Review by K. R.

This day and age many people have a lot of different devices for recording video. I, myself have a number, including two cell phones, and ipod touch and ipad, several android devices (including a few Amazon Fire tablets), a dash-cam in my car, and a couple of the small action cameras. Not to mention some regular style camcorders and a digital point-and-shoot camera that can take videos. I was given a drone for Christmas that had a video camera but it now lives in the top of a tree somewhere in a Louisiana bayou (story for another time). Plus, I’m slowly working on transferring old VHS tapes to digital format. So I was happy to try out this new version of Magix Movie Edit Pro 2016 for the past thirty days. I’ve been using an older version of similar software from another brand (Corel VideoStudio Pro X3) and wanted to tryout something newer.

Installation was typical for a software package like this, and you need to activate the software and register it at the company’s website (you’ll need to set up an user account). The package also comes with a code that gets you some bonus content. I had problems with getting that. There really isn’t any clear instructions as what to do with the code. I went out to the CATOON web site and couldn’t figure out where to input the code. Doing a little research I finally figured out that you had to access the website through the web portal inside the software itself. Then I had the problem of how exactly to do that the icon/button isn’t marked very clearly (IMO). But I eventually found it (upper right-hand corner of the screen, black square with the letters CO and a blue dot inside the O). Since I had already set up an account with the Catoon store all I had to do is put in the code and check out. Make sure that the amount shown is $0.00 otherwise there was something wrong with the code. At first I was a bit underwhelmed with the downloaded content, but after taking a better look at it I changed my mind. You get three folders of stuff, Videos, Songs, and Sound Fx. For the video, you get ten short abstract video pieces ranging from 5~27 seconds in length. You can use these for a variety of things. Songs, you get twenty pieces of music, and for Sound FX you get forty various generic sound effects. Not a whole lot of stuff, but some pieces that might come in handy. You can look around the Catoon store while you’re there and check out some of the free stuff, but be aware there is licensing on all the content there for the specific usage of the material. Be sure to first check to see what you’re agreeing to before you use something you got for free.

The Magix Movie Edit Pro 2016 was easy to jump in and get started using but then I’ve had experience using similar video editing packages in the past. Someone new to video editing will probably be facing a pretty steep learning-curve trying to use this software for the first time. The company has provided a fairly detailed 400 page PDF user manual to read, but my suggestion is to go online and check out the video tutorials that are available on the companys website. These short videos are more a overview of someone demonstrating many of the software’s features than actual tutorials but you do learn something from viewing them. I first worked my way through the software by having one of the videos open on one of my screens and the software up on the other, and following along as the video played. This is probably a good place to mention something that sort of irked me about the tutorial videos. There are three different versions of this video editing software available (Pro, Pro Plus, and Pro Premium). The tutorials aren’t very clear as to what features are in what package (well, they sort of do, I just didn’t pick up on it). So after viewing the videos before I actually got the software, I was a bit disappointed that the Pro version didn’t include some of the features that I was really wanting to try out (screen capture for instance). Still, go check out the videos if you’re just starting to use this software for the first time, or are considering buying it.

The interface and actual operation of the software was similar enough to what I’ve used in the past that I was able to get started with no problems. Like I mentioned at the start of this review, I’ve got a number of video device (too many really). The issue with that is there are a couple different video file formats each of those produce. But the Movie Edit Pro can handle all of those. I’m able to import and edit everything. Some of the features I like with this new editing package are the title / subtitle feature. I make a lot of video sideshows for people using the photographs and I found that titling images is something that a lot of people appreciate. Having the ability to choose a location for the text and changing up the look of the font is really helpful. I also like that you can choose a stock menu when you burn a project to a DVD or Bluray.

I also have Magix’s Music Maker 2016 Live on my computer, and like that the music files made with it can be directly used for this video editing package. It’s great to make a custom soundtrack for a slide show in Music Maker and then simply drop it into the audio track in Movie Edit.

I could probably go on and on about the things I like with this software, but that’s enough. I have to say I really enjoyed checking this out and think it will be something I’m going to keep using for awhile. I’d recommend it to anyone needing to edit the videos that they too probably have piling up on their computers and devices.

Just in case it might be helpful - I’m running this software on a five year old computer a HP HPE-190t desktop with an i7 processor and 12GB of ram running Windows 7 Pro. I’ve got two monitors, a 27 and a 24 which works well as I can set the main program up on the larger screen and use the smaller one for the video pre-view window.