Avidemux appears to be the ultimate editor, but...
The problems begin immediately, because it's the only editor whose audio and video are almost always out of synch (when they weren't in to raw video), and often wildly so. You can easily adjust synchronization by typing in the milliseconds of difference, but it can be very tedious to find the exact amount, and you'd better do it before you edit anything (you'll see why in a moment).
The editing itself is precise, and different button sets make it easy to move back and forth - better than all other free editors. But once you've finished, the easy part ends.
"Copy" to the same format is very fast if you've done everything right, but for conversion, you'd better know exactly what format and codec go together or you'll get an error message until you find the right combination.
And when you do, you may then get the worst error message of all - one that tells you you haven't started on a "key frame." In that case, you have no choice but to start over. In fact, if you want to change any edit you can't undo it - you have to undo ALL of them - and start over.
Little quirks involve having to name the new file yourself, and there's no button to delete a scene, you have to right click and select "delete" from the menu. And if you want to do something like cropping the video, processing then can become amazingly slow.
So while this is the most full-featured editor out there, I've given up on it until it becomes more user friendly.
Review details
- Interface
- Features
- Ease of use
- Value
- Recommend to a friend? No
- Posted Jan 05, 2012 for v2.5.6
If you want a FREE video editor that with a small learning curve, can do some great splicing, joining, converting and using numerous filters, some decent visual editing.
It definitely has options. The default when main window is opened is set to COPY, but this can be changed to whatever codec is listed and there are quite a few. The same goes for the audio, and the format can very easily be changed the same way.
If you are willing to learn a bit, taking 20 minutes to read the NUMEROUS tutorials on the web on how to use Avidemux, it isn't all that bad and you get to learn about video and audio formats which comes in very handy.
If you prefer it the easy way, it doesn't get any simpler than clicking the "Auto" (which I call the "no brainer function") to do the work for you, choose an output, save. That's all there is. There are also advanced options when doing so for the more enthusiastic users.
Cutting parts from video is very easy and handy. Select point A and point B, cut, save, that's all that's to it.
I have been using an older version, perfectly happy with it but I now have the latest which I'm very pleased with. It has been the most stable editor and it's manual enough that if something goes wrong, it's likely due to my error. I have bought and tried others and I can never get the specific results I want, so, Avidemux is what I will continue to use.
Free awesome editor!
Review details
- Interface
- Features
- Ease of use
- Value
- Recommend to a friend? Yes
- Posted Apr 23, 2011 for v2.5.4 r6854