You can record a voice over onto the narration track because it is a separate track on the timeline. Here are some other features that we found to be helpful for you when you start to edit on the timeline. Each of these take your production higher in value. If you want to add the Ken Burns effect to your stills, which is a combination of panning and zooming, there is a button for that. You can get deeper into editing your individual video clips or stills by making adjustments to your lighting, color and exposure. New to MoviePlus is the ability to flip, reverse or spin a video clip along any axis – most editing programs allow for flipping or reversing footage, but getting every angle in between opens up a lot of possibilities. Serif includes a few more cool features to spark your creativity.
It automatically adds a one-second crossfade between each clip and your movie is done. All you do is move the desired clips to the storyboard box that says “drag clips here” and the feature takes care of the rest. There is another way to edit with this program, a feature called storyboard. This provided a volume line on the clip, which could be edited to make volume fade up or down dependent on your keyframes. First we selected the audio track of the clip we wanted to edit, then we clicked on the “show key frames” button in the media window. When we wanted to change the volume of our clip or fade it in and out we would look to the media window again. From there you can change the location, size, color and font style to what is best for your project. Find the one that is right for you, and drag it to the timeline. First you click on galleries, underneath that you will see a text button, click there and boom – all of the title effects you wanted. When we went to make a title or rolling credits for the piece it was effortless with the media window. If you wanted to crossfade the clips you just drag one on top of the other and it creates a crossfade for you. Something that we enjoyed about the simplicity of the timeline is that the clips have little handles to control fading from both ends of the clip. After we dropped our chosen clips onto the timeline, we used the unlinking button to separate the link between the audio and video then delete the part we didn’t want. We did find that if you double-click a clip in the media window it opens another window which allows you to shorten the clip to the desired spot or length, but there was no way to import just the video or just the audio.
We navigated with the explorer tab, selected the files, and then right-clicked and clicked on “add to project.”Īs we mentioned before, all the editing is done on the timeline, since there is no viewer window to modify clips, it can be a bit cluttered. Then we went to add pictures and songs from our computer and we found that navigating in the media window was straightforward and quick. The missing frames didn’t make a huge difference to the final outcome of the video.
We found that importing video was easy but it did drop a few frames. The simplicity of this program lies in the media window because that is where you get everything you need.
Underneath both windows is the timeline where all the editing takes place. On the top are two windows, the video preview window with the media window next to it. Here you will see a simple three window setup. When you choose to start a new project under the create section – it dives into the program. It opens a wizard that simply asks “What do you want to do?” then gives you three options, create, open or learn. When you first open Serif’s MoviePlus X6 you notice a simple quality about it. Not only can you edit your videos, with the software, you can burn them to DVD and share them with friends. Included in this product is DVD authoring which is a great add-on feature.
Like all beginner software it doesn’t have all the tools the big boys in Hollywood do but you can make a slick video with what you do have. With simple yet effective menus and an easy to understand timeline, this would be a great tool for the beginner editor. This is a simple introductory editing software straight from across the pond – the United Kingdom.