Not the city. The editing software.
A month ago, we bought Sony’s Vegas Media Studio HD Platinum (affiliate link). After doing a bunch of projects with Windows Movie Maker, the free editor that comes with Windows, we spent less than $99 and got a real editor.
Why did I wait? Because I’m cheap and I’m proud.
Why spend money when you have a perfectly good product to use for free? Never mind the crashes that happen because of the size of the files I’m editing. Never mind the time it takes to figure out how to layer multiple video tracks. Never mind the number of things that can’t be done. Never mind how much time it takes. The product is free.
And, after all, when you do something cool and then say, “Yep, I did that with Movie Maker,” people who know say, “Wow.” Not “Wow, the story. I’d love to be part of that story.” It’s more like “Wow, you really did well with what you had.”
The problem, of course, is that cheap and proud are lousy attributes. Cheap says that time is of no value. Proud says that the story is of no value.
The best story deserves the best craft, with skills polished by practice using tools that allow them to stretch. A stewardship that thinks of outcome as much as expense, that is aware of larger measures than money.
At the heart of the Gospel is extravagant humility, not cheap pride. The story of this coming weekend is a King giving up everything, spending everything, throwing everything aside to buy back a subject sold into slavery. A husband, abandoned, wife returning to her addiction and prostitution, paying full price and more to the pimp, to pay off her ‘contract’.
Ludicrous. Futile. Except, of course, to the one rescued.
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Here’s one of the Vegas videos, a story from our church.
300 words a day 
Diane Brogan
WOW! Great job on the video! It is seamless. As the scenes changed there was never a break in the continuity. The $99 was well spent.
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Jon Swanson
thank you Diane.
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Rich Dixon
Did my wife put you up to this? I’ve been struggling with promo videos for the bike ride project and griping about crummy WMM software but too cheap to buy real stuff. Church volunteers were supposed to help, but volunteers are often like software–you get what you pay for.
Do you know anyone who’d be willing to record about 30 minutes of voice-over tracks? Back to that volunteer thing again…we’re a low-budget operation, and I just blew it all on software. I’m seeking a young, energetic-sounding voice similar to the one in your video.
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Jon Swanson
Always glad to feed frustration. My guess is that there may be someone in your church who might help. Someone who is in radio or who sounds good. In a video you haven’t seen yet, a guy from our congregation who is in radio was glad to do the voicework.
Or maybe someone reading this can help.
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Matches Malone
How long did you use MovieMaker before you decided to invest in Vegas? Do you have a lot of experience editing? I have a friend that says he edits, but he’s not an editor. Still not clear on that. Some things truly are “Name it and claim it.”
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Jon Swanson
I’ve been using MovieMaker for 7-8 years. For a couple years in the middle, I used AVID on a PC. I’m not a trained editor, but I am a practiced editor. I will claim that. I probably do 6-10 videos a year for inhouse showing.
Here’s an example of my MM work.
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Mr. Tunes
the biggest problem with Windows Movie Maker is it’s not flexible with how it exports videos. Vegas lets you really customize the size and the codecs of your final video, which is important when working with channels like Youtube and Vimeo.
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Jon Swanson
exactly. Though WMV as a format does upload to Youtube.
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