I want to make snappy videos, but I can’t afford a Mac. No worries my friend, I have an affordable solution for you. I’ve been using an editor for Windows called TrackAxPC for a little over a year now and it continues to impress me. I want to be open and honest with you; making videos is not a focus in my life. Yes I’ve made a few and you’re welcome to go check them out on my YouTube channel, but they are nothing special. My motivation in writing this post is for the church that might not have the money to throw into editing equipment and/or the talent pool of people who are already proficient with a particular video production suite.
Once I had created my first couple of videos I was really excited about the whole vlogging scene and decided I wanted to jump in. I had already been working with GIMP (graphics creation/manipulation), TrackAxPC (video editing and encoding), and xSplit (realtime overlays and multiple camera switching) on my Windows machine for a few months when I jumped into what I perceived to the superior platform: I bought a Macbook Pro. Now, I’m not going to argue against Mac being the industry standard for professional video production. I’m just not sure it holds that ground as firmly in the novice realm. (The Mac went back a week later, for numerous reasons.)
While iMovie can help you make a very sharp looking movie in very little time, it lacks the full pallet of tools available in TrackAxPC. You’re going to have to click your mouse buttons quite a few times more, but once you learn the tools I think that you’ll be happy with not being limited to predefined templates.
Also, I got stuck once and sent an email to their support address. Within a few hours I was talking to one of the developers. Not tech support. Not some contracted, read off the screen, and rush though the phone call type operation. No, I was working with one of the guys who makes the software. Also, on their site there are tons of video walkthroughs and a very helpful community.
My Bottom Line
Please don’t take this as a Mac bashing post. If you have the Mac and the full Adobe suite or Final Cut or whatever and you can make glorious HD videos, then more power to you! On the other hand, if you have a PC and you want to get into trying your hand and video production but don’t want to drop a few thousand dollars into the experiment, give this software a shot. It has a 15 day trial and if you purchase you get to install on two PCs!
Who knows? Maybe you’ll make this meager investment and find out that you’re the next one-person Pixar and you really need that Mac Pro setup to really express yourself. I certainly hope that is true for many of you. In the meantime, please consider this post to be a proposal on a low risk baby step in that direction.
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