Add Chapters to MP4 with SimpleMovieX on Mac (1/2). Files generated by SimpleMovieX are accepted fine by iTunes but when loaded into MetaZ (a) none of the tags are detected (all fields are blank like on a never before tagged file) and (b) when MetaZ is told to write the file after setting tags it fails to do so (write takes 0 seconds and Queue window shows Atomic Parsley exit code 1). With SimpleMovieX from Aero Quartet, the needs in these scenarios can be fulfilled. Installation of SimpleMovieX, or SMX for short, is a simple matter of mounting the image file and copying the program to the Applications folder. When launched, SMX presents you with the message 'Drop Movie to edit here.'.
[prMac.com] Cerdanyola de Valles, Spain - Aero Quartet has released version 3.7 of SimpleMovieX, the lightweight Mac OS X movie editor. With a feature set roughly similar to QuickTime Pro, SimpleMovieX extends editing capabilities to other popular video formats AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The main advantage of native editing is speed and quality, since no re-encoding is required to save edited movies.
Powerful editing operations like splitting a movie into clips, a Batch Converter, an Audio Waveform tool to make sharp audio editing and synchronization, are among most appreciated features of version 3. SimpleMovieX also provides a search pane to quickly find a sequence and an adaptable timeline for accurate playhead positioning even in large duration movies. Huge files beyond 4GB, for example 6 hours of TV recording, can be edited without truncating.
SimpleMovieX is a tool for a wide public: Discriminating TV viewers that clean their recordings of commercials, Users of a digital camera, mobile phone or camcorder that need to edit, compile, convert and share their personal footage, Video collectors compiling music concerts or Google Video shorts, ...
SimpleMovieX requires Mac OS X v10.3 or higher. QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is required to take advantage of MPEG-2 capabilities. QuickTime Pro is not required.
Powerful editing operations like splitting a movie into clips, a Batch Converter, an Audio Waveform tool to make sharp audio editing and synchronization, are among most appreciated features of version 3. SimpleMovieX also provides a search pane to quickly find a sequence and an adaptable timeline for accurate playhead positioning even in large duration movies. Huge files beyond 4GB, for example 6 hours of TV recording, can be edited without truncating.
SimpleMovieX is a tool for a wide public: Discriminating TV viewers that clean their recordings of commercials, Users of a digital camera, mobile phone or camcorder that need to edit, compile, convert and share their personal footage, Video collectors compiling music concerts or Google Video shorts, ...
For occasional users, an unlimited demo version of SimpleMovieX is available for free download.
SimpleMovieX requires Mac OS X v10.3 or higher. QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component is required to take advantage of MPEG-2 capabilities. QuickTime Pro is not required.
Developer: Aero Quartet
Price: $30
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9, QuickTime 7. Universal.
Trial: Fully-featured (slower saving)
- You have a digital camera that can double as a camcorder soyou use it frequently to record five-minute clips of your kiddoing cute things. Eventually, you need to assemble them intoa movie to show to the kid's technically-challengedgrandparents.
- You have TiVo and have shelled out the money to be able toconvert the recordings to MPEG-4. Now you need to quicklyremove the commercials.
- You are a Stephen Colbert fan and want to take up his VideoChallenge so you need something that can quickly move chunksof video clips around.
With SimpleMovieX from Aero Quartet, the needs in these scenarios can befulfilled. Installation of SimpleMovieX, or SMX for short, is a simplematter of mounting the image file and copying the program to theApplications folder. When launched, SMX presents you with the message'Drop Movie to edit here.'
Below the main window is a holding area, called the Gallery. As a movieis loaded, it appears in the Gallery, and a few controls appear in themain window.
For simple editing, all the work can be done with the controls in themain screen. You have the big Play button to play back the clips. Usingthe copy-and-paste metaphor of a word processor, you select a segment ofthe movie by adjusting the white and the blue controls. Actually, thesegment end that you adjust instantly turns blue as you select and dragit, so it seems like you don't really move the white knob. With thetarget segment selected, you can copy and paste them via keyboardcommands Command-C and Command-V or from the menu bar at the top.Command-X or its corresponding menu command would cut the selectedsegment from the movie, but since cutting is a frequently-used action infilm editing, SMX conveniently has a button, labeled with a picture of ascissor, right in the main window.
Editing a movie isn't as easy as moving chunks of text in a wordprocessor. You don't really see the selected movie segment but merely arepresentation of it on the time line. To give you extra, finer controlof the process, SMX provides zooming, audio waveform, and a searchwindow.
Using the up and down arrows in the main window, you can zoom up to 900×into a movie segment to select just the frame to serve as the beginningor end of a segment. You can also use the left and right arrow keys on thekeyboard to move one frame at a time. To control by sound, enable thedisplay of the waveform overlay. Now you can precisely capture thosesound bites exactly based on where the wave goes flat. Lastly, byexposing the Tools pane, you can visualize the selected segment in termsof frames. Instead of fast forwarding to the place where you want themarker to be, you click on one of the still frame in the grid. Thenumber of still frames to be scanned can be 16 or 64.
SMX has one advanced feature that can be attractive to TiVo owners. Aslong as you can somehow convert the TiVo downloads into MPEG-4, SMX willhappily load them. Using SMX's new chapter feature, you can divide themovie into, well, chapters. On the time line, the chapters are labeledalternately as blue and white chapters so with a built-in script, youcan easily remove all the commercials in one fell swoop.
Simplemoviex Mac
I am not a TiVo owner but I do have a need that SMX helps greatly. Mywife plays the Chinese zither in a local musical group. From time totime, they would perform at concerts and I record the shows. I donot care for the DVD format's menu system and prefer that my movie discsplay immediately upon being inserted in a playback device. I store theconcert movies in the Video CD (VCD) format. VCD files are in MPEG-1format, and even though quality is at best VHS, VCD discs take less timeto burn, lack DVD's menu system, and play immediately upon insertion.
To separate the music from the movie, up to now, I had to use Audacityand Griffin's iMic—somewhat of a low-tech solution, and I usually end upadjusting the volume a few times before I can get the music right. Now,with SMX, I can cut out the concert segment with the tune I want, thenextract the audio out to an AIFF file. I still use Audacity to exportthe tune to MP3 for import into iTunes, but the extraction process ismuch simpler and more reliable.
I don't do any movie editing at all and don't own QuickTime Pro, either.If I want to extract an audio track out of a movie I would try the taskwith iMovie. Alas, before any movie files can be used by iMovie theywould have to be first imported into iMovie. The import process takesminutes to complete, but is long enough to derail the train of thoughtthat carries my artistic vision. In the case of VCD files, iMovie cannoteven import the .DAT files, a mere few hundred megabytes in size. iMoviecomplained that I didn't have enough space for the import process, eventhough I did have 4 GB of free space.
SMX has many more advanced features, but you are on your own when you getthere as SMX's documentation has a gaping hole in advanced editing. Withthe common use of online documentation, I wasn't surprised that the SMXhelp file has links to the Web for advanced editing. Alas, when I went tothe Aero Quartet Web site, there was nothing much on advanced editing,either. The page is under construction. To its credit, the SMXdocumentation does disseminate the difference between codecs, such asMPEG-1, and containers, e.g. QuickTime and includes links to Wikipedia.
Simplemoviex Alternative
SMX bills itself as 'The happy QuickTime Pro replacement that doesMPEG.' Its list of reasons to switch from QuickTime Pro includes nativesupport for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and AVI. To the list, I would addfree/discounted upgrades and more reliability. One major complaintQuickTime Pro owners have is that every new version of QuickTime Procosts $30, regardless whether you bought it before or not. What's worse,when QuickTime Player 7 came out, installing it would disable QuickTimePro 5 or 6's Pro features. With shareware like SMX, chances are you'llget free upgrades for a long time to come.
Overall, SMX works smoothly but I've found two somewhat annoying bugs.If, instead of dropping files into its window, you use Command-O, in theselection window you would not be able to double-click a file to selectit. You would have to press the Enter key on the keyboard or click theOpen button. The other bug is that if you go into full-screen mode, then useCommand-Tab to switch to another application, when you Command-Tab againto return to SMX, the movie goes back to its normal size and continuesplaying, but with SMX's blank default screen. You would have to go intofull-screen mode again or select a screen size from the menu bar.
Incomplete documentation and a few bugs aside, I still thinkSimpleMovieX is a solid product. As I do not own QuickTime Pro, I cannotsay that it makes a good replacement, but for my light movie editingneeds, its feature set is just right. I give it a Very Nice rating.
Simple Movies
Copyright © 2007 Linus Ly.Reviewing in ATPM is open to anyone. If you're interested, writeto us at reviews@atpm.com.
