Product Reviews

For a software reviewer, few things are more frustrating than a program that has every feature known to man but excels in no particular area. That is, until you come across a package so feature-filled that some of them refuse to work at all. Such is the case with Movie Edit Pro. The list of its capabilities is very impressive indeed. In fact, there's not much it doesn't claim to do. All the usual video tools are here in droves; there are no fewer than 300 effects and transitions to choose from, numerous 3D text effects, picture-in-picture modes, DVD menu templates, and support for HD and Blu-ray disc burning to keep things up to date. All the effects work perfectly well, and they're easy to browse through and apply. Just drag and drop the one you want from the Media Pool area onto your movie timeline, and that's it. Sadly, things weren't so simple when we tried to make use of some of the more advanced features.

For example, the option to upload direct to YouTube just didn't work. After we entered our username and password, nothing happened. The program wouldn't allow us to import TV footage using our USB digital TV tuner, as promised; despite the fact that our particular tuner used a BDA driver, as stipulated in Magix's system requirements, it wasn't compatible with Movie Edit Pro and the feature wouldn't operate.

Our problems continued on attempting to use the PC Screen Capture tool. This promises to allow you to grab and import any video currently playing

All of this is a shame, because as a basic video editing suite, Magix is good to use. We liked the combination of logical and easy to understand toolbars with sensibly arranged and comprehensive menus. We were also surprised by the program's speed on our modest 1GB Windows Vista laptop.

Small touches were appreciated: the ability to grab any image off the web from within the Media Pool, for example, which is a handy time-saving option. All you need do is right-click the image you want and select Save Image, and the image is then added to your gallery. There's also a very good integrated facility for sharing your videos and photos online with friends and family. 500MB of storage space is included free - enough to get you started - and the result is a smart looking themed page which uses Flash.

Chop and change

Other features we found useful included Intelligent Mouse Mode, which groups together a portion of your movie timeline automatically so you can swap around individual elements without mixing up the entire running order of your movie. The Scene Detection facility scans your movie and splits it into individual scenes to make editing easier - a good way of making longer videos more manageable. The program can also automatically insert DVD chapter markers for each scene.

Magix supports nine different video formats, including WMV, AVI/AVI-DV, QuickTime, and the Sony PSP and Apple iPod-friendly MPEG-4 format. We were also pleased to find two excellent printed user guides with tutorials, something that's usually only seen these days with more expensive packages.

If, like us, you'd rather not have your software cluttered with less than useful features, there's a Classic version which foregoes them, leaving a decent solution for home video at £20 less.