Review by Jerry Saperstein

Magix is a European software publisher and has been around for a long time. They publish a range of audio and video products as well as others.

Ive been using their video and music products for years. On the whole, the products perform well and are typically updated annually. Some annual versions have been better than others, particularly in terms of stability. In fact, with Movie Edit Pro, the stability issue became so severe a few years ago, I pretty much switched to Cyberlink PowerDirector.

Movie Edit Pro 2016 Plus, so far in limited testing, is stable on Windows 10, but its still early in the game.

In terms of features, there is great competition among the entries on this run of video editing which includes Adobe Premiere Elements, Cyberlink PowerDirector, Corel VideoStudio and a very interesting upstart, TrakAxPC. Each entry is competent and can satisfy the needs of the casual to fairly advanced videomaker.

This edition of Movie Edit Pro comes with a couple of very useful extras, ProDADs Mercalli v2 image stabilization, which is very effective and the New Blue Titler, which is a pretty good package. Many action cam features have been added and if you have a GoPro or similar action cam, this will more than satisfy your needs. There is also limited support for 360 degree editing, where you can import 360 footage but not export it as 360. This is a feature with zero interest to me.

You can create up to 99 multimedia tracks, sync multiple cameras (which works well and is very handy), do limited color grading of your video, work with ChromaKey and a lot more. Object tracking has been vastly improved, so if you want to obscure someones face as they walk or run, it is much easier now. The keyframing feature has been substantially upgraded and is now on a par with that in Cyberlink PowerDirector.

Dont be lulled into believing that there isn’t a learning curve with Movie Edit Pro. There is and it is fairly seep once you leave the very basics behind.

I strongly urge that you download the 30 day free trial and, in particular, the 399 page manual. At the very least, do browse through the manual to learn what features are available in the program.

Movie Edit Pro, by the way, can be used to produce some very sophisticated slide shows.

Overall, the feature list is long and the program has the potential of being very useful. It is a bit of pain to install: I had to provide my product code at least four times and go online three times after installation for additional downloads, permissions and registration.

Movie Edit Pros Use Interface is not particularly intuitive and you my initially find it confusing and intimidating. Dont try to bull your way through it: watch the online tutorials, read the manual or both. Take your time. In about half an hour or so, youll pick up the basics.

Overall, I give this program a four out of five. Id like a more intuitive interface. As I remarked earlier, Ive had stability issues in the past and am a little nervous about the future. Time will tell.

Jerry