I wrote a bit about it last week but since then I’ve been luckily enough to get my hands on a copy of Magix Movie Edit Pro 14 and have been giving it a roadtest for you and I have to say I’ve been really impressed.

Within the box itself there is the disc and two manuals – a main manual and a supplement. Some people have been put off by there being two but I actually think it’s a good idea. Why?

Well the first manual covers installation and the more general features of the program and so is essential for getting started. The second however looks at the editing features in more detail and means once you’ve got the basics sorted you’ll only need to have a small book lying around as opposed to trying a larger one to stay open!

So what’s the program like when you get going?

Well personally I found it to be one of the most user friendly video editing softwares that I’ve used.
At the top of the screen there are three tabs to choose from which move you to one of three areas – recording, editing or burning. I personally really like this feature as it means the user doesn’t have to be experienced in video editing to get started.

So let’s look at the three modes in one more detail.

The Record mode, unsurprisingly, is all about getting the footage for you to edit and there are three ways to get this:

• You can record directly onto the PC
• you can import an already recorded file
• You can import from Magix Media and TV Center.

The first two methods were relatively straightforward but the third did cause me a bit more trouble as there was a need to activate the program online for use of MPEG2 and MPEG4 though I will admit this was all done in a couple of minutes.

The next mode, and the one we’re all really interested in is the Edit mode.

Now it took a while (about 30 minutes) to get the hang of this but I did find it to be very intuitive and once I’d got the basics it was very easy to begin editing my clips.

Editing the tracks is very easy with a right click adding all kinds of options and effects and fades can be dragged onto the tracks to create some great results. To begin with I did struggle with cutting out unwanted scenes but that was down to me being too keen and trying to work it out without looking at the manual!

Audio is easy to edit and adding soundtracks is a doodle.You can add tracks straight from CDs or use soundtracks already created by the program which were much more impressive than I’d expect.

Once editing is done, it’s just a quick click on the Burn tab to get your movie ready to show off to the world. You have a good selection of options which include uploading the internet or burning onto the DVD with there being a nice feature of DVD menu creation for the latter.

All in all for the price of this software ( a very affordable £39.99) I was incredibly impressed. This software has the features that an experienced movie maker would expect to see whilst also being designed to make the world of video editing less intimidating for the first time editor.

Would I recommend it to others to use?

Definitely.

I really enjoyed the way the software looked and the way it worked. Video editing is a very personal thing and for some people it may be not feel as easy to use as other video editing software but I found it quite the opposite and I really would urge you to consider it as your next piece of video editing software.

If you do fancy grabbing yourself a copy I spotted it at Amazon and on the Magix website.

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