AIST Movie DV 7

Video editing for those with plenty of experience

We last looked AIST Movie DV back in 2004, when it was at version 4, so longstanding PCW readers will have heard of it.

AIST is better known for its broadcast video products and, though it doesn’t have the level of brand awareness that the other products in this group test can boast, it nonetheless has a very capable video-editing application in Movie DV.

The newly released version 7 looks very different to the version we reviewed two years ago. Gone is the bronze and green colour scheme, replaced by a look more in tune with Windows XP. Fundamentally though, the application hasn’t changed in terms of how it works.

What sets Movie DV apart is that, as well as a broad and powerful set of video-editing tools, it places a high priority on compositing – overlaying video and graphics elements and editing the way they interact to produce multi-layered video compositions.

In the professional video-editing world, most compositing is done using dedicated applications such as Adobe After Effects or Apple’s Shake.

While Movie DV’s compositing tools don’t come close to providing what these applications have to offer, you can achieve some very sophisticated effects that, with the exception of Premiere Elements, are well in advance of anything offered by the other applications reviewed here.

As far as the basics are concerned – trimming clips, assembling in the storyboard or adding them to the timeline, adding transitions and effects and voiceover narration or a backing audio track – Movie DV provides very capable tools but you’ll need to have at least some video-editing experience or be prepared to put in a lot of learning time to get the most from them.

The interface is busy but well organised. Like Premiere Elements all windows, including a browser, storyboard, canvas and timeline, are interlocked and resize as a group when you change any one of them.

Another similarity with Elements is the Effects box, which works a little like the Properties panel, allowing scaling, positioning and rotation of overlaid clips and other objects.

The storyboard and timeline windows are synchronised and this ‘both at once’, approach has some advantages over the ‘either or’ view provided by other applications. As you drop and arrange clips in the storyboard, you can see what’s happening to them in the timeline.

The timeline itself provides two alternative layouts, a single-track mode which superimposes transitions between abutting clips or A/B roll format which shows the ‘internal’ timeline with the transition track sandwiched between the two video tracks.

There’s a good range of effects and transitions and, given the other advanced aspects of the program, it’s no surprise that these can be keyframed.

All this functionality comes at a cost – not all editing operations are obvious or intuitive and there is no online help, other than the accompanying pdf manuals. Movie DV would really benefit from a panel with context-sensitive advice on how to achieve common tasks such as adding titles and keyframing effects.

Another drawback for novice editors is that Movie DV has little to offer in the way of preconfigured content. Beyond a few title animations, four static picture-in-picture positions and a handful of effect presets, it’s all your own work.

A more serious problem for those looking for an all-in-one package, is the lack of any DVD authoring features, though you can save to mpeg2 for authoring with a separate application.

This is part of a group test looking at video editing software. For other products in the test, see:
Video Editing intro and Editor’s Choice
Adobe Premiere Elements 2
Cyberlink Power Director 5
Pinnacle Studio Plus 10
Ulead Videostudio 9
Optimising video for handhelds
Editing high-definition video
Features table