At one of the end spectrum you have applications such as Sony Vegas Pro that allow everything under the sun for the full on video editing professional. Others of the same ilk are Adobe Premiere Pro, Edius Grass Valley, Final Cut Pro (pre version 10 anyway), AVID suites and other high end packages.

To grab the mid-level market, many of these companies have also released ‘lite’ versions of their flagships that while having superb functionality have lesser ‘capacity’ if that is the right word. A bit like a 10 tonne tipper versus a Toyota HiLux if you like.

The bottom end, the one-click-and-make-a-movie-if-you-are-lucky stuff has mostly been left to those who supply the freebie apps that come in the box with the camcorder when you buy it. And usually they are not very good.

Sony has decided to have a crack at this market with the release of MovieEZ HD. No pricing for Australia have been nominated as yet, but as it sells for UK£29.95, around AUD$49 is probably a safe bet. But does it work?

The Interface

Simplicity is the name of the game here as you can see. Whilst it may not be a 3 clicker to make a movie, certainly it is done in only four steps – 1. Add photos and video, 2. Choose a style, 3. Add music, and 4. View your movie.

Visual content can be added from your computer, a camera or ‘device’, a camcorder (tape) or from an AVCHD camcorder (memory or SD card). This is a simple point and click or drag method to populate the screen area and once content is added, depending on its type, a single click will open a menu allowing some action on that object. For example, clicking on a still lets you rotate it, define how long it is shown for, add a caption to it or even add motion control. Video footage allows all of this plus has an option to split into clips (note the trial version will not let you use any footage with Dolby audio in it).

Adding a style is the next step; this simply means selecting one of the supplied styles and changing any parameters you want that apply to that style (see the screen shot for “Cube Twist” settings) and that’s it. While some of these are a tad cheesy, the ironic thing is that to make many of these styles in ‘standard’ editing software is actually time consuming and difficult!

Finally, you can add music. Anything that has digital rights management is stopped from being added by the way, so if you are thinking of throwing “Wind Beneath My Wings” under that wedding video, forget it. If you are angry about this, don’t be too harsh on Sony as after all, they are a music publishing company! Music added to a movie can be trimmed to fit to length.

Of course, doing all this ends up in a “canned” looking presentation so there are options to personalise it with animation, titling, font settings, adding a background (colour or image) or including a logo. Motion effects can be tweaked, images cropped, slow motion or speeded up video added and cross fades between clips are there for good measure. You can even add a voice over.

For many, this will appear as a basic package that doesn’t cut the mustard. But look at it for what it is, a quick editor for the masses that gives good results, still allows a little creativity, is easy to use and inexpensive to boot.

I’d suggest you could actually put together a decent wedding video using MoviEZ – restricted music options besides. And in many cases, that is all people want.

Vendor: Sony Creative Software / New Magic

Price: UK£29.95, expected around AUD$59

Auscam ratings    

• Performance          8
• Documentation       7
• Features:              8
• Value for money: 10

We liked: Easy to use, inexpensive

We didn’t like: As we are against music piracy, we won’t say restriction of recorded music use.

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com