After having looked at a variety of video editors, I returned to the Magix Edit Pro product because it had some of the greatest versatility. But with a wide range of features comes a higher learning curve, and some bugs. I compared it with Sony Vegas studio and Vegas Pro. Magix has a lot of similar features, and can do everything the studio edition could, and had the ability to handle many tracks like the pro edition. The one thing that Magix lacks compared to the Vegas pro edition is the ability to filter in various ways such as subtracting or adding two video tracks. But Magix has some very good color correcting features such as the ability to change just one color, or specify which objects should be white. As such MEP should be better than Vegas for fixing old videos. But one feature trumps all other editors when it comes to handling old videos. MEP can use VirtuaDub filters which have a wide variety of effects and are available for free. With VD filters one can do things like remove logos, spatially shift colors to compensate for VHS defects, and independently denoise and sharpen. Many more things are available. While the Adobe products also have plugin capability, this is generall limited to their proprietary format and most plugins cost extra. Finding and using VD filters is something which is most likely to appear to the geeks. But Magix supplies a 'tested' set of VD filters.
Since I restore old videos, and amateur dance productions it is vital that I can see the wave forms clearly. This is because no video editor has enough capability for full audio restoration. So the audio track is restored using a separate editor, and then recombined with the video. The new audio is then visually matched to the original audio track. MEP can display and magnify the size of the tracks enough for good matching. However many other editors either can not magnify the track enough or in particular would not dispaly the audio track wave form. But for routine restoration MEP has very good noise reduction built in, something that is often lacking in other video editors.
There are a few annoyances and lacks. The playback does not have a pause control so you can not stop at a point where you wish to edit. But MEP does have a control for scrolling slowly through individual frames. But you have to go slowly unless your have an extremely powerful machine. When moving around to various points for editing MEP could be very slow. There is a delay while it sets up the necessary informaion, but once this has been done, scrolling through the video could be quick. MEP does not have any facility for switchable subtitles. This is a rare item in most editors but it is available in PowerDirector and also in the free but very limited DVDFlick. However PowerDirector is one program that would randomly not display audio wave forms. The obsolete Ulead DVD Workshop 2 had a superb facility for adding switchable audio and subtitle tracks, but it was not a very capable editor, but was also a superb menu creator. Occasionally MEP would lose syncronization between video and audio, but that was easily fixed by right clicking on the video track and selecting "create frame table".
In general video editors are complicated beasts, and as a result can be unreliable. Each one has some features the others lack. In my opinion MEP is probably the best editor for fixing problems in videos, but not necessarily the best for jazzy video production. But it is sometimes difficult to find the feature you need when there are so many available. I can not give it a top rating because it has occasionally locked up, but it has usually worked very well.Get more detail about Movie Edit Pro 16 Plus.
