Tenomichi 3D Edit Gold 3

We first looked at 3D Edit six months ago. While the underlying technology was breathtaking, the program had too many rough edges to challenge the incumbent editing apps. With version 3, though, Tenomichi has fixed many of these faults.

The interface is still wacky, designed entirely in DirectX rather than using standard Windows GUI objects. However, there's now a menu along the top to help perform basic operations.

One of the biggest previous omissions was titling. The new Title tool is still pretty basic: while you can change the font, size, extrusion and colour, the latter can only be done using fiddly knobs rather than a colour swatch or eyedropper. Text positioning is performed with little knobs too, rather than simply grabbing and moving it onscreen. On the plus side, if you add extrusion, it's real 3D, so responds to changes in distance. However, you can't animate text attributes in this version. You also have to use a PanCropZoom shader to add motion, and we couldn't find a way of creating a drop shadow at all. We expect some of these features will be added at a later date, possibly even for free.

Each time you load 3D Edit, it checks your version and downloads updates. One feature that should be available by the time you read this is a scene-detection shader, which will cut up your footage and even remove ad breaks from TV recordings. Automatic scene detection for DV sources is already available in the capture applet, however. Tenomichi will also soon be adding a whole new library of broadcast-oriented shaders, such as making your colours TV-safe, plus a user-controllable explosion effect.

The other major advance with version 3 is the greatly improved output options. Previously, the software just exported DV, but now DivX and XviD have been added, plus a host of Windows Media Video presets, although just for WMV8, not 9. MPEG output is still also conspicuous by its absence, most likely for licensing cost reasons.

Other than needing more work on the titler, 3D Edit has everything to take a video from capture to output. The amazing real-time effects performance remains, the bugs have been ironed out and it's a lot easier to get to grips with. Anyone who's recently bought an XFX graphics card will already have a copy of the Silver version. But if you haven't, and you want to make video with lots of effects, 3D Edit has heaps of potential.

Author: James Morris