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Corel DVD Movie Factory Review
- Easy to use DVD authoring software with basic video editing capabilities
- Easily perform basic editing tasks
- Add titles and soundtracks
- Quickly copy whole DVDs or CDs
- Automatically add professional looking scene transitions
- Intuitive drag and drop DVD and CD burning
- Choose from a wide variety of themes as opening sequences to your movies
- Work in storyboard or timeline mode
- Wide variety of visual effects to choose from
- Create mixed media clip shows combining photos, video and audio
- Author DVDs with professional looking title menus
- Automatically cut out adds from captured TV shows
- Capture video from a TV tuner card
- Convert videotapes to DVD without using any hard drive space (with appropriate hardware)
- Import video from any popular camcorder, including HDV, DVD and AVCHD
- Create high quality music DVDs
- Rip audio CDs to MP3 format
- Burn password protected DVDs
- Create CD and DVD labels with included LightScribe™ support
- Trial version of Corel's DVD player software included
- Free trial available
- Compatible with Windows only
Corel DVD Movie Factory sits on something of a mid-way point between being a video editing tool and a DVD copying and burning tool. It does both tasks rather well but, like most combined packages, you don't get the full depth of each function like you would with standalone applications. However, Corel DVD Movie Factory is extremely reasonably priced and is a great investment if you want to copy discs and make good looking home movies with the minimum of fuss.
Corel DVD Movie Factory has a friendly user interface with big, clear icons to lead you to the different tasks that the software performs. It isn't quite as polished as some applications we have looked at, but is very simply laid out and shouldn't be very difficult to figure out even for novice users. Copying discs is as easy as clicking a few buttons and putting the right discs into your computer and there is even an option to password protect the content on the disc. It is equally easy to capture video from a variety of different sources and rip music from CDs to store in MP3 format on your computer.
Once you have captured some footage from a camcorder, TV tuner card or other device, you can play with it in the video editing part of the application. Depending on the level of control that you need, you can choose to work in storyboard mode or directly with the video timeline. Both of these let you add in some nice looking visual effects to your video and drag and drop scene transition effects between clips. You can work with different tracks to add sound effects and backing music to your creations as well as including subtitle tracks.
If you don't want to do the work yourself Corel includes some pre-made templates, based on different themes, which allow you to insert your own footage and achieve professional looking picture-in-picture effects. It is also possible to get the application to automatically create photo slideshows for you with backing music and good looking panning effects. However, there aren't as many pre-made templates as we have seen in some other applications.
One of the downsides of the standard edition of Corel DVD Movie Factory is that it doesn't let you work with high definition footage. To get this functionality you must upgrade to Movie Factory Pro, which we review elsewhere in this category. However, if you don't have a camcorder capable of recording in high definition then this probably won't be much of an issue. The one other issue some people may have with the software is that it doesn't provide as much control as a standalone application might and so is really best suited to novice users.
All in all Corel DVD Movie Factory is an excellent tool for those who need basic, easy to use video editing capabilities built into the application that they use to import footage from a camcorder. It is easy to quickly create decent looking home movies and slideshows with the built in tools which is ideal if you don't want to spend too much time messing about with the edit. The price Corel is asking for its most recent version of DVD Movie Factory is more than reasonable and we recommend giving it a try.
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