Potential new customer of Movie Edit Pro 2016 - a few questions about it please...

nick_vid wrote on 12/4/2015, 10:07 AM

Hello, I am new to Magix Movie Editors as I always used Pinnacle Studio in the past but I have some questions about the 2016 version and if it can provide the editing anyswers to my video production business.

Basically I record car racing and produce DVDs and Blu-rays of the events to sell at future events, so fast edit turnarounds are very important.

I need to be able to produce DVDs on a single disc that are around 2 hours long. Currently I have no problem with this on Pinnacle as it automatically compresses the footage to fit a standard DVD and the quality is very good. I have even pushed it to 2 hours 30 mins with no real loss of quality.

Is this possible in Movie Edit Pro 2016?

I need to add titles at the start to introduce the event, have fades to black between races, and titles at the start of each race and results titles at the end of each race. This is where Pinnacle struggles as I find the title editor slow and difficult to use.

Is it possible to customise a title and save as a template in Movie Pro 2016? And have a coloured background to the titles to they stand out more?

I need to edit 2 to 4 cameras together for certain races, but I have a problem with Pinnacle with some tihings going out of sync, especially when I try to cut bits out and move the track along. Are there any such known issues with Movie Pro 2016?

I need to make custom menus for the DVDs with a picture from the video footage as the background, and text as buttons for each race (there can be up to 16/17 races in a day). I dont want each chapter to have a picture, more like a background picture of a race car, then 3 or 4 buttons as text on each menu screen so you can select the races.

Is this possible in Movie Pro 2016?

Are there any known issue of importing, editing or burning long DVDs and Blu-Rays? I have downloaded the trial version but as its limited to 3 mins of export and doesnt support the audio on my AVCHD files, its abit of a waste of time for me.

So any help would be great.

Many thanks.

Nick.

Comments

browj2 wrote on 12/4/2015, 11:32 AM

Hi Nick,

I also use Pinnacle Studio Pro (18.6 presently) but only for some of the effects that I don't have with Movie Edit Pro (MEP), otherwise, it's all Magix.

Get MEP 2016 Premium, not basic or Plus. Premium has the Mercalli 4 plugin, which is worth the price of MEP itself.

DVD and BD settings can all be changed, at your risk. There are many discussions in the forum and Q&A about this, but John E. Baker will likely chime in here.

You will find most of the editing in MEP easier than in PSP, at least in my opinion.

Titles work better and you have New Blue Titler EX. Fades, moving text around, animating text, etc. is easily done (easy once you know how). Custom titles can be saved as title templates or special effects.

To have a coloured background, use a caption (lower third). There are many that come with MEP. They can easily be moved to a different area on the screen, just drag the title to where you want. Or you can make your own with a graphics program like Xara (also a Magix product) Photo & Graphics Designer using the animation feature. Xara also integrates with MEP to allow you to quickly create custom overlays and graphics, something that you won't find with many other programs on the market.

MEP2016 Premium allows up to 4 cameras in multi-cam mode (VPX7 allows for 9 cameras). There may be some minor issues, but not like in PSP in which it is a new feature. And editing the cuts afterwards is a snap. See my tutorial on multi-cam editing for Magix Video Pro X (VPX) under the Tutorials tab.

DVD menus can be customized a lot. No problem with what you want. VPX allows you to export the menu to a PSD file for modification in Xara or PhotoShop; MEP does not. But you can do much more in MEP than you will probably ever need, including modifying the background on the timeline.

DVD menu buttons: There are 2 ways to set up the program. One is to create multiple movies, say one for each race, and then chapters within each movie. Then the first DVD menu provides buttons, customizable, for each movie (race), and then the submenus for each movie would have the chapters.

Or two, one movie with chapters for each race. You can have multiple screens if you have too many chapters for one menu screen. You can change the backgound, icons, text, etc. and even add background music. The background music plays while the menu is shown.

You can also add an intro video leading to the menu. For example an animated flyin title with credits and sound for your company.

Other features are the built-in audio mixer, cleaning and mastering tools, with the possibility of adding in plugins.

A last word, editing is different than in PSP and takes a while to get used to. Track build up is different; when you have objects overlaid on multiple tracks, in PSP you see whatever is on track 1 on top, then track 2 below it. So your title would be on track 1 and the video on track 2. In MEP this is reversed; think of looking at the stories of a building from the top. You see the top floor first, so the text would have to be on track 2 or a higher numbered track and the video on track 1 or a lower numbered track. This avoids having to insert tracks above (which can't be done in MEP) as per PSP, or moving everything down a track in MEP, which is easily done if need be.

HTH

johnebaker wrote on 12/4/2015, 12:22 PM

. . . . but John E. Baker will likely chime in here . . . .

True because John CB did not mention three important things, which are:

Try the program out first - there is a free trial version available on the Magix website - do not forget to extend the trial to 30 days to give yourself time to get used to it.

The trial version is limited in many of the things you can do, however it will give you a feel for the programs interface and way of working.
Read the installed PDF manual thoroughly it is under Help in the program.
Look at John CB's getting started tutorial here.

You an also create multi movie discs - great for the end of the race season where you could produce a season highlights disc combining movies from the season's race projects.

I have just completed one for our German class's tour to Germany, Switzerland and Austria earlier this summer - one movie for each day complete with chapters where necessary. Intro video with copyright information for one place we visited - was only allowed to video providing I do not publish it on the Internet.

HTH

John EB