Review by John Green

I have never worked with video editing, or burned CD/DVD except for drag-and-drop operation to backup files. After working with this package for a couple of days, I think it is absolutely great for the casual user who wants to create some nice looking video packages.

Pro:nVery powerful. One can edit each individual clip down to the frame, then integrate it into the project. There are separate tracks for video, overlay video, titles, sound, and voice over. The included effects allow one to create professional looking titles and basic video effects. To operate the program, one simply imports the video clips, sounds, etc. onto a working area, then drags the appropriate item into the timeline. It supports blu-ray and DVD burning. I don’t have a Blu-Ray burner, so I only burned DVDs.

There is an express interface for those who want to avoid the complexity of the full timeline interface. I quickly went to the detailed menus to do what I wanted; if you have any experience with Flash (which uses the timeline style construction), you will have no problem working with this software.

A separate burning package is included called DVD Factory Pro; it is run from within the X3 software. It does a good job of rendering and burning. It is fully capable of using multi-CPU, and I found that my quad core AMD worked a LOT faster than my single core Pentium!nnThe program makes use of the hardware on the video card for faster display while working, including using smaller size images if desired. So all of the PC hardware can be utilized.

The program offers to let you download DVD Factory 7 SE, which is a stand alone program very similar to the DVD Factory Pro, except that one cannot access the DVD Factory Pro except from within the X3 program. I’m not sure that it was necessary, but it is nice for a quick burn project.

Con:nThere is some inconsistency in how the software finds it’s source files. One has to navigate to get videos, for example, and then when you want to open a different kind of file, it remembers the video location. It would be much better if it remembered separate locations for the different kinds of files. It was quite frustrating; I ended up opening folders for each of the data types, so I could simply paste in the folder location quickly. Once the files are inside the program there is no issue.

There is no indication inside the main program of how much space the project will take when it burns to DVD, and even the burner application does not tell you until you actually get to the final screens. It seems to me that the original program should be able to calculate the space being generated, so one could cut down the project to fit - before starting the burning program.

Conclusion: Excellent package. It will take a bit of time to learn all the features, but even a novice like me can make really great looking videos using this software. Highly recommended.