SimpleMovieX: QuickTime Pro replacement
As should be clear from our many posts about it, QuickTime Pro offers some pretty nice basic editing features for $30. Nonetheless, you might think there is room for another low-end video editing application for the Mac, precisely because QuickTime Pro is so centered around the MOV container and Apple favored codecs like H.264. In a cross-platform world much of the video you might run across, and want to edit, won't be in Apple favored formats. Though QuickTime Pro may be able to handle many of these through separate codec plugins, SimpleMovieX has the advantage of having native support for the common MPEG and AVI formats, which allows you to edit, split, and merge AVI files encoded with DivX. The SimpleMovieX developers have a comparison page that lays out the differences to QuickTime Pro. SimpleMovieX is well worth a look for simple video editing needs, particularly without the need for transcoding.
SimpleMovieX is the same $30 as QuickTime Pro, but unlike the latter a demo is available for download.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brandon said 5:43PM on 5-05-2007
This program has one of the worst UI I've ever had the displeasure of using.
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Leonard Nimrod said 6:30PM on 5-05-2007
If it were free I would see the benefit of SimpleMovieX, but it's not. It cost the same price as QuickTime Pro.
I prefer QT for the following tasks:
— Quickly trimming audio and video
— Quickly joining files via the drag-n-drop method into the open window
— Quickly joining files of dissimilar types
— The aforementioned, rotating of video
— The aforementioned, overlaying video
— Transcoding multiple sessions at once
— Doing an ad-hoc recording from my Mac's internal mic and iSight camera
— Last, but certainly not least, playing all my video media (Not including Real media, but I can't real the last time I came across that codec)
Things I dislike about QuickTime:
— Clicking the video pauses instead of going to going to fullscreen
— Unable to adjust the width of the progress bar in fullscreen mode
Oft unknown codecs/containers supported by QuickTime:
— AVI (DivX/XviD/3viD) [Okay, so this one is pretty well known]
— OGG/SPX (Ogg
— MKV/MKA (Matroska)
— PSD (Adobe PhotoShop)
— PDF (Adobe Acrobat) [Preview or Safari do a much better job]
— 3GP/3GPP/3G2/3GP2 (3GPP/3GPP2)
— M3U/M3URL (Mp3 playlist) [If you use iTunes then you would have no reason to use this]
— SWF (Flash Media)
Some of those I have never used and will never use, but I found them interesting nonetheless. However, several of the highly compressed video codecs I find useful on a daily basis.
Why did I write all this? I don't think QT gets the credit it deserves.
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BobbyW said 7:33PM on 5-05-2007
I don't think I'd call Quicktime Pro low-end. Have you ever dug into it and seen all it can do?
For anyone who works on a Mac and does video work with ANY kind of regularity QT Pro is a must-have.
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JeffDM said 7:48PM on 5-05-2007
I don't have a problem with QuickTime Pro. While calling it low-end might be unfair, I think light-weight would be fair. It's not really what I would use for editing if I can avoid it.
I do have an issue with leaving out fullscreen mode in the free version of Quicktime. I also don't think it is acceptable to have to find work-arounds. Back a couple years ago, I used Full Screen Movie Player to get full screen quicktime. There are other, even less important issues, but I think that's an unfair limitation placed on Quicktime. I can't think of any other player that makes you pay for full screen playback.
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Mat Lu said 8:58PM on 5-05-2007
@4: I agree it's annoying, but you can easily put QT player in full screen mode with a simple AppleScript:
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2005/08/fullscreen/index.php
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MurphyMac said 9:24PM on 5-05-2007
This list of ways Quicktime can be scripted showcases the not-so-obvious power of Pro. And why any competing product has a lot to live up to.
http://www.apple.com/applescript/quicktime/
The ability to skin Quicktime makes it almost worth the price for me!
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Dave said 1:04AM on 5-06-2007
QT Pro isn't meant to edit, but when your animator hands you a full-res animation file from After Effects as a backup, and a few weeks later you need to send h.264s to a conference in Paris, you're Avid/Final Cut machines are booked up, go ahead and export them out of QT Pro. Its what "heavier" compression programs are accessing anyway, isn't it?
Saved my agency lots of time and money with it - but I rarely edited with it. Not really its main purpose.
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G said 1:17AM on 5-06-2007
Free, fast, multi-format: MPEG Streamclip
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
(Happy user, not the creator.)
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Ahmad said 1:55AM on 5-06-2007
I gotta say, TUAW has a pretty wacky logo
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Emilio said 4:03AM on 5-06-2007
Well, as a Windows 'switcher' with a large volume of .AVIs encoded in HufYUV, this definitely is NOT the answer I'm looking for. I have found an OS X version of HufYUV, so that I can at least watch the material on my Mac, using either VLC or XinePlayer, but that's it. Quicktime Pro won't touch it, and neither will the free download of this SimpleMovieX. It either crashes immediately, or displays a typical blank, white screen.
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utumno said 4:16AM on 5-06-2007
Emilio : You may find that installing Perian (http://perian.org) and/or attempting playback with Chroma (http://chromaplayer.com) helps. HufYUV is implemented in ffmpeg the last I looked and both those products are based on ffmpeg.
Perian is free and open-source, Chroma is not.
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Skoalbandit said 11:12AM on 5-06-2007
As the first poster said the UI of this program is awful.
Only thing I would like in Quicktime Pro or this program is a way to set in and out points for cuts without having to use a mouse. Need something more percise.
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Real Mac User said 11:36AM on 5-06-2007
@skoalbandit: left arrow, right arrow, "i," and "o." The shortcuts are there. Just do what comes naturally.
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Emilio said 12:44PM on 5-06-2007
Utumno,
Thanks for the tips. I already had Perian installed, no help there. Chroma, on the other hand does seem to handle many of my files. VLC handles more of them (especially when they're cropped to non-standard sizes,) but Chroma's control interface is better for the ones it can read, especially with it's ability to scrub one frame at a time with the arrow keys. Thanks!
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Skoalbandit said 9:16AM on 5-07-2007
Real Mac User.
I must be missing something because I and O don't work for in and out points for this program. The more I use it the less I like it. But it is a free option to get export so it is not all bad. For simple edits Quicktime pro seems a lot simpler.
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