A few days ago I suffered yet another Windows crash as I was using NeroVision Express video editing software. I'm not bitching about Nero 6, because honestly I didn't buy it for video work, I just needed a decent CD/DVD burning program. But, I was hooked on the idea of video editing.
NVE is very frustrating at times, but when it works, it's very fast and easy to make simple DVDs from home videos, once they are digitized. Sadly, it's a royal pain to mix still pictures and video clips, so all the stuff I shot while on vacation last year still hasn't been merged into a decent home movie.
This last BSOD sent me over the edge. I embarked on a search for better editing software. Looked at Pinnacle, didn't like the reviews and gripes I read on http://www.videohelp.com. Adobe's prices shocked me into stillness. Sony's stuff seemed to be in the same boat. Then I found Magix had a video editor.
I kind of like Magix, I have used some of their software for editing midi files and regular audio files (though I think Goldwave is much better on these). So I researched what people thought about their video editor. The 2004 version looked like it wasn't as reliable as Pinnacle, though it did have many of the same features. I went to their website and they had a new version out. Went back to VideoHelp to look at reviews on it and they all said it was much improved. Seeing that the downloadable version was only $49 vs Pinnacle's $99, I took a chance on it.
Well, I'm not disappointed. I've tried to break it with way too many windows opened, tossing in a mix of mov, wmv, avi, mpeg video clips and a variety of bmp, jpg, gif and tif still pictures into it and it survived. I'm impressed. That would have killed NVE. (one minor disappointment is animated gifs are rendered as a single still of the first frame. NVE would treat it as a video clip.) I rendered to avi, mov, mpg, dv, wmv and it all worked.
Now I'm learning how to use it's many, many features.. and I think it may be a lifetime effort to learn them all. For $49, this has the most capability I could ever hope for. Every corner I turn with it seems to elicit another 'Wow! Neato!' reaction from me.
So I think I'll be busy for a long time.
It's been nearly two weeks and I've only managed to get maybe 16 hours in using MEP10. So far, so good. Haven't found a real 'Aww Sh*t' yet. Just a little tedious to figure out some of the controls. Still haven't got that down.
I did read someone wanting to do a 'walk through wall' effect and that made me wonder if MEP10 could do that. Well, it can, with the help of an image editor that has alpha channels. I used an old 3D program to make the wall and saved it as a jpg. Then pulled out an old graphic of a person walking, set it's background transparent in PaintShop Pro, saved that as a png. Then I made a copy of the wall picture, edited it to have one side masked off in the alpha channel and a saved as tga. Then I started up MEP10, imported the wall jpg to the background layer, added my walking person to the next layer then put the alpha channel version of the wall on the last layer. I set the middle layer of the walker to move from left to right and it worked. Right at the mask boundary, the walker fades. Because I did a quick and dirty on the mask, the person is still visible at the top, bottom and far right side. But still, the principle is proven. Just sub in a green screen of a person walking instead of the still and it should work.
