Review by Nancy Famolari

I really like this software. The editing tools are excellent and the special effects let you produce unusual, fun videos. The easy editor does step you through the process and by adding the special effects you can have a very professional looking video. I also like the slide show option. I made several slide shows of book covers. The special effects, particularly the 3D give you very interesting effects. The one caution I have is to check how the special effects crop the pictures. My book covers have portrait orientation. The balloons option crops them as though they were landscape which made the book covers unreadable. However, there are plenty of other choices.

Much as I like the software and will keep using it, there were some problems. The manual is difficult to use. It reminds me of my camera manuals which take a bit of study. This is fine for the advanced effects, but I think an instructional video for beginners would be a help. There are excellent instructional videos for the advanced effects, particularly 3D, on the website.

The other problem I had is that the software locks up a lot. You can cure it by shutting down the computer but that gets frustrating after awhile. I also had trouble consistently loading my videos into the editor. To be fair, this may be due to the way my videos are stored. My camera is the Canon HR10, which stores the video on small discs. Sometimes I could load a file perfectly. The next time, the same file wouldn’t load.

So, I recommend this software if you’re serious about making great looking movies. If you just want to share the family video, it may be overkill. The problems can be overcome, and the videos I made came out looking great.