StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm currently editing footage for my student film, and am using Windows Movie Maker. However, it has several major drawbacks, not least of which is the apparent inability to have more than one audio track (I want the footage sound, the ambient music, and a sound effect - at present I can only have one of the latter two).

The college Macs have IMovie, but using this would entail doing all of the editing in college, which isn't all that practical for several reasons.

So, can anyone suggest an editing software which is more capable than WMM and less capable than professional software (I don't want something you need training to use)? Thanks

Err.

Hm.

How much editing do you want to do? Adobe Premiere is pretty good, not as complicated as Aftereffects, and such. If you can get access to a Mac, FinalCutPro is pretty idiot proof.

I need to take the raw footage I have and make it into a film by adding on-screen text, black screens, fades, audio/sfx/video sound simultaneously...

I'm not sure how to say exactly what capability I require, as I'm not sure what I don't need...

I'll check out Adobe Premiere. The only Macs are in college, but 1. I hate them, 2. I have files here I need on the film etc and 3. I've spent about 8 hours on it so far and am nowhere near finished, so I can't spend enough time on it in college.

Well, if you're careful with timings you could use an audio editor (Audacity) to merge sound effects and ambient music and then just save the resultant file as .wav and use it in VirtualDub.

Sourceforge is your friend.

You may want to apply a filter for your OS, but I'm sure that one of those will fill your needs.

EDIT: and then you can use Mencoder to change it into a format of your choosing.

Sony Vegas.

Adobe Final Cut. Pretty proffesional but easy to use despite that.