MediaEdit - 3.1.3

I do like this editor, much more so than the recent iMovie, which needs to be redone. But I have found some serious flaws in the exporting function, particularly with MPEG4. I have tried this export at least 6 times now and for some reason, your finished movie has closed gaps where you have intentionally left space in the sequencer for fades, particularly in the front of a movie. I cannot figure this out since the DIVX export function works flawlessly. The only thing with DIVX is that you are stuck with 160bps as the highest bit rate for your audio and for MPEG4 you can go all the way up to 320bps, a huge plus for musicians who want to showcase their music as best as they possibly can.

Either the DIVX function needs to be upgraded to a higher audio quality or the MPEG4 export function needs to be addressed by the programmers, IMHO. Otherwise, I'm sticking with Final Cut Express 4 for my needs. I would be happy to pay for this software and 'unlock' it at the end of my demo download, but these audio features are paramount to me over the pros that you can gain from this software.

Wow! This is simply a must have tool for anyone who works with videos. It reminds me of the original iMovie, but much better. I love how i can put anything in any layer: text, audio, video, and even sprites. You can even put video and audio in the same layer. Picture-in-picture is so easy to do. I also love the crop feature too.

It edits all files natively so if you have a text track, sprite track, or any special quicktime tracks, it'll load them perfectly fine without conversion.

This is how iMovie '08 should have been.

Is there any compelling reason for buying this rather than using iMovie (either the 06 or 08 iLife version)?

Just playing around with this for a little while, I reckon it has a lot going for it. When I try it out a bit more I will do a full review, but it is certainly well worth a download!

Rifty