Well, looking through the product info, it sounds like an editors dream - but then so did Vegas 11. :-) What are the trial limitations Peter? May give it a whirl myself.

Trial limitations (as far as I know):
7 days without registering
30 days with registering
Can't output more than 3 minutes of video
(No watermarks)

Magix Video Pro X4 - the origins of this product go back a long way through several vendor/owners. It was among the very first NLE editors offered when firewire capturing/editing came to windows. At that time the product mix was Ulead Studio Pro, Ulead Wizard style (sort of -you get the idea) , the orignal code of Magix, and Adobe Premiere.
While Ulead Studio Pro and Adobe Premiere battled head-to-head before Sony owned Vegas, the wizard style of Ulead and Magix were considered the simple editors for the greater masses. I bought the box at the time, but actually never opened it, because I was more interested in the capablities of the leaders.

As in any software code that has suffered multiple owners, I can only say it has been a player but not able to gain much ground since. Why??, well that is marketing! ... and problems with the implementation. Always a little of both.

First bummer! It won't copy and paste between two instances. In fact it gives a warning when you open the second instance, so I was prepared for the worst.

Maybe I'll dust off Clipmate, if I can remember how to use it. I used to use it with Premiere Elements, which wouldn't even let you open the second instance. The procedure was clunky at best, with problems and workarounds.

>At that time the product mix was Ulead Studio Pro

Interesting. A bit of history... My first editing experience was with Ulead's Media Studio Pro. I was creating a pre-wedding video to show at my daughter's rehearsal dinner. I finished the edit a couple of weeks before the wedding. It took the remaining two weeks to get it to complete a render because it kept crashing part way through. Finally, the day before the rehearsal dinner I was able to get a full render. Soon after that I heard of Vegas 4 which had a reputation of being rock solid. I switched, and it was pretty much crash free, especially for rendering. In fact, I can't remember any version of Vegas ever crashing on render.

So now I'm hearing that Magix Pro X4 might be more stable than Vegas 11. I'm sure a lot has improved from the old Ulead days, but I would want to trial a render longer than a 3 minute video before investing.

/jerry

"I can't remember any version of Vegas ever crashing on render."

Well Vegas 9c did just that to me last week, hence my current preoccupation.

I successfully burnt my 1.5 hour project to a rewritable BD, checked it on my TV and decided it needed a few minor changes. After the changes, Vegas consistently crashed during rendering at a point that I hadn't changed! I was able to render a selection up to just before that spot, and to render from just past it to the end, but not a portion that included that spot.

I got sick of it and rendered the whole timeline with Vegas 10 and made my BD. Vegas 10 of course took much longer than 9c would have because it didn't smart render and the quality of unedited parts would have been slightly worse, but what can you do?.

Bummer continued!

ClipMate doesn't help. In fact, since ClipMate is silent during the copy process (it normally goes pop if successful or squeals if there is some problem) I suspect that Magix Video Pro does not use the Windows clipboard for copying, but has its own.

Typical..just downloaded the trial, then see this. From memory, MSP would not allow copying between 2 instances of the programme. That's a show stopper for me, I use it a lot.

The trial for which program?

Maybe the one that is the topic of this thread?

:-D

Hilarious Duncan, but the post I was querying mentions "MSP", whats that?
The original post is primarily about Video Pro X but mentions several others.Also Magix make more than one video app.

MSP is presumably Ulead MediaStudio Pro, now defunct since Ulead was taken over by InterVideo and in turn by Corel. I have MSP8 gathering dust.

I put in a feature request to Magix to be able to copy and paste between instances of Magix Video Pro and received this reply:

"I can forward this as a feature request but cannot promise if and when this would be implemented. Have you considered working in multi-movie mode (so several movies are open within one single project and program) rather than having several instances open? This would enable you to switch between different movies/timelines and perform copy & paste actions between them. I understand this is not exactly the same as running two completely independent projects in two instances (especially if they themselves are multi-movie projects) but might be a suitable workflow to get you where you want to be and improve the handling."

If you try to open another project while one is still open, you have the option of replacing it with the second project or adding it to the existing project. If you opt for the latter, then you have a multi-movie project. If you click on Window in the main toolbar you are able to select which project to work on. You can copy and paste between these projects. If you go back and edit the original single movie projects, the changes are not reflected in the copies in the multi movie project.

One interesting little quirk: I created a new blank project but when I opened an existing project to add it, it merely switched to the old project. I had to put something in the new project to make it stick.

Working using multi-movie projects is not what I have been used to, but I think it will be adequate for what I have to do. So no major limitations for me yet.

So far I have not had any hiccups with the program. Touch wood! There are a few minor cosmetic bugs in the interface but nothing serious so far.

"Working using multi-movie projects is not what I have been used to, but I think it will be adequate for what I have to do."

That sounds very similar to the concept of "sequences" which is quite common in NLEs.

Bob.

Bummer 2! Video Pro X4 output won't work with my authoring software.

Video Pro X4 has a flag that you can set to "Smart Render" and if that is set, there is another one "Smart Copy". If a virginal AVCHD file is processed with the latter set, it goes through virtually unchanged and works the same as the original with other software. If only the former flag is set, there is a little change, but not much because it is almost as quick to process. The only difference that Mediainfo reports is that the original and smart copied versions have a scan type of "interlaced" while the smart rendered only version has "MBAFF" (macro block-adaptive frame-field, according to Wiki).

If some changes are made to the video, it can't be smart rendered. In this case Mediainfo advises that the GOP has changed from M=1, N=26 to M=2, N=13.

The smart rendered output from Magix Video Pro X4 gives DVD Architect Pro 5.2 a pain. After switching the timeline to the video and back to the menu, the menu becomes black, and after closing DVDA, the media files are not released.

TMPGEnc Authoring Works 5 does accept it, but insists on re-rendering it.

I tried passing the smart rendered output through tsMuxer, VideoReDo, PowerDirector and VideoStudio (without substantial recoding). None of them helped.

I tried it in Vegas 9c, which immediately crashed, and in Vegas 10e which froze.

SCS software sure is fragile!

Adobe Encore insists on re-encoding my AVCHD files, so that left me with just the BD authoring built into Video Pro X4. It is template based with limited direct editing capability, but it looks like the templates are PSD files and can be edited in Photoshop. The trouble with templates is that I can never find one that I like.

I made my BD using Magix Video Pro and joy of joys - the skip button works on my BD player! (DVDA has a bug).

Is there no sister programme for DVD/BD authoring? MSP had DVDWS.

There are two icons in the top right corner. By default, the left or normal editor interface is active. Selecting the right is for authoring and burning. The user sees one program but the two functions may reside in different sub-programs.

Bummer 3!

Every so often, (8 times in 50 minutes) the video is corrupted for say 5 to 13 frames, usually appearing green but not always. It seems to be consistent for a particular clip. I found that for one clip at least, passing it through tsMuxeR first prevents the problem. It only happens during smart render. I am now currently attempting to fix the other glitches. I have lodged a ticket with Magix.