Magix Movie Edit Pro 2013 Plus

Magix makes some of the most popular video editing software in Europe, and it has a smaller but devoted following this side of the pond.? The Movie Edit Pro 2013 version debuts a few interface changes such as combining video and audio tracks, adds support for the new AVCHD 60p format, enables multi-cam video shoots, and gets a speedup through performing more operations on your PC's graphics processor. The software has been a leader in introducing 3D video editing to consumers, but it's fallen behind its U.S. competition, Adobe Premier Elements, Corel VideoStudio, and CyberLink PowerDirector in offering any really forward-looking new features like support for 4K footage. Nevertheless Movie Edit Pro is a capable and mostly intuitive enthusiast-level video editing app.

Install
Movie Edit Pro (not to be confused with Magix's actual pro software, the $399 Video Pro X5) installs on Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. A separate free Windows 8 new-style app called Movie Edit Touch is also available. Mac users, as is the case with many pro-sumer-level video applications, are out of luck. A trial version of the program delivers full functionality for 30 days, after which you can pay for a license and activate the app without having to re-install. Three editions of Movie Edit Pro suit different users' needs: The $69.99 base edition is geared toward beginners who want wizards that automatically create their productions; it's limited to 32 tracks, and lacks the higher-end editions' multi-cam support and advanced color correction.

The Plus edition adds those capabilities, while also upping the track limit to 99. The Premium edition adds advanced effect packs from NewBlue, digieffects, and ProDAD. I was disappointed to see that the installer added a browser toolbar and a system cleaning utility to my PC by default; only if you choose Custom installation can you uncheck these extras, which you probably don't want?I sure don't.

Interface
The pleasing dark look of Movie Edit's main window hasn't changed much since my last review of the program. The Welcome dialog is less extensive than that of competitors like Corel VideoStudio, with simple options to watch an intro video, create a new project either from scratch or from a template, or open an existing video project. An Options dropdown adds choices for directory location and video and audio formats.

The standard three-panel interface has video preview and source areas on the top, and a timeline area extending along the whole bottom half of the window. It's a flexible interface, in that you can pull out each panel into its own window by dragging its top border, and each can be full-screened. Movie Edit Pro is less modal than Corel and Adobe's competing apps, which take you through the workflow from import to output. Buttons on the far top right, however, do offer Edit, Burn, and Export options.

The timeline area also can alternatively display a storyboard of your movie's clips, and this view offers more than most competitors' equivalents: Icons for text, sound volume, and transitions let you perform those actions. Moving around in and zooming the timeline seems natural using the mouse wheel. You can also easily drag-and-drop clips to different tracks and positions. I do wish the video preview pane had a pause button, since hitting stop takes you to the beginning of the clip.

The preview window does show the time value for the playhead position and total clip time along its top border; this took me a while to find, but these programs have to show so much info that I can't ding it because I was expecting this info to be near the playback controls. A Show Time context menu choice lets you overlay the preview with a big red timecode. Another preview window peeve is that there's no clear way to switch between previewing the current source clip versus the movie.

Import
The source panel's Import tab just shows PC folders; to import from a device, you hit the Record button under the video preview panel. Record options include AVCHD, HDV camera, DV camera, analog TV input, Audio, and even the screen?this last is a nice extra, saving you the cost of a separate screen cam program. You can also just capture a single frame from these sources. One thing I look for in a media-editing app like this?since you work with still images and audio as well as video clips?is an easy way to filter the source view to just photos or just video files. The Magix software doesn't give me this the way competitors like Adobe Premiere Elements do.

Basic Video Editing
Most trimming in Magix is done right on the timeline, with a razor icon for splitting, which can be switched to "Remove start," "Remove end," or "Split movie" functions.? For more precise edits, the Edit trimmer lets you fine tune a transition between clips, and the Object Trimmer window lets you do so for the start and end of a single clip. The dialog for both these activities is fairly complex, with three panels and no fewer than 25 control buttons, but I can see how, after getting accustomed to it, it could be useful.

In Movie Edit Pro, transitions are called "fades" and there's no search for them. A couple of the groups of fades weren't available to me?Effect, 3D Series, and Movement. But for your 3D projects, 10 Stereo fades are on offer. As in most good software these days, you can drag a clip's corner to produce a cross dissolve transition?the most commonly used kind.

Instant Movie Making
Choosing "Use movie template" from the welcome screen offered me just one choice, Blockbuster, but you can download 17 more, with topics like Action, Film Noir, and Winter Wonderland, for free from within the program. This is reminiscent of Apple iMovie's Trailers features, which has you insert clips of certain types of shot (close up, group, action, and so on) into template slots. As with a lot of features in Magix, a dialog asked me to authorize features like H.264 licensing before I could use this. But as with iMovie's trailers, the results are quite fun and engaging.

Two more instant-movie-making tools are available: "Travel Route Animation" wizard, which places your movie on a map, and Slideshow Maker. The latter's templates add transitions and background music, and it lets you use video clips, so it can really be considered as an instant movie-making feature. Slideshow Maker let me customize the transitions, effects, title text, and background music, and even save my customizations as a new template.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/e5zYkgFSpeY/0,2817,1777473,00.asp

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