Magix Movies to CD & DVD

Aimed at the novice video-editing market, Movies to CD & DVD makes a good first impression.

The interface is clearly laid out, with tabs at the top of the screen splitting the process into three stages: import and capture, edit movie and make movie.

Movies to CD & DVD uses Windows' digital video (DV) camcorder recognition and remote control functions. This led to some problems as our, admittedly two-year-old, camera was not recognised by XP.

But Magix is planning to release a patch to enable recognition for more cameras and, when tested on a different, newer camcorder, things went more smoothly and we captured footage easily.

You can also reap from analogue sources including VHS recorders.

We had more success editing our movie. The edit movie screen has two formats: storyboard and timeline. Timeline has a chronological four-track layout for video, soundtrack, text and additional audio, while storyboard displays scenes in large 'filmbox' icons.

Rather than displaying these icons in consecutive rows, there's a single row across the bottom of the screen with room for about seven filmboxes. This can be frustrating when you try to drag and drop a scene to a position off-screen, as the screen does not scroll when the pointer reaches the edge.

Dropdown menus on filmboxes allowing you to add text and effects to scenes were easy to use and the make movie process was straightforward.

For software aimed at the novice market, the black and white manual was disappointing. The format was cluttered and there weren't enough accompanying screenshots.

At £30, Movies to CD & DVD has a decent range of features and some user-friendly editing functions. Ultimately we did manage to burn a movie to disc, but it wasn't the simplest program to use.

DETAILS:

Price: £29.99 (£25.52 ex VAT)

Contact: Magix 020 8968 3666
www.magix.com

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• Pentium II 400MHz processor or faster
• 300MB fixed-disk storage
• SVGA graphics card with 4MB of Ram (minimum)
• 16bit sound card
• CD-Rom drive