... Funny, this is an existential microcosm.

I have a lot of old movie tapes I want to give a chance at making it into the more distant future by copying onto a hard drive, maybe burn onto disks etc. That's the basic need.

On top of that I'd like to take certain key events and edit out the crap, maybe splice some stuff in, ad some text, a soundtrack, maybe some voiceover, etc. Then I'd like to be able to output the vids in several different formats - disks, some uploadable stuff, etc.

On top of that, I like to think I'll get some time to fool around with more sophisticated bells and whistles. I'm sometimes a sucker for the nifty factor for its own sake. Low priority though, as I'll likely not get the time.

EDIT:

Regarding Vegas, I used it on a few big projects maybe five years ago and it worked, more or less, well for me. I'm not sure my PC at the time was up to the task and it would hang up a lot or crash. Playback was choppy. But I worked through that and got the job done. My current PC has a lot more power - one of the reasons I wanted to load the old Vegas software on it was to see how much better it ran on a more powerful PC. I turned my office upside down looking for the program documentation but I could not find the serial number. That was extremely annoying.

I used to do everything Sony but lately I've been disenchanted with their products - my latest TV a Samsung, surround tuner Pioneer, bue ray player LG. They all replaced Sony products, which are pricy and don't get the good reviews anymore. My next camera will likley not be a Sony, as my current one is...

[EyeKhan]

Adobe After Effects is good too, but expensive. It can also output to a bunch of different formats as well, although you might get better results from outputting an uncompressed lossless file in whatever your chosen format is, and then letting a dedicated compressing and encoding software like Sorenson Squeeze handle those things, and outputting it in different formats...Squeeze is also expensive as well though...

Yeah, After Effects is a bit more than I need I think. It looks cool as hell and if I had a lot more free time . . . . .