Movie Edit Pro MX PLUS (PC)

I bought this editing software to replace the previous Magix version, as it had more facilities and promised to be less of a drain on computer power.
It is probably the best editing software for the money ever. I have previously used several other editing programmes, from well known publishers, but this beats them all.
It is not for the beginner unless you are prepared for a very steep learning curve, but once the basics are mastered, it is worth just playing with everything just to find out what it does.
A fairly powerful PC is recommended - I use a P7 quad processor with dual hard drives and 4 Mb RAM.
It comes with a comprehensive manual, as well as in depth on line help.
I particularly like the "2 camera" editing mode, which I used to good efect when filming my grand daughter's wedding using 2 cameras.
The output onto HD if brilliant, I cannot praise Magix enough for producing such a comprehensive editing suite for such a reasonable price.

**** FIRST THE WARNING ****

Make sure before you buy that your system can meet the somewhat heavy requirements of this program. I have a number of PCs. One is an Intel dual core running XP with 2gb memory. That one is fine for most, but not all, of the features. Another is a fast but single core processor with 512kb ram (large when I bought the PC) which doesn't touch first base. The software should, however, be compatible with most well-specced PCs being sold today.

Specifically the requirements are "Processor: Dual Core processor with 2.0 GHz, RAM: 1 GB, Graphics card: Internal graphics card with a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768, Sound card: OnBoard sound card, Hard disk memory: 4 GB hard disk space for program installation. Recommended system requirements for (AVC)HD and Stereo 3D editing: Processor: Intel Core 2 quad processor with 2.83 GHz and better, RAM: 4 GB, Graphics card: Dedicated graphics card with min. 512 MB RAM, Sound card: Multi-channel sound card for Surround sound editing, Optical drive: Blu-ray burner to create Blu-ray Disc"

If you can get past that hurdle, then everything else is a breeze. Absolutely no problems installing (XP Pro)and then you are up and away (there are some freebie add ons, not much more than samplers really, but possibly worth installing as well).

The interface is the old familiar from Magix. I have used Magix for some time. The interface is not one which suits me, but most people are very happy with it. The program runs fast and smoothly and I cannot criticise it per se, but some of the bells and whistles (noise cancellation and editing, etc. are no more than average and do not appear to have improved significantly from my own earlier version).

That apart, you do get an awful lot for your money and the software works very well, particularly if you take my tip and spend a little time reading the manual before playing with the facilities. Unfortunately the temptation is to get down to it straight away. You then use the easy parts of the program and never get to know the less obvious but otherwise special editing and other effects available to you.

I've had this software for a few days and found it relatively easy to use.
Initially I found it hard to locate the HD settings menu which are found in an 'advanced menu' which can be accessed from the export MPEG menu.
These settings allow you to select 1920x1080 MPEG with a variety of data/frame rates.
Also to work with high definition content it was necessary to register the software online and perform a 'one
time' HD activation. Without this activation you would be limited to SD content.

I was able to import 5 separate HD MPEG (1920x1080, 17MB average frame rate, 29.97fps) video files totalling about 50 minutes (6GB of video).
I joined them all together within the software and trimmed them down to a video lasting 24 minutes.
Then on my I7 2630QM processor (6GB memory) I was able to get the software to write out a new MPEG file within about 12 minutes.
The average CPU usage seemed to be around 70% and the application only needed 0.4GB of memory.
So clearly my computer is more than powerful enough to cope.
Hence I think this was a good test of how fast this software is when working with high definition content.
It seems the amount of time required to write out new video is up to 50% shorter than the total run time of the video you are processing.
Of course this is assuming you have 4 Intel processor cores running at 2GHz.

The main downside of this software is (in my opinion) the poor quality MPEG codec supplied with it.
Some of the high definition content (after editing) was distorted near to where motion was occurring.
Even though it was not distorted on the original unedited video.