Okay, let’s talk about this Eva and Ava thing. Heard everybody raving about ’em, wanted to see what the fuss was really about myself. Grabbed both, thinking it’d be simple. Spoiler: It wasn’t. Made some real dumb mistakes along the way, wasted time figuring stuff out. Here’s exactly how it went down.
First Move: Setting Up Eva
Downloaded Eva first. Installation seemed okay, clicked through the defaults like I always do. Big mistake. It dumped files everywhere – Desktop, Documents, even made some weird folder in Pictures. Couldn’t find anything! Went crawling through forums, found out you gotta uncheck “Advanced Placement” during install. Why call it that? It’s just “Scatter Files Everywhere.” Reinstalled it properly, told it to keep everything in one folder.
Tried importing my test video clips. Eva just… froze. For fifteen minutes. Thought my laptop died. Restarted, same thing. Looked closer – realized all my clips were in some ancient format from 2010. Eva wouldn’t touch ’em. Had to batch convert everything to MP4s. Sucked up a whole morning just doing that.
Next Up: Giving Ava a Shot
Figured Ava might be friendlier. Installation was cleaner, put everything where it should be. Imported those same MP4s? Smooth. Actually felt relieved. Thought “This is the one!” Then tried to cut a simple clip together. Dragged three videos onto the timeline.
- Mistake Number Two: Didn’t check the audio settings. First clip screamed at me, second clip whispered. Total mess. Had to manually adjust every single clip’s volume up and down like some audio DJ. Ava didn’t auto-match audio levels. Eva actually handled that better – weird.
Then came titling. Wanted big, bold text over my intro. Ava’s default text box looked like it came from a 1998 screensaver. Tiny font, hideous color. Spent an hour digging through menus, resizing, changing colors, trying to center it… felt like building a house brick by brick. Found out later Eva has pre-made title templates you can just drag and tweak. Would’ve saved me a headache.
The Big Showdown: Exporting Disaster
Finally had a rough edit ready in both programs. Hit “Export” in Eva. Looked straightforward – picked 1080p, clicked go. Ten minutes later, got a file… that wouldn’t play on my phone. Or my TV. Just a black screen with audio. Turns out, Eva’s default export uses a weird container format nobody supports outside Eva itself. Re-exported using MP4/H.264 combo – worked fine.
- Mistake Number Three: Didn’t test export settings first. Did the same with Ava. Picked “High Quality.” File looked great… but was 10GB for a three-minute video! Impossible to upload anywhere. Realized “High Quality” in Ava defaults to near lossless. Way overkill. Dropped it to “Web HD,” got a decent 200MB file.
What Finally Worked
After all that fiddling:
- Eva won for quick edits and handling messy audio. Templates saved time too.
- Ava was smoother for organizing longer projects once I customized the workspace. Its color grading felt more intuitive.
Biggest takeaway? Never trust the default settings on either one. Always dig into Preferences before you start. And for the love of all things digital, convert your media first, and export a small test clip immediately before wasting hours rendering a giant broken file.
