Avid Free DV
Quick and Fast: Pretty well rounded, but really slow and hard to learn at first. Only imports certain formats.
Where you get it: Avid discontinued it on their website. I got mine Here. You will need a serial number and authorization code which are found in the Questions & Answers tab below where you download.
Free DV is a free version of Avid Xpress DV and the intention was that you’d buy Xpress DV, Xpress Pro or one of the bigger ones. Avid was the first editing software around, coming between tape to tape editing and Final Cut Pro so it really helps if you’ve done both of those. Still, it’s not very easy to learn and there are some good tutorials on Avid’s website (see below).
I found Avid Free DV to be RATHER SLOW. It also took up a lot of space on my computer compared to other freeware. Many normal functions like trimming are done in special “modes” that you get to by clicking icons along the top of the timeline. You can import AVI, Jpeg, Quicktime, WAV and a few other formats, but not WMV or Mpeg, which I think is very strange. There are two video and audio tracks, but the audio tracks quickly fill up with the audio from your camera, leaving you to delete one track if you want to add music. And then after I rendered, there was static in the audio which wasn’t originally there. Still trying to work that one out.
The only good points I saw with Free DV is that it helped me learn Avid (somewhat like Final Cut Pro, for those of you wanting to learn that) and that it’s pro looking. Even so, I’d pick Windows Movie Maker above this for your normal day-to-day stuff.
EDIT: Lately, I wasn’t able to render out of Free DV, so I deleted the whole thing. I recommend using Jahshaka or Movie Maker to edit.
Tutorials: These tutorials seem to be the original ones provided by Avid. Fortunately, they weren’t removed when the program itself was removed, otherwise we’d be in deep trouble. There are also good tutorials for Avid Xpress Pro on lynda.com which get deeper into it all. (lynda requires you to pay after a little bit.) There is also a Free DV forum at This Site.
License and Use: The site I got Free DV from says the license is a “Freeware License”. It never says you can’t use it for commercial purposes, in fact I heard some pro Avid users use Free DV for stuff they do. Interesting.
Demo: For this chapter, the demo is the Summer Reel for my design identity, Explozion Design Studio. You’ll hear the audio static, which may or may not have to do with how I rendered (I think it’s the program).
NOTE!! The video compositing/effects were done in After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Lightwave 3D. I just edited all these clips together in Avid Free DV. Don’t start thinking this is a special effects program.
