WeddingCutter

Is this for real?

Apprently, yes. If you are familiar with this software forgive me for not knowing of it's existence. It's been around for about a year and it's supposed to quite a hit. The 'Pro' is supposed to be an improvement on an earlier version (Version 5) that I had not heard of at all.

Pinnacle Wedding Pro "from Pinnacle Systems India is the latest version of Pinnacle's video editing solution for wedding video professionals." says CIOL.com.

Raju in Jodhpur, the only Indian I've worked with who also covers weddings (We rented his suite for 2 days for some editing) used Edius, a Canopus thing. Good for video, but shit when it comes to working on the audio. I guess it's a budget editor. Smaller editors do the job when it comes to editing something as basic as a wedding. And the average wedding video does not require any serious color corrections or multi format exports or anything so it's a pretty much problem free edit. When the better editors like Avid and Premier and FCP are all too damn expensive (unless you approve of piracy), smaller cutters work.

So, I can understand people who spend their lives covering wedding getting used a cheaper, more user friendly editor like Edius or any one of the million other little video editors that are out there. The work they do most certainly does not justify the use of something a little high-end like an Avid or a Premier or FCP. But why on earth would someone go through the trouble of making a seperate wedding editor software? That is what I find hard to understand. Does Pinnacle believe there is a market for this? And are they right?

It's about 60,000 INR a pop. You can buy a working (pirated) copy of Primier Pro 1.5 anywhere in India for about 50 INR. You get Acrobat, Photoshop, Aftereffects and Encore thrown in for free. And I don't know how to say this without sounding judgemental and holier-than-thou, but the average wedding cameraman can't really be too concerned about protecting intellectual property.

But what do you get for 60,000 INR? What would make something like this attractive to the small time wedding filmmaker? The only thing I can think of is the breakout box and the USB compatibility Pinnacle throws in. The hardware comes with the software. So you don't need to buy a fancy video card (which costs a helluva lot), and the interface is supposed to be uniform, from capture to DVD authoring. You don't have to switch from this to that for different tasks. And the fancy titling, P-in-P, and the effects are all a part of the same package so it's a lot easier for someone to do all that bling on a wedding video.

If you read this article on Channel Times you'll find out exactly how much demand there is for an editor like this. Just read the comments left below the article.

But really, it's still wierd. I know it's perfectly normal for something like this to evolve when the market for it is clearly there, but it's still wierd. NewsCutter and other editors designed for specific useage is understandable, but a wedding editor?


Oh my god there's a Chinese version too (it looks Chinese to me). Help!



And Digital Juice makes one as well!

Crossposted on timecode.