Magix movie editor

[ADBest]

Thanks for the quick reply Billy.

I am trying to replicate the basic editing procedure that I use in Premiere. ie Batch capture, then trim, then drag down to the time line.

So far I have been able to batch capture but then find that when I load the clip into the monitor window and set the in and out trim positions, the trimmed clip will not drag to the time line. It appears to drag as a white bar of clip length but when the mouse button is released the clip disappears.

If I place the whole, untrimmed clip straight onto the time line, then I can trim using the razor tool as you describe. But that is not the way I wish to work and the manual suggests that I should be able to use my traditional approach, (page 34, Option 1), but I am obviously doing something wrong.

Magix is very strange to a Premiere user but then any new programme is a bit opaque to begin with.

I have taken a few short HD clips through the editing process using the razor tool approach and will now see how the quad core behaves during the burning process.

Cheers

Arthur

[ADBest]

I can now report that I have fought my way through Magix, (Movie Edit Pro 15+), to the point where I have successfully produced a MiniDV tape of a short HD edit and played it on my 40” Plasma TV.

The problem I had with the refusal of an object, (clip), to transfer to the time line was, I think, associated with the way Magix deals with captured footage. The captured video is saved on the nominated drive but is not associated with any specific project, but may be called up by any project which wishes to use it.

There appears to be some subtle difference between ‘Copying’ and ‘Importing’ which I have not yet worked out.

The solution to the problem I described was to create a new project and then, from this project go to the ‘Media Pool’, (which is a straight copy of Windows Explorer), drag the .mpg file to the time line. This launched a screen which offered to copy the file to the time line. (Which it did).

I can now get on with an understanding of the twiddly bits of Magix.

The Magix documentation is hopeless, as is their help line and the tutorials that they bang on about. I tried the help line which informed me that they were very busy and they could be up to eight days before they would get around to my problem. They came back in three days and requested that I download a programme which would analyse my system in order to help them produce a solution.

The analysis took 50 minutes to run, goodness knows what information they gathered!

I was then requested to describe my problem again. So I copied my earlier e-mail request.

I repeat below my request and their reply, (a further two days after the system check).

I have dabbled with Magix, (Movie Edit Pro 15 plus), previously but have now the time available to have a serious attempt at getting to grips with it.

The programme does many and wondrous things but as a start I wish to ‘Capture’, ‘Edit’ and burn a DVD of the finished production. The clever stuff can come later.

So far I have captured a few HD clips, (Objects?), using the ‘Batch Capture’ feature.

These then appear in the ‘Media Pool’ as ‘Record3.mpg’, ‘Record6.mpg’ etc etc).

I have been able to drag an ‘Object’ to the ‘Programme Monitor’ window and trim it.

However when I try to drag the trimmed ‘Object’ to the ‘Arranger’ the ‘Object’ disappears. It also disappears if I drag it to the ’Storyboard’.

Where am I going wrong?

I have used other video editing systems in the past, various Pinnacle programmes, Premier 6.5 and recently Premiere Pro but in each case I had peer experience to quickly guide me when I lost my way. Magix is my first attempt to go it alone as no other Video Club member has gone before me.

Dear Mr. Best,

Thank you for your message and syscheck. You were actually under no obligation to carry out the syscheck. We include it to save time though with technical difficulties, although it would appear that your request pertains to operating the program.

From what you have written it is quite difficult to reconstruct your problem here. With the program open and in the Edit window, you are able to drag and drop your HD recordings to the timeline. If you were able to 'trim' a file, then you most definitely did this in the timeline mode.

What is is exactly that you wish to do at this juncture?


Best regards,
Bernhard Schwarz

MAGIX Development Support
Postfach 200914
01194 Dresden - Germany

Magix may well be a good application but until they comb through the programme to eliminate the Germen language references and produce a proper manual which is technically useful rather than a marketing pitch they will not make much headway in this country. They must understand that the competition has a well established customer base in the UK, (unlike Magix), which means we can all easily obtain peer assistance in our early attempts. The lack of response to this thread, in my opinion, confirms this view.

Arthur

[Dave Watterson]

I have not even seen Magix, so have no bones to grind. We should just remember that when NLE began to become popular in 1998 - in those days Adobe Premiere 4 was the front-runner - the IAC had to resurrect its long-dead series of residential weekend schools in order to help people get the hang of the whole confusing process. David Jackson and David Blundell taught a generation of IAC movie makers.

The IAC's private NLE email group (for members only) grew out of a need the course participants felt to keep in touch with each other and David Jackson, whose expertise guided all of us.

Having worked for years in IT, I know only too well that the people who plan and write programs often have trouble understanding what everyone else finds difficult about using them.

The early NLE programs from most companies were so poorly served by their manuals that we began to believe the companies wanted to encourage a third-party manual market, where independent authors wrote their own guides to using the software.

People who have seen the Magix team demonstrations are impressed ... so be patient and try to get to know it ... despite the Magix documentation! As I write this amazon.co.uk is offering Magix Movie Edit Pro 15 Plus & Photo and Videoshow Soundpool 6 (PC DVD) all for £34. Heck at that price not many programs even offer documentation these days.

- Dave

[ADBest]

Dave, thanks for your note. I agree completely with your comments but what the situation amounts to is that for a NLE programme to become accepted it needs a big effort on the part of someone. The pioneers of the popular applications have made the effort and we now have the widespread user base to support new starters in their early faltering forays. (I know this from experience).

Any new NLE programme has a mountain to climb. My criticism of Magix is that their marketing department drives their whole approach and all their publications are geared to extolling the wondrous capabilities of the programme rather than getting users started up the learning curve.

I too was impressed by the Magix presentation and my copy of the programme was a freebie but if I can’t make it work then it is useless. Any programme driven by an expert will be impressive; it’s when you get home and get your hands dirty that the problems arise.

The only reason that I persevere is that it gives me a free route to HD editing.

If there are any members out there that have managed to climb the foothills then I urge them to break cover.

My own approach to a new programme is to learn the rudiments of capture, simple editing and then recording. Once I can do this I begin to add the finer points as I need them. The frustration with Magix comes from the fact that when I am held up by some minor issue I have no one to consult.

I still think that Magix could do more themselves.

Arthur

[col lamb]

I have been into NLE for longer than most within the IAC and have tried all different kinds of editing software but since getting AVCHD camcorders (Sony TG3 and Panasonic AG HMC 151) the editing problems have been just like they were prior to Premier 6.5 (real time editing without a dedicated accelerating card). Nevertheless I have made progress and I have now a very workable system.

I also have been using Magix Movie Edit Pro 15 +. The + has the extra functions to handle AVCHD footage. SD and HDV footage = no problem, native AVCHD editing is another matter.

There are very little options available to edit AVCHD, Magix and Edius Neo Booster are both supposed to handle the AVCHD files NATIVELY, that is without conversion.

Now using Magix my editing PC crashes at will, converting the AVCHD files into Magix's own file system resolves the issue to some degree. The resulting Magix files are not of the same quality as other conversion.

You need a very fast PC with bags of Memory (3GHz 4 core + 4Gb Ram + compatible graphics card for GPU rendering) for editing AVCHD footage.

As more and more AVCHD camcorders are getting onto the market you are likely to be going this route eventually and so I would suggest that you start to look at them and all that goes with our activity, for the times they are a changing (make a good song that).

Edius Neo Booster (version 2.5 in other words) is great, yes it costs more but like all versions of Edius it is rock stable and fairly easy to learn. I have also used Neo's AVCHD conversion software to change the native AVCHD files ito something that I can edit on my laptop. It works great and


Col Lamb
Preston

[ADBest]

From the information picked up on this thread and the ‘Copying ones own DVDs’ thread, I have decided to purchase a double layer DVD RW, (Plextor DVDCD PX-880SA) and a Sony Blu ray player, (BDPS360 Profile 2.0).

If 20 minutes of HD in Blu ray format can be burned onto a standard DVD, and more onto a dual layer disc, then for 90% of what we edit that will be enough.

The Blu ray player will replace my existing DVD player and do all that that device did, including up-scaling. It will of course also play my efforts at HD editing.

As a test I produced a short edit using Magix and burned it in Blu ray format using a standard DVD RW onto a standard DVD. This was then played on a young neighbour’s Playstation and the result was very encouraging and I will certainly do more. However I tried burning the finished Magix HD edit as a DVD for playing on a normal DVD player but the quality was far worse than an edit carried out in Standard def and burned to a DVD.

This may, I suppose, be due to the transcoding involved in converting from 1440 x 1080 edit back to 720 x 576. If this is the case and it means that I would have to edit twice if I require to produce both a good quality SD DVD and a Blu ray HD copy then I can’t see myself doing it very often.

This magix thread has 794 ‘views’ to date so there must be some interest out there so things may be astirring.

Arthur

[billyfromConsett]

I wonder if an external Blu-ray writer/player can be plugged into a computer's firewire and so be a portable writer/player?

[ned c]

I am surprised that ADBs experience with writing an SD DVD from an HD original resulted in an inferior result. My experience is the opposite, we now do everything in HD/HDV and create SD DVDs that are definitely of high quality. I work on a Mac with Toast for DVD writing, that is the Mac equivalent to Roxio for PCs. I seem remember that Michael Slowe once noted that he though SD DVDs written from HD originals are superior to those originated on SD. (Apologies Michael if my memory has yet again failed me).

ned c

[billyfromConsett]

I have made a number of DVD's made from HDV edited material. The optimum settings still baffle me. I use a data rate of about 7.5Mb/s but don't know if hitting the Progressive option should be the best one to choose.

The same question applies to the exporting of a new mpeg file from an HDV timeline - progressive or interlaced?

[Roy]

I have just burned a DVD direct from the time line of Adobe Pro 2 which was an edited HDV video and the result when the DVD was played back by an upscaling DVD player was extemely good, almost up to full HD quality. Even when played through a normal DVD player on a 40" TV without upscaling it was far better than a DVD burnt from a SD timeline output. I woudn't go for DL discs yet as I've heard bad reports about them. Roy

[ADBest]

Thanks for the good news that HD edits may be burned to DVD at the same or better quality than the same footage routed through a standard definition process.

I will have another attempt to see where I am going wrong.

Arthur

[ADBest]

Progress? report.

On the positive side I have burned a high definition edit in to a DVD in standard definition using Magix with the default settings and viewed the result on a 40” TV. The results are very good. (What I did to produce the rubbish I reported on earlier I don’t know).

The bad news was that the Blu-ray data saved to a DVD, which played on the Playstation, stuttered and jumped, both audio and video, when played on the TV.

The failure to play on the TV was traced to the bit rate selected in the Magix ‘Burn’ area. There is a slider selection marked at one end “Long playback time”, and at the other “Slow playback time”. (I suppose that the illogical juxtaposition of ‘length’ and ‘speed’ occurred in the translation). I thought I was being conservative when I chose to move the slider towards the “Slow playback time” end of the slider.

Big mistake. What I did not notice was that as the slider moved in this direction the bit rate increased dramatically.

Next time round I selected a bit rate of 7.5 Mb/s, (the value pinched from a recent ‘Billy’ post), and the result plays perfectly on both the Playstation and the TV.

Of academic interest only, I wonder how the Playstation managed to play the first disc.

Magix continues to promise and frustrate in equal measure and I would be very grateful if someone out there explained to me the principles of the filing philosophy used. I keep losing files and strangely find that if I delete a file from a project then the edited file still plays happily. Obviously it goes back to the hard drive to find what it needs. For a Premiere user this is very strange behaviour as if you delete a clip file from within a project in Premiere it disappears and you have to import it again to make the project work.

Magix needs some peer group support as no one can wait eight days to discover the next keystroke.

Anyone in the market for a bulk supply of silver beer mats?

Arthur

[Roy]

I have to admit defeat, I've given up on Magix. Life is to short to worry over this programme with its mixture of promise and grief.
I am more than happy to work in HDV with Adobe premiere Pro2 and you can see the result of my test video in HDV on Youtube. I notice that Youtube gives you a choice of four viewing modes when you play back an HD video. I find that when in the 1080 mode the video stops and starts a lot, but plays okay when looking in on the 720 mode. I am happy with the result when it fills the 22 inch monitor screen from YouTube. I would like you to view the 3 minute video and give me your opinion on the quality of the image, good or bad.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3JxthKRpA

[Roy]

I stand to be corrected here, I was told by people who know about these things, that to put HD onto a DVD you need a Blu ray burner. After burning onto the DVD you can then play back on a normal DVD player. If this knowledge is wrong, please put me right before I invest in a Blu ray burner. Roy

[Geoff Addis]

Using Toast 10 Platinum I have burned Bluray compatible disks onto DVDs using the normal MacPro DVD Drive. I canot answer for PC use as mine has a Bluray burner fitted.

Geoff