In a few weeks I will conduct a one week course in sound design. The students are graphic/game designers and the aim is for them to get a basic understanding about what sound design is and how it works.

This is the second time around and last year it worked great except for one thing, the video software. One of their assignments is to design the sounds to a video. Both the sounds and video are given to them for the purpose of learning how to work with limited assets. The software we used was Sony Vegas. I hadn't used it before but it didn't take me too long to learn the basics. Enough to teach and support it.

A few hours after the students started editing the program started crashing. Not for everyone but the ones that had the problem didn't get rid of it. A few days in to the course 1/3 of the projects crashed every 5 minutes or so.

They were told to submit the result with only the .veg files since I had the source files myself. Same problem there. About 1/3 of the projects crashed and I spent too long trying to solve it. In the end some of the students were given grades based on what I'd seen them do, not the result itself.

My question is, what software would you recommend (free/trials/demos) for such a project? I'm thinking about using Adobe Soundbooth since I think they have the Adobe Collection installed. I would prefer Pro Tools or Cubase since they are the ones I'm used to but it's not viable for a school with limited funding to invest in them for one week usage each year.

Any ideas greatly appreciated!

**EDIT: Let's make it clear so there's no misunderstandings. I might have been vague.**

1. The platform is PC.
2. The students will not edit the video at all, it is pre-rendered. They will only sync audio to the video in real time. So it has to be one software, not two different ones.

//Henrik