Product: VideoWave III
Company: MGI Software
Website: http://www.mgisoft.com
Estimated Street Price: $99.95
Review By: Julien Jay

Introduction

The democratization of Movie-Making has conducted many users to buy camcorders and video capture cards solutions. Indeed the price of such equipment reached $50,000 a few years ago. Now you can buy a complete multimedia editing solution for only $5000. But a remaining problem is that editing videos on computers has always been a hard and dull task to do especially for novice users that discover tools like Adobe Premiere (which is certainly very efficient software) but also very complex. The Canadian ‘eye’ software manufacturer, MGI, has unveiled to the world its brand new video solution: VideoWave 3.5. This brand new software brings simplicity to edit high-end videos on computers. One sentence really reflects what this new release brings to the product: “PC Video Made Even Easier.” If I have to say something about it I’d say ‘Simply the best’. So below is a complete review of this innovative software.

Features

• Support of analogue video capture including USB Cameras and brand new support for DV camcorders and PC connection standards (IEEE-1394 / FireWire).

• Unique SmartDV technology that only renders or produces the parts of a DV video that have been edited in order to speed up the production of DV movies.

• Advanced MPEG engine that supports real-time MPEG-1 & MPEG-2 capture regardless of source.

• StoryLine templates

• Ability to change the colors of text effects for each Start, Hold and Finish position

• The Special Effects editor of VideoWave 3.5 allows users to apply any of the 26 included special effects.

• Publish templates: the produce movie box allows you to select your output format from a complete list of preset templates (MPEG1/2;VideoCD; Video Email; WebVideo) But you can also create your own production templates.  

• VideoWave includes a number of predefined templates for various hardware capture cards. The type of video file you want to create defines the settings, e.g. ‘ATI All-in-Wonder for VCR’. Settings allow you to select different templates, further edit or create your own capture templates.

• VideoWave now allows you to view and dynamically change the brightness, Contrast, Color & Hue of video you’ll capture.

• Audio templates allow users to easily select different sound quality for audio capture from a clear list (CD-Quality).

• You can now used different audio capture devices by selecting them in the capture settings.

• MMX support: VideoWave III supports as its predecessor the Intel MMX technology that speeds up some pictures operations.

New Features in VideoWave 3.5 (the upgrade which can be download for free from the MGI Website)

• Windows Media support: create Streaming Videos for the Web.
• MP3 Support: Add your favorite mp3 music and sound effects directly to your video.
• Create Custom Edit templates: save your favorite text and special effects as templates for quick reuse.
• Expanded File Support for Image Extract: Tiff and JPG files now supported.
• Enhanced Media Library Management: Sort your Video and Audio by Path, Name or Type.
• Support For Half D1: Capture Video at 352 x 480 (supported cards only).

Setup

MGI VideoWave III comes in a very luxurious box that really impressed us. With such a nice box the software cannot be bad! After unpacking it you’ll discover two CDs. One CD contains the setup program and the other one contains the content stuff that may be needed by the software. Insert the first CD, and the setup will start. We found the setup program a little bit banal in terms of interface: it’s an old InstallShield Setup and not a Windows Installer one…

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