Customer Reviews

Movie Edit Pro 2004

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I like this product. I have tried several movie editing/DVD burning software products trying to find one that meets my needs without costing me an arm and a leg. I am working on a project that involves converting the contents of old VHS tapes into DVD. My PC is equipped with the following hardware:
1.0G AMD processor
1G memory
2 - 120G hardrives
Hauppage WinTV 250 video capture card
HP DVD burner

My problems with video software seemed to occur after I tried to edit the video. I don't know what happened but I believe that each software product has a different compression method because the quality of the video never was as good after being processed (ArcSoft Showbiz, Ulead MovieFactory). I downloaded a copy of Ulead MediaStudio Pro and it performed great. The quality of my movies was just as good after editing as they were before. MediaStudio Pro is expensive. I read about Magix and their other video editing products got decent reviews so I thought I would give Movie Edit Pro 2004 a try. The price was right and I have not been disappointed. First off, I was shocked that I actually received a usable user's manual with the software. The tutorials provided are helpful. The user interface was intuitive for me (but I have used several products now, I have and idea of what to expect) There are a few screens that use terms that are confusing especially some of the audio and video cleaning screens. The video editing functions are very easy to use as are the DVD menu creation functions. After a great deal of trial and error, I was able to create some decent DVDs from my VHS tapes. I also created some clips for use on the web.

This software is not without problems. There are quirks. I think every piece of video software that I have tried has had some issues. Sometimes the audio and video would get out of sync. Unexplainable white flashes would occur during scene transitions. The audio/video thing can be dealt with but it is annoying to play a DVD (4-6 hours to process and burn) and find that half-way through the thing, the audio gets behind the video. Magix has a decent user's forum on its website. You might want to check that out before purchasing the software. It gives some insight to the kinds of problems users are finding.

I have searched for months for a cost effective and feature-filled video editing program. I looked at Pinnacle, Ulead, Cyberlink, and so on. Magix's movie edit pro seems to be the best product out there for under $100. This program is loaded with features. First off, there is a bonus content cd with tons of extra video and audio clips. Plus, the installation cd has many more video clips, audio clips, and transitions that are either included in the program installation or just on the cd, totalling up to around 2,000 media files. The options are endless integrating those media files into your own videos.

The program itself is incredibly awesome. I have only run into a few problems (such as one crash and some audio glitches) during the time I have owned it. You can do things like add commentaries, reverse the film, do picture and picture effects, add 3-D transitions, do green, blue, white, or black screen effects, and many more. Another really cool feature that you don't see in cost-effective video editing programs is the ability to create video menus on DVDs. I recorded about 30 minutes of DV footage onto my computer, and there were no dropped frames.

I would say that this program's only competitor in a similar price range is Apple's iMovie. Although, this program comes with many more specific features, which almost puts it in the catagory of the higher priced video editing programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro. However, if you are looking for extremely powerful but very expensive software you should check out Apple's Final Cut Pro HD. If you do not wish to spend 1,000 dollars on a video editing program, (which is Final Cut Pro's price) then Movie Edit Pro 2004 is a great buy. This program has similar professional features and costs a lot less.

Another feature I am particulary interested in is it's ability to function in real time. I am running a 2.8 GHZ processor with 512 ram, and it seems that the program always runs pretty smooth.

I called this program "the best buy" because programs like pinnacle studio 9 and Ulead Video Studio 8 lack some important features that this program has.Overall, Magix's Movie Edit Pro 2004 is a fun and powerful tool to edit videos.

Today, most home users want "video editing" software to simply take a home movie from a camcorder and create a DVD from it. Sometimes, they want to do simple edits, and/or add music or titles to the video as well. If that is all you want to do, and you would like to do it in the absolutely easiest way possible, then this software probably isn't the best choice.

Now, if you (like me) want an actual video editor, that will do very complex editing and effects, then Magix is awesome. I have tried pretty much all of the video editing software packages, and nearly all of them offer only basic editing tools to make a movie. One of the greatest things about Magix is that the effect's properties can be changed dynamically through curves. This means that you don't have to use any types of presets for zooms, PIP, rotation, color changes, sound fades/effects. The effect will change based on the curve that you set in the timeline. This is a HUGE improvement over all other low-budget software packages that lack this feature.

I bought Magix because my friends and I frequently make short films just "for fun," and I was tired of Pinnacle Studio constantly crashing right in the middle of editing. I was extremely happy to find out that Magix is absolutely loaded with features that an ameture video editor would love (blue screen effects come to mind).

Also, I am astounded that most reviews of video editing packages don't mention the quality of the output video. There is a very big difference between the quality of video from one package to the next. For instance, many have a "digital" look to them where the image can look pixellated. In contrast, Pinnacle Studio's output is usually somewhat blurry (probably to reduce pixellation). I'm glad to say Magix is tied (with Nero) for the best quality DVD videos, and they look great even on a 55" widescreen TV.

Now, Magix is in some places "rough around the edges". But, if you want and editor with some serious power, then this is literally the only one on the market in the price range that can produce some very interesting editing effects.

I was looking for some software to edit and burn home movies to DVD from my mini DV camcorder.

I read reviews on this site about the big players and was not impressed. I decided to go with this well reviewed product due to it having the two basic features I wanted.

1. DV Importing and Editing

2. Self-Contained DVD burning

I was pleasantly surprised with how rich a program this turned out to be.

The interfaces were intuitive and allowed a range of complexity. You could easily just burn raw footage directly to DVD or make an editing masterpiece.

I created my first DVD in about 2 hours.

The manual that comes with the software is pretty good with step by step instructions and screen shots.

The DVD Authoring menu allows the user to add Menu backgrounds, music and combine projects onto a single DVD. It also allows the user to burn the project files ( editable ) onto the DVD as a multi-mode DVD format so that they could be retreived and added to later.

Only thing I probably should have not done is approve the program's media player to be the default media player. I can fix that pretty easily and you can just de-select that as an option during install.

I was a bit concerned having read the reviews before purchase that this might be somewhat difficult to learn. After purchase the following happened: It installed without a hitch. Normally at that point I'd go read the book but the interface is so well designed I couldnt resist playing right away. I had figured out most of the basics of time-line video editing in the first hour and most of the basics of audio editing in 2 hours without ever opening the book. Although my camera had come with software, I had been unable to figure out how to use the firewire connection, but this software took care of that too. The only thing I would never have figured out without reading the instructions are the different mouse fuction selections.
I can't wait to start doing some green screen effects. I think this software is fantastic.

I now actually have the 2005 iteration of this program, but it is essentially an updated version of this software. I am extremely torn on rating this product. On the positive side, the software makes unbelievably professional looking DVDs that can be played on a computer or conventional DVD player (at least in the US.) The end product is fantastic, and the quality of the image, sound, and menus are first rate.

There are two negatives, though, that many others have noticed: the customer support (particularly the website) is absolutely worthless. You need to be a real self-sufficient person to use this software. Secondly, the interfaces are fairly complex and are frequently counterintuitive. A lot of learning occurs by trial and error.

Overall, I do recommend the software because it is very capable and reasonably priced. Having said that, you may be content with Windows Movie Maker, which comes bundled with many PCs now, especially if you don't have the patience to learn this rather trying software.

Still, though, in the end the DVDs look great!

First let me say that before I purchased MEP (I have version 10), I did a lot of research on available editing software. I must have read hundreds of reviews, several for each available brand. I also downloaded trial versions and edited some of my movies with them for comparison. And after all of that, I ended up buying MEP. I chose MEP because of the price and the excellent feature list.

However I must admit, I was somewhat apprehensive about my decision because of the reviews I'd read. One of the major research sources I used was PC Magazine's online reviews. PC Magazine has reviews for just about every video editing software package on the market and is a good place to find information on video editing software. The PC Magazine editor had given Move Edit Pro a mediocre rating of 3 out of 5. The magazine commended MEP on its range of features but complained about the user interface and support.

However, the article also included MEP user's responses to the article and most of the users seemed to absolutely love the software. As I read more and more reviews, I began to see a pattern. Users who seemed to be looking for a simple tape to DVD transfer package were mostly dissatisfied with MEP and the users on the other end of the spectrum, those that wanted a powerful editing utility, love the program. So you end up with the old, "you either love it or hate it" adage about this software; there's not much room for anything in the middle.

I've had the software for a week now and I have to say that I love it. Unlike some of the downer reviews, I've had no problems with the interface; on the other hand, everyone seems to agree that support sucks, I've looked at the support website and I have to concur. I think the interface could be a lot better too. If Magix had adopted a more Windows standard interface, I believe they would have fewer complaints but even so, the interface is not hard to use and I can't really complain about it. No, my only complaint so far is that I've run into memory errors with it from time to time. So far, it hasn't kept me from making my movies and it hasn't happened very often but memory errors can be troublesome if they occur very frequently. I also receive errors when I try to access files across my network.

At this point, I can say that I'm very satisfied but not ecstatic about the software. If it weren't for the buggy memory behavior, I'd give it a perfect five star rating.

I'd recommend this software to anyone who wants to perform heavy editing on your movies at a very reasonable price. The features and the content are far and above anything on the low-end of the market. You'll not find the same range of features in another product without looking at the professional video editing packages that start at several hundred dollars and go up to over a thousand.

If all you want to do is quickly transfer your tapes to DVD, then I would recommend one of the other packages such as ArcSoft's ShowBiz Wizard. ShowBiz2 came with my HP DVD writer (dc3000) and I've used it considerably to edit and create DVD's as well but I wanted something more powerful which is what led me to Magix's Movie Edit Pro. However, ShowBiz Wizard is an ultra simple way to quickly transfer video tapes to DVD if that's all you need. In fact, whenever I copy my friend's tapes to DVD, I use ShowBiz Wizard, it's quick and easy but it doesn't give you any editing capabilities.

****A Month Later****

Okay, I've had the software for a month and I've worked on several projects with it and now I wish I hadn't rated it so high. I still like the interface and the features. The software really is powerful. However, I've had many problems importing and encoding certain videos. The ones that work are great; they make you want to give the software praise. But then the problem videos make you want to strangle the developers. I have one short 30 minute video of a brass band performance that I wanted to burn to DVD for my fellow band members. I was able to successfully capture the video using ShowBiz2 and encode it to MPEG format (I have to do this with all videos because MEP doesn't recognize my USB connected cameras or VCRs). I then imported the video into MEP, like I always do. The video comes across fine but the sound is corrupt. I tried several work arounds and finally ended up burning the video to DVD from ShowBiz2 with no editing and then importing it again into MEP. AT that point I had both sound and video. Great! So I edit the film and try to burn it to DVD from MEP and the software craps out on me again. It can't encode the film! I try several times with no success. I even re-import the film and try to encode it with no editing, same result!! Very, very frustrating! I finally gave up on that one and used ShowBiz2 instead; but I really missed the MEP features. The next one I do is a large film ranging over my first son's first year. It is a large film, over 4 GB. There is a known issue with files like this and MEP but the work arounds so far don't work for me. Again, I get the video but the sound is corrupt. I haven't given up on this one yet. I'll try a few things but it's starting to look like I should have opted for one of the other editors with fewer features and fewer bugs.

Regards...

I have been making movies with the sims2 and other movies of my family but this program works great! i was kinda worryed when i saw the other reviews but i proved myself wrong buy this great product Movie Edit Pro 2004 its amazing and trust me its easy enoph for a kid to use it then u can 2!

Extensive use of the product and reading of various reviews of magix's movie edit pro have made me come to the conclusion that the software isn't as difficult to use as some (a few) people say it is. for everything i wanted to do, there seemed to be a very helpful tutorial video which explained it all.

Perhaps the "difficulty" people were referring to lies in the fact that there is just so much in the software package - which may have inadvertently led to some confusion. The range of effects and samples, including those available from their "online content library", really are quite extensive. and when you take into account that - the last time i checked - amazon sell it for ca. $25, it really does seem to be worth the money.

Having spent some time looking for software to (finally) take my stack of home movies and edit them on the computer, I finally decided to purchase Movie Edit Pro 2004. The reviews were wonderful for this product, but I was still skeptical. After all, could a product under $30 really get the job done?

Movie Edit Pro 2004 surpassed my expectations and then some. You can layer your movies with ease, having the capability to add music beginning with a specific frame, or starting a transition between scenes at the frame of your choice. You can add many different music formats to your movies, including MP3. And the music you add, you can easily adjust the volume up or down to fit appropriately with your movies.

Creation of credit and title screens is an easy task. Movie Edit Pro 2004 also comes with many different transitions and features that allow you to hone your movie making skills as you progress.

This would also be a perfect starter software package for the young "I-want-to-make-movies" under 20-something in your life.

Overall, I have no reasons to give this product less than 5 stars. It exceeded expectations, is a tremendous value for its price, and is easy to use. I haven't tried any other products after purchasing Movie Edit Pro 2004. I haven't needed to.