Hi,
after having used commercial NLE software for years for private videos, I want to rethink this 1. it was from Adobe and 2. I really donīt need fancy features because the for me most important things like deshaking and cleaning with IMHO best quality is done outside of the NLE with AviSynth and VirtualDub (at least a hobbyistīs price range).
So the only reason I want to use a real NLE software is to trim the deshaked and maybe cleaned clips and add transitions between the clips in a comfortable way - there are only rare occasions where I want to use scaling, rotation and color correction, but they exist.
It is important to me that I am able to import and export FFMPEG open-source codecs.
While this might not be that important for HD video, I have used e.g. the the FFV1 codec for lossless SD material handling (lossless for HD is not practical). And for output, I prefer to use MKV with h264/ac3 by using x264 with Blu-ray compatible settings from
https://sites.google.com/site/x264bluray/.
But most important: Since my homevideos are either 576i50 (DV, analogue capture or DVD) or 1080i50 (AVCHD), I want to stay in the interlace domain for those "old" videos because even QTGMC causes minor artifacts and takes a lot of time on high quality settings.
So there were some candidates:
I checked out Vegas from a Humble Bundle sale (yes, commercial, but cheap in the bundle), but it did not work smoothly with AVCHD material, and an pricey update to the latest version was recommended in the forums...
DaVinci Resolve is great, but does not offer compatibility to the mentioned codecs, thatīs why I put it aside (for now).
Then I watched several videos on "best free video editing software", and I checked out Shotcut.
But I just got the answer that when using (certain?) filters, all the material is deinterlaced (with half frame rate) and not reinterlaced, even if you set the output settings to "interlace" - a behaviour that I havenīt seen before for the last 25 years. But the developer says that this is by design and not a bug and that they donīt have interest in fixing this - I would have to implement it myself (which I am [currently] not able to do).
I also checked some other open-source NLEs, but there were also problems or they did not support interlace at all. But I might have overseen a tool, thatīs why I ask here.
I might invest in a 99€ Adobe Premiere Elements, Magix stuff etc., but just for some trimming and cross dissolve between the clips which are really basic tasks...?
There might be the opinion that it is best to deinterlace everything to 50p/60p anyway since we have progressive displays nowadays. And there might the claim that QTGMC (at least for the moment?) is by far better than any built-in routines in the video processors of hardware playback devices (yadif2 in VLC or VirtualDub2 is definately not).
But this also means that hundreds or thousands minutes of private home videos would have to be deinterlaced and reencoded with a certain degree of quality loss unless you donīt also add some cleaning task on top - which is all time-consuming.
Thatīs why I still want to output those old videos in interlace format.
Furthermore, the Blu-ray standard does not allow 50p/60p videos, and remembering the incompatibilities in the 2000s with DivX/XviD and certain variations of the MPEG-4-ASP parameters, I donīt want to risk non-playable or stuttering videos on certain chipsets/players. The then-neccessary reencoding is really not a way I want to go.
I want the videos to be future proof like the DVDs I made 20 years ago with TMPEGenc (partly burned on CDs, later on real DVDs) that are still playable today (directly from disc or VOB files) and that I currently repackage from DVD to MKV files without any reencoding.
There are some videos left on Super-8 and DV that need to be edited, thatīs why I look for a new NLE software.
Thanks in advance for any hints!