I'm putting together a 10 minute video with several 2-3 minute clips, and I'm using a Mac. The first draft using Shotcut was fairly successful. Nothing went seriously wrong, and the output is usable, it just could use some refining (including script rewrites) so I am giving it another go this week.
I'm downloading some other software packages today (OpenShot, Lightworks, Resolve) to try them out and see if I have a better experience with them. I'm decent at using Shotcut, but I might find I take to a different product better. My most serious complaint about Shotcut is that it can hang during the export process and as a result I lost a few hours. I finally found some export settings that work, so that battle has been won -- but still, a different product might end up becoming my go-to instead of Shotcut.
On the next version, one of the 3-minute video clips is going to have a presenter talking in front of a green screen. What I'm going to plug in place of the green screen is a montage of still photos. There are about 50 still photos in this set. I'm envisioning this as 30 seconds of a 9-photo-grid montage, then change to the next set of 9 photos, and so on.
OR, instead of the montage, a constantly playing photo slideshow. I'm not real particular about what the style of the slideshow is, as long as it looks professional. The slideshow template can be cute (they are family photos) but it still has to look somewhat refined.
I'm looking for some advice on what free Mac software to use, to create the slideshow/or/montage of the still photos. Does one of the above-named video editors have this capability built in, or should I go to a different product to create and export the photo slideshow?
What I did in the first version was had the presenter stand in front of a 55" flat screen TV, and used an iMovie-created photo slideshow play on the TV while the presenter was speaking. Because my lighting was not pro quality, I had a lot of wash-out of the photos. They were still viewable, but I think could do better. I think green screen will make this concept work more smoothly.
Thanks!