Automatic Video Editing Programs

Editing video can be tedious, difficult and time-consuming. In the professional world, on the average, it takes an hour of time to edit a single minute. This does not include capturing and logging the video and audio clips. 

NEW - muvee adds magicMoments scene selection - for automatic video editing

Believe it or not, there are several automated video editing programs that will go through your captured video clips, isolate the best images and scenes, and then edit them together into completed video productions with video effects and transitions, background music and titles. I spent years going to film and video school to learn how to edit. Why, I now wonder...

Well to tell the truth, the final movies created by automated programs are not quite as slick or as tight as editing done by professionals. However, for home and consumer videos, these programs work great. 

It is easy to use these programs to assemble a project that will impress your friends and relatives. In addition, when you are done, you can save them in a variety of Internet and email-ready formats. The three programs here are similar in overall concept but they work slightly differently.

I have experimented with muvee, Roxio Cinematic and Sony's MovieShaker and have been VERY impressed. What takes these programs  minutes to accomplish, would have taken an professional hours to do using a  nonlinear video editing system. 

Basically these work by loading your selected video scene or scenes into the program and selecting an appropriate musical background. Then pick out what style or theme of video production do you want to end up with. Wild thrash rock, gentle jazz, romantic tinged with reds and orange, black and white old fashioned cinema look, etc, etc. You get lots of choices.

You can also add some basic titles as well. When you are ready, you press the button and the software automatically analyses and assesses your video footage, identifying close-ups, interesting actions,  and faces. This can take a very long time depending on how many clips you inputted and the power of your computer. 

Once the analysis stage is completed, it then edits the footage, to the music, creating a short video production. Depending on the tone and theme that you picked, you may gets lots of wild effects and transitions. You can also also get a gentle chronological assembly of the best clips with no effects or transitions at all.

muvee autoProducer is the fastest, easiest and most fun way to transform raw videos and photos into professional-looking productions.

What are the differences?

Cinematic's CineMagic automatic editing module utilizes code licensed from Muvee and operates in a similar fashion. However, CineMagic only provides 5 different themes versus dozens to choose from in Muvee. CineMagic's advantage is that is is linked to the entire Cinematic editing program which enables you to fine tune your auto created movie. Muvee does not provide that feature. MovieShaker sort of does but you are working with one long saved digital file, rather than a series of individual clips on a storyboard as with Cinematic.

Muvee and Cinematic only need to analyze the footage once and it remembers it. When you want to try a different style, the new make movie result is very fast. Unfortunately with MovieShaker, each time you pick a different style or theme, it appears to re-analyze all the video clips all over again. Also, MovieShaker restricts the finished movie to 30 seconds in length and does not provide any capability for building in different sizes and colors of fonts for titles.

muvee is hands-down our favorite because it works so much better than the other programs - it may not offer some of the post editing bells and whistles but nothing compares to the ease and speed of muvee  check out this review

Muvee Maker 6 Press Release 

 
BuyCinematic from Amazon

  Sony's MovieShaker

 Many of the high end Sony VAIO computer systems bundle in Digital Studio, a suite of multimedia applications. This includes their automatic editing program. Called Movie Shaker, this Sony application can automatically create edited short videos (up to 30 seconds in length) with all kinds of cool effects and background music. If you are a relative newcomer to video editing, and want to have a bit of fun, try it out.

 There are a variety of different style modes you can apply to your clips, ranging from fast and frenetic to slow and romantic. You go through your DV camcorder tape and capture various clips. You can also use clips captured from the Digital Studio's Smart Capture application.  You can also connect your DV camcorder and collect clips that way as well. 

One note, clips from the camcorder are not saved. If you close the application or finish your project, those clips get erased. 

Once you load the clips in, you can also apply text that will be superimposed over the clip. Hit SHAKE, and the program does its thing. This auto function is a lot of fun and is perfect for slamming together a cool looking video in just a brief time. One thing bothered me though. Despite having a P4 running at 2 GHz and 512 MB of memory, creating these 30 second SHAKE videos took along time, especially with the modes that had lots of effects and transitions.

 MovieShaker also provides basic video editing capabilities as well. 

You can use the video editing module to capture and trim video clips, re-arrange them in various orders and add effects and transitions. You can also add a music track and narration. 

However, for easily creating quick video productions from your DV camcorder or from a pre-captured video clips, the MovieShaker application is a lot of fun and does the job. The more I played with it, and tried out the various mode selections, the more I liked it. You don’t need to know anything about video editing, effects or technology to create videos that look like they were created by a trained editor.

 Create stylish and professional-looking video montages quickly and easily online from your digital photos and video. One True Media.