June 8, 2005

Movie edit pro 2005 (**** out of four) is an integrated video capture, video editor, movie creator and CD/DVD burner designed to work with common analog and digital video formats. The program has drag-and-drop simplicity for beginners but plenty of sophisticated features for advanced videographers. The features make it useful for anyone from those who want to preserve or share personal videos to business users who want to create presentations, interactive training videos or product demonstrations and more.

The first step for any video editing project is to capture the video into your computer. Movie edit pro 2005 captures all the following formats:

Digital video(DV) directly from a DV camcorder, conveniently controlling the camcorder from the computer screen. The capture requires a Firewire port or digital capture card in your computer. The program automatically divides the video into scenes, one for each time you started your recorder.

Analog video from your VHS, VHS-C or 8mm camcorder, VHS tape player, TV card or other video output using supported graphics cards or an external analog capture device. The TV capture feature lets you record or timer record TV shows. The default setting captures analog video all as one scene, but you can divide the one long scene into more manageable "takes" by manually setting start and stop markers or letting the program use its scene recognition feature to break up the video into scenes.

Audio from any audio input to a sound card from devices such as cassette players, CD players, microphones or even record turntables (remember those?).

Snapshots from your digital camera or scanner.

While capturing video, you can use the defaults for simplicity or take advantage of the many options, such as setting resolution needed for specific outputs, adjusting audio volume for clearest sound, keeping track of frames dropped and remaining hard drive space and more. Movie edit pro 2005 can also import and export a variety of file formats, including avi, dv-avi types 1 and 2, MPEG-1,2 and 4, WMA, WMV, MOV, MXV, MJPEG, JPG, BMP, WAV, DIVX, MP3 and MIDI. This newest version of the program now imports, exports and edits HDV, HDTV and WMVHGD video and supports Dolby surround sound.

Once the video is captured onto your hard drive, you can edit it to remove unwanted shots, trim scenes or takes, rearrange the sequence of takes and more. The program offers two basic editing modes. Storyboard mode is the easiest to use and features a three-window display: the storyboard window on which each scene is represented sequentially by a thumbnail of the first frame of the scene, a media source window from which you can drag and drop media files into the storyboard window, and a video preview window to see how you’re doing. You can add plain or fancy transitions between scenes, steady or scrolling text to any of the frames, with a variety of cool effects, and a soundtrack from the included selection of music or your own music and/or narration.

The more complex Timeline mode adds a 16-track timeline onto which you can drag and drop video, still pictures, sound, special effects and more. The Timeline shows the timing and relation of each element of video, sound, effects, transitions and the like. A staggering number of tools are available: an image stabilizer, image and sound restoration, split screen, chroma key (blue, green, black or white), audio stretcher (without changing pitch), audio mixing and voice-overs, 3D titling, 3D scene transitions and more. If that’s not enough, there are 1,400 templates, 70 video, image and color effects, 170 blends, 50 animations, 45 audio effects, background music and sounds effects. Even more is available on the www.magix.com Web site.

If all this editing is too much for you, use the MovieShow Maker to automatically optimize and enhance, recognize scenes, add music and synchronize it to the scenes, all for a professional result. You just choose from one of 12 themes.

Once you’re happy with your results, Movie edit pro 2005 gives you several options for burning CD-ROMs, VCDs, S-VCDs, miniDVDs or DVDs. The included authoring tool and templates let you create interactive animated menu screens that feature movie and chapter buttons, allowing you to go directly to a specific scene while viewing. This feature makes the program a natural for developing teaching CD or DVD videos. And new in this version is the ability to edit directly from your DVD+/-RWs even after they have been burned. Make your changes and re-burn on the same disc.

You can save your production as a streaming video file (Quick Time or Real Video) to stream from your Web site or attach to an e-mail. Or export your production into various file formats. You can send the video through your computer’s TV card video output to record onto a VCR or send the video through your computer’s digital graphics card to record onto a digital camcorder.

The default modes work well for simple editing and burning, but if you’re serious about your video efforts and want to get the most from this program, you’ll need to spend some time, have patience and try the many features. But this learning can be fun and produce gratifying results. A vast amount of help is available from tool tips, on-line help, a 128-page printed manual and a much more extensive User Manual in pdf format. And, the printed manual provides a short course in movie making.

Movie edit pro 2005 offers a wealth of video production features you can use to give videos a personal touch and a professional look.

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