Magix Movie Edit Pro 2015 review

This isn’t the only challenge facing people who want to edit 4K video. While the software automatically matches the project settings to imported media, it’s not so careful about matching export settings. Exports to hard disk are at a choice of DVD quality, 720p or 1080p. With no option to customise settings, it looked like 4K exports were impossible. We eventually found a workaround by opting to export at 4K to YouTube, which left a 4K video file in the same folder as our last export to disk. We often complain about other editors’ overly complex export options, but this one goes too far the other way. We weren’t able to export our 2.7K GoPro footage in MPEG-4 format at all, as the drop-down list of Quality settings was mysteriously empty. Exporting as a 1080p MPEG-2 file was possible but the video had peculiar letterboxing problems.

^ Red Giant Knoll Light Factory specialises in lens flares

Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium costs £99 including VAT and adds a further three plug-ins from Red Giant. Retrograde applies vintage film simulation, Chromatic Glow adds glow effects and Knoll Light Factory adds sophisticated lens flares. All three are capable of excellent results but they don’t integrate particularly well with the host application, with parameters presented as a purely text-based list. They’re worth the extra £20, but bear in mind that these extras usually change from one version to the next, so it might be tricky to reopen old projects that use these plug-ins after upgrades and reinstallations.

^ Turn digital video into cinefilm footage with the Red Giant Retrograde plug-in

Once again, Movie Edit Pro scores better for quantity than for quality. However, there’s enough here to keep it in the running, such as its ripple editing options, 99 tracks and accomplished multi-cam editing. It’s a solid choice for those who want lots of features to experiment and don’t mind putting up with a few quirks.