Video Editing made Ridiculous

The software makers for video editing software just don't seem to get it.

I have a simple task (or at least in my mind it should be simple). I want to take the footage from a DVD +RW I took with my Sony DVD-based Camcorder, and convert it into a bunch of nice quicktime movies suitable for sending to relatives via the Internet. Ideally, I want to edit out the 'boring bits' that are in almost every video clip of raw footage, and maybe even put a title in front of the movie. However, that last bit is optional. After all, if I can name the file, I really don't need to put a title in front. Pretty simple, right?

A few notes before I begin. My DVD uses, of course, MPEG-2 format with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and it is also WideScreen. I'd like to ensure that my widescreen isn't messed up.

Let's start with Intervideo's video editing software. Downloaded the trial, installed, and tried to work with it. Crashes. Regularly. End of Trial.

Quicktime Pro? They want extra bucks to handle MPEG-2, and it does not list .VOB files as supported on its web site (.VOB files are the files containing the MPEG-2 movies that regular DVD's use). Oh yeah, Apple doesn't offer refunds if their software fails to do the job. Moving on..

ULead Studio. Won't read the .VOB files. Moving on...

Pinnacle Studio Plus 10. Can't find a trial download. They are happy to show me a video on their website showing how awesome their software is. But no trial. So I download one for which I can find a trial, version 9.3. There is a 9.4 patch, but it won't work on a trial download. Naturally, it won't read the contents of my DVD directly, either.

And then there's the big one: Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. Downloaded the trial. It will happily read the .VOB. Yay! However, in spite of the fact that my camcorder already divided the 'scenes' by making them into DVD Chapters, Premiere ignores those and just sucks in the whole 30 minutes of video into one long clip. It has no scene detection capabilities, either. Even on my machine with 1Gb of RAM, this means that manipulating this clip is SLOWWWWW. The user interface also is less than friendly, assuming that I have no life and wish to spend hours upon hours becoming a professional video editor (I don't).

Now, I could get around some of these things buy buying separate utilities to convert .VOB files to MPEG-2 movies (though it's hard to find from the descriptions of these utilities whether my widescreen, frame rate, compression, and audio will be preserved during the conversions).

But regardless, I don't want to buy multiple products to do what should be a simple job. Does no software maker out there GET IT? What is so hard about actually USING the Chapter dividers that are actually seen by the software? What is so hard about scene splitting, Adobe? Pinnacle does it (even if most of the reviews of their software say that tech support is non existent and the software itself is about as stable as Tom Cruise making a talk show appearance).

So, for the time being, I'm shelving my video editing plans, having spent two solid days trying to find usable software to do a simple task. To the makers of video software listed above: Thanks for nothing, guys...