Up to now I have only shot and sold stockphotos, but I want to start selling footage as well. Which would be a good program for a starter (intuitive or easy handling)?

It should at least offer trimming, cropping, color/contrast correction and of course encoding for the agencies. On top it seems advisable to have an easy to use application for blurring something like a brand label on a cellphone or a face of some passerby in the background. I have just tested Sony Movie Studio Platinum and I could achieve this with a mask, but this would not follow the person... I do not know how this is called... maybe object-tracking?

And since I don't know now how many videos I will produce, I would prefer a program which costs up to about 100$/80�.

I would be very grateful for your help.

Anya

DaVinci Resolve.  You won't believe it's free.

DaVinci is incredibly powerful, yes, but pretty much the opposite of "easy to get into". AE is quite a mess at first too...

However, the free DaVinci lacks noise reduction (something you might want to use on every single clip, depending on camera) and limits you to UHD resolution render. That's fine in most cases but not when doing time lapses and you want to output true 4k.

Thank you very much for your help. I will look into that.

Anya

Same here, I way using Magix movie editor, then tried getting into after effects for the warp stabilizer. I'm still trying to figure out if the effort and cost of after effects is worth it for stock

Normally, I would recommend Sony Movie Studio - it's quite a versatile program and easy to learn. It covers most of my needs. However, there is one major disadvantage - the lack of a serious 1080p option. You can output videos at 1080p but only as a rather obscure file format that's not recognised by many devices and at a low bitrate.

I also want to start doing videos. I don't know much at all but my camera is capable of 4K, should I start with 4K?

4K would be better generally. Check the options in your camera, some of them can produce more fps for HD format, which is good sometimes.

Thanks Irina and SpaceStockFootage. Video is such a learning curve!

I think the quality should be okay but I will take your advice to upload 1080p version as well.

If you look one year in the future and see yourself doing more and more video I really suggest starting with the real software right away.

My recommendation for ultimate control would be After Effects for single clips. There is a learning curve but sooner or later you will have to learn the advanced stuff if you see yourself uploading quality footage.

If you strive for perfection (or will in the future) stabilization, masks (exposure correction of a sky for example) and control over blurring (trademarks, people) is essential.

DaVinci Resolve (free edition) is a powerful, professional, programme which will require much investment in time, especially for a beginner, to learn how to use it.  I use it for my stock clips in preference to Adobe Premiere Elements because of the detailed control it gives over colour control and stabilisation. Premiere Elements offers similar control but the tools are not as good and, in my experience, the resulting output not as good.

Neither offer noise reduction out of the box and that is the only feature I miss.

The biggest issue is how long video takes to render and just how big the files are....started using after effects to get 4k done. But its a time consuming affair

That is not an issue. It's a good thing that keeps 1 million photographers from competing. At least for now...