Customer Reviews

Roxio Videowave Movie Creator

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This s/w came free on a new Dell computer. I've been transferring footage of a show done at my children's primary school to DVD. Goal is to produce relatively simple DVDs with about 2 hours of material, so NOT at full DVD quality. Have spent quite a few hours working on about 3 hours of material. Primarily used capture mode and the Story Line Editor; never used CineMagic or Story Line Builder.

It came installed, so I had no problems there. Applied an upgrade from the RVWMC site with no major difficulties.

The inital small spash screen remains on the screen long after the software has loaded, and clicking on its "x" does nothing. Just one of many annoyances.

The capture feature works ok and (unlike some others) RVWMC will allow capture of video in DVI format. However, it has what appears to be a poor MPEG encoder judging from results. I wanted to encode at a modest bit rate that will allow me to cram two hours onto a DVD. Experimented with different rates but it looked quite poor at low rates when compared to what Sonic could produce (see below).

Trim mode is pretty good - allowing precision of trimming down to the level of a single frame (half frame? dunno, I'm not Dr. Video). This is very useful, another advance over others.

The story line editor allows me to string clips together. Easy to get lost on a long story line; the individual pieces are not numbered and it only shows 7 at a time, with (as far as I can tell) no way to zoom out to get a feel for it.

My major gripe is that RVWMC has pieces of major features but they feel partially completed, not fully tested, not quite ready. For example, it can do a rolling credit with a variable font -- pretty nice if you're content with a few lines. But the textbox that accepts the text simply stops accepting characters after about 30 lines. Then what? For example, right-clicking on a piece of the story line shows a properties window, and various text boxes allow you to put the cursor in them -- but you cannot change anything. For example, you can put a solid frame in the story line and put plain text on top of it, but you cannot edit the text - the Done button cannot be clicked.

The lack of support is simply exasperating. Roxio points the finger at Dell in my case, but (as you can imagine) Dell's call center in India has nothing to offer. ...

Even on my relatively capable machine it feels slow. Switching among tasks takes seconds sometimes, which is longer than it should. What is it doing?

By comparison, for simple tasks, Sonic's MyDVD has fewer options but a better MPEG encoder, and in general works far more smoothly with fewer glitches and crashes. Sonic's "good" mode (basically VCD bit rate, I think) still looks acceptable. I finally gave up on RVWMC for this project and used Sonic.

Don't spend much money on this one, that's my advice.

Full details: my Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator has version stamp 1,6,676,1 according to Help/About. Running on a WinXP box, 2.4Ghz, 512Mb, lots of disc.

Like some of the other folks here, I have been disappointed in this software. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. There are so many features that seem oversimplified, incomplete, or non-functional. I could never get even basic functions of the storyline editor to work. For example, I wanted to simply get a DVD with different chapters to play continuously, and I couldn't do that. When I would play a movie made with the storyline editor on my DVD player, it would constantly quit in the middle of the DVD and return to the menu. I still have no idea how to perform this basic function.

2. Technical support stinks. I have to pay for support after one month? Who came up with that idea? Way to show your enthusiasm for your product.

3. But the biggest reason is that there is only one DVD write quality setting. You simply can't fit more than 55 minutes worth of movie onto a DVD. Even then, it is discernably lower quality than the HQ setting on a DVD recorder. If you want the quality of satellite or digital cable, you are NOT going to get it with this software. This means that the software is inferior for most applications.

After doing some market searching, it appears that the basic features of this program are typical of this price range, so I can't say that you will find a product that is a lot better. But that doesn't excuse the misleading advertising: "Copy all of your movies to DVD!" Yeah right. If you don't mind your 4-hour event being split up onto 4 different DVD's. The home movie studio market does a TERRIBLE job of educating consumers about this.

I finally broke down and bought a Sony DVD Recorder. It was a lot more money, but I needed it for what I was trying to do, which is to capture broadcasts and create DVD's of my favorite sports teams. If you want to do something like this, then you can't use Video Wave Movie Creator to do it.

I found out that it doesn't create SVCDs. Also, the video editing is quite limiting, not even as good as the free Windows MovieMaker 2, or Ulead VideoStudio. Finally, the text on the product tour dialog doesn't show on my Windows XP machine. So my advice is: Look somewhere else for video editing software. This one is not worth it.

First of all, it does not work. I wanted to burn VCD on my CD-R, it won't. Went to find support about why it won't, there isn't any support. Went to the customer's forum and found out the product has been bad, and not supported for 2 years. Save your time, find something that functions. I'm back in the search for a "WORKING" VCD creator.

This is the first time I've ever tried editing my home videos. I've found this software to be extremely easy to use. You really don't even need to read the instruction manual that is included, it's so simple. It has met all of my editing needs, which are somewhat basic. I don't know if more experienced movie editors would be as pleased with this product, but I really love it. You can download videos, edit video footage, burn CDs, create music videos, and much more. Very fun software!

I usually use Magix's Video DeLuxe 2.0 but this is nice for something different. It's much easier than full editing software, but still more flexible than some of the more basic programs out there (like Pinnacle's Expression). The wizards work well and you get a decent music video for most occassions (don't try that with video that requires audio in synch, though!) My only gripe is that some of my MPEGS are not compatible in this software and it re-encodes all of my video that is already encoded. But for a beginner package or something to inspire new ideas, this is a super piece of software!

This thing eats up resources like you cannot imagine. You MUST have at least 512mb of RAM in your system and at least an 833 mhz processor to even think about successfully running this software. The software is buggy--which is probably why Roxio has an upgrade available on its website. Make sure you download the upgrade before you try to run with this.

Having said all that--once you figure out how to work with it...it does make some nice movies. But...you won't get any movies without frustration first.

One more note: documentation is thin and tech support is virtually nonexistent. Roxio charges for phone tech support and provides only limited email tech support. They take forever to respond to emails. There is some useful information from other users available on their website bulletin board area.

Still--not bad software if you can get it for free after rebate.

I was very disappointed with this software after reading other reviews. First it is limited to story line editing only. There is no real movie time line editing in the package. You can do individual segments but not the movie. Very little capabilities in audio tracks plus it often generates errors here using audio tracks over the entire movie instead of just a section of time specified. The worst part-it would not create a DVD unless I upgraded (separate purchase) my easy CD creater software (this came from technical assistance). Technical assistance is a joke from website to phone system. The only real saving grace is the ability to strip audio from an individual clip.

Was in an hurry to get some software to put a video presentation together for a rehearsal dinner...Roxio Videowave has worked pretty well so far. Most of my media is still digital photos, but I incorporated both stills and video into the presentation. Saved it pretty easily into an MPEG file, and it's worked well so far. User's manual could be a little better, Help menu is okay for beginners. Overall, a good product. It has met my expectations, but just whetted my apetite to do more! There's a rebate available - use it to make this quite affordable.

Many of the comments talk of VideoWave as not working well with older, slower machines. This will be true for just about any video editing software you choose. Video takes A LOT of information and you need a fast machine to process it. I like this product. Admitedly, I haven't been able to play around with it too much, but it seems fine to me. I also own Pinnacle Studio 8. That I HAVE played with a lot and I mostly like it, too (only MOSTLY because at first it gave me some problems when I tried to burn to a disc, similar to a problem in a review listed below). VideoWave seems to be more for the template-oriented person (easy to crank out lots of stuff) while Pinnacle seems to be more of a do-it-yourself platform. Both have their places. If your computer isn't too old to do video editing and you would like to try, then I'd recommend this product.