So, I’m just an EP / Coach out there, but I love all of the reveal videos your all put out there. The VEX community is much more awesome than the VEX IQ community in that way.
I am wondering, with all of you editing all this video, does anyone have an online platform that you use for editing? For next year we have to do video submissions for STEM projects in IQ, and with my 20+ teams and a computer lab of 30+ computers, managing the files locally is going to be a pain. I see a couple online using the Googles, but I’m curious if anyone has actually used any of them.
The closest I can think of is the Adobe Creative Cloud.
It comes with a full suit of photo and video editing, and the files can be saved or stored up in their cloud.
But it is not cheap… even with the education price.
I am not an expert in this area. Maybe there are better options around.
I would just use Google Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive/whatever setup with a synchronized local folder – that is, a folder on the local machine synchronizes with the cloud – and a proper, ‘offline’ video editor. That way the shared files behave like local files and are readily usable with locally installed software.
I recommend the free version of DaVinci Resolve for powerful features or HitFilm Express for a less daunting experience.
Oh yes. Forgot about Lightworks. Definitely also professional-grade software, but it’s probably too much for most robotics students.
I second Hitfilm Express too (It’s free!!). I have only been experimenting with it and it seems very capable. There are lots of tutorials on youtube to help you learn the software. The only downside that I see with it is that it takes forever to open on my computer (2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, iMac 21.5-inch, Late 2013). SSD might help?
As @meng said, Adobe CC is very nice, but expensive.
Definitely agree with @Barin about online file sharing. They are easy to access and share among students. Plus, nowadays most students are familiar with using online file sharing such as the ones mentioned above.
For our reveal video, we used iMovie ( ). I really like iMovie because I use it for school projects and I know my way around the software very well. I generally, avoid using any of the stock iMovie effects because they are wayyy over used. We made our text animations in keynote, and used a green background so we could green screen it onto the video. That worked pretty well, and its a nice trick if you don’t have access to other editing software. Looking back, we probably should have used a better camera for the video footage.
As far as online options go, there aren’t any good ones that I have used. Many of them have cheesy stock animations, or put a watermark on the final video (pay to remove water mark).
I would really recommend editing locally then exporting the files to a GDrive that everyone can access or some other cloud-based platform. Some of the softwares people use are
Sony Vegas Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
Davinci Resolve
As someone who has both Sony Vegas Pro 15 and Pro 14, I personally like version 14 primarily because I was used to its style before, with the addition that some features are either removed, moved, or replaced with another feature in Vegas Pro 15. I believe Vegas Pro 14 would be easier to learn and figure out compared to 15, but these are just my opinions regarding the software. Now, in Vegas Pro 14 I have had the software crash countless times more than Vegas Pro 15, so I eventually made sure to save projects before adding videos of making major modifications to the project.
How much overlap is there going to be between the videos? If there is not much overlap, the content would be unique to each video, so would you really gain anything by doing it in the cloud? From experience, most low-mid end video editors only allow 1 user at a time with a video.
). I really like iMovie because I use it for school projects and I know my way around the software very well. I generally, avoid using any of the stock iMovie effects because they are wayyy over used. We made our text animations in keynote, and used a green background so we could green screen it onto the video. That worked pretty well, and its a nice trick if you don’t have access to other editing software. Looking back, we probably should have used a better camera for the video footage.