Posted by HeatherC (Canada) on 19:35 Jul 25
I don't post often here, but I do read a lot, and stash things away in the back of my mind...
I have a 15 year old son (almost 16) whose goal in life is -- well, his big goal is to create/direct films. I am not completely sure what "steps along the way" he aspires to...
His younger brothers took part in a musical production in their homeschool co-op this past June (ie. last month) -- my Zack (the 15 yos) videotaped the production, as did 2 other men. Zack has been working for 2 weeks on compiling all the video footage into one production (including intro, credits, a menu, etc. -- all the stuff that your average DVDs offer these days. I think he's even worked on some out-takes and bloopers....). Well, today he lost all his work! (I'll pause for a collective gasp.... ) He still has the original videos, but will have to start work all over again...
We aren't sure why this happened. Sigh....power failure? (lots of thunderstorms around here today....) or just lousy software -- he's been using Pinnacle, which is known to be somewhat "buggy". (We couldn't afford Adobe Premiere when he first started out with all of this....not sure we can now, but that's one of my questions....)
The other possibility is that he just didn't save his work properly, and today the program hung when he was finishing up, so he just shut the computer down....
Anyhow -- questions (if anyone would prefer to respond off list -- my email is h candy at magma dot ca)...
1. Does anyone (or their dh?) know anything about this software? And might there be a way to rescue his work, even though both Zack and my dh have "hunted" for it?
2. We have started looking into getting the Adobe Premiere software -- but it's $850 US!!
A little tough for homeschoolers like us to manage at this point. That price is for the most recent version -- would a lower version (ie. Premiere 1.5) be OK? There are some FS on ebay at $299 US -- still a huge stretch for us, but better than $850!
3. Any suggestions about other ways to get this software that are legal, and would end up leaving us with something that will be useful for at least -- oh, a couple of years anyway?
Thanks for any suggestions, etc.
Heather C (Canada)