Movie Edit Pro 16 HD (www.magix.com, $79.99) is the newest version of this remarkable movie editing program that lets you create a near-professional production. The program has drag-and-drop simplicity but plenty of sophisticated features including HD support for advanced videographers.

You start by capturing video clips onto your hard drive, editing them to remove unwanted shots, and if wanted, rearranging the sequence on up to 32 tracks. The program offers three editing modes: a simple Storyboard mode where you arrange your basic scene sequence, a more complex Timeline, allowing you to precisely adjust lengths of scenes, effects and sound tracks, and a Scene Overview for easier scene sequencing.

New to this version is a title editor, which allows edits directly in the preview window so you’ll know instantly how they’ll look. Also new is a 3D character creator, used to create animated characters that can even speak your words.

Previous features have been kept or upgraded: image optimization allows you to correct for poorly exposed scenes, chroma key to change the background of scenes, picture-in-picture effects and much more.

For the all-important sound, the program offers support of Dolby Digital Stereo and a sound restoration feature to remove background noise and easily adjust volume. You can audio mix up to 99 stereo sound tracks for unparalled flexibility.

A staggering number of other tools are also available: audio stretcher (works without changing pitch), audio mixing and voice-overs, 3D titling, 3D scene transitions, and more. There are also more than 1,000 templates, video, image and color effects, animations, audio effects and a large library of background music and sound effects.

Once you’re happy with your edits, you have several options for burning CD-ROMs, VCDs, S-VCDs, miniDVDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The included authoring tools and templates let you create interactive animated menu screens featuring movie and chapter buttons. Save the production as a streaming video file for Web (including direct upload to YouTube), e-mail or export it into various file formats, or record onto a VCR or digital camcorder.

The default modes work well for us for simple editing and burning. If you’re serious about your video efforts you’ll need to spend some time to try the many features and navigate the bewildering number of controls. This learning can be frustrating or fun, but can ultimately produce gratifying results, so don’t give up. A vast amount of help is available from tool tips, on-line help, an included 250-page printed manual and a much more extensive 350-page User Manual in pdf format.

Our previous column reviewed Corel VideoStudio X3 (see it at our Web site, www.norma-tony.com), which is similar in basic features and a bit easier to use but lacks some of the advanced video and audio features of Movie Edit Pro 16HD. Either program is capable of producing great movies that anyone would be proud to share.