SimpleMovieX

Release notes: SimpleMovieX 3.13 is a free upgrade for all registered users. New! Built for MacOS 10.12 Sierra (and compatible back to Mac OS X 10.6) Improvements: Fixed Metadata functionality, in particular Amazon search Using FastSpring store instead of defunct Kagi

At first, I thought this app was the answer to my prayers: a simple way to trim MP4 files. It even had a decent tutorial movie that showed me how to use the somewhat bizarre interface. So I trimmed a batch of MP4s and then tried to play them on my media server only to find that all the files were now corrupt and wouldn't play. Also, the first time I ran it, I had to force-quit the program. So, to sum up, this is a fail. Looks like it has potential but my experience was nothing but negative. Work out the bugs, drop the price by about $10 and I'll give it another go.

I use SimpleMovieX for cutting/editing MP4 files and from my point of view, it is doing the job very well. With mp4box you only can cut at I frames and it is a command line tool. Quicktime saves only mov, but not mp4, or re-encodes. With SimpleMovieX you have frame accurate editing for mp4, and lossless save. I havent found an mp4 editor on MacOS that is doing this and is affordable. I agree the UI is sometimes not obvious to work with, but if you understand the logic, it is ok. I tried larger movies >2h, and cut away some commercials, no problem, or trimmed some music videos, w/o issues. So I havent fully understood, why some ratings are so low. There is simply no alternative, or someone should point me there...

he application has great potential, but nasty showstopping bugs. I tried merging avi files for instance and though, at first look, the result seemed OK, the audio track was completely messed-up. I used DivFix++ on the files and the index was damaged beyond recovery. Not a one time thing either it did that every time I tried.

Simply not worth the time or money. I've tried to use it since v2 and that worked better than any of the v3 versions but it still wasn't satisfactory. You would think it would be the equivalent of graphic converter but it's not. Many movies edited have cuts in the wrong places when you save the movie or, my personal favorite, it adds in huge lengths of black screen at the end of the movie that amazingly match the exact amount of time you removed from the movie to shorten it. Further attempts to remove those junk areas actually replicate and add them in AGAIN and the movie grows in size like a salamander under an xray machine! And they want $39 for this?!?!?! -I believe it used to be $29. The solution I found that is flawless for editing movie clips is using MPEG Streamclip AND IT'S FREE! I'll never go back to *not*simple movie x again. It's a horrible product that fails to do even basic editing correctly let alone anything fancy (which it doesn't if you were wondering). Avoid it.

This app has been a problem for me as well: segments are messed up, crashes, even "save" and "save as" that report errors. The failing "saves" suggest to use Treasured, an app to diagnose problem files. When turned lose on my QuickTime files -- which operate everywhere but within SimpleMovie -- Treasured "has not found any known media type in the file. Moreover, the file is unlikely to contain a movie. Large segments of the file do not contain media, of any sort. Therefore, the chances of repair are low."

This has GREAT potential, but it doesn't work properly. First off I found it very counter-intuitive in a few areas. It also crashes regulalry with a few features. But my biggest gripe however is that after spending all the time to get the chapters in the correct place and separate them into individual movies, it gave errors for each one and the files don't play in anything. I emailed the developer & the replies were very fast - until he asked for logs etc - I supplied right away and then nothing. Silence. more emails still unanswered. I think this software is ok for some but if you have issues of it not working for (even the advertised) features too bad as the dev will just ignore you. Very disappointing as I would be using this daily if it worked. Now to find something that does work....

I tried SimpleMovieX several times but there is still a major problem for me (and I guess many other users) - and I never got any response by the developers: I'm using an online TV recorder (save.tv) which saves videos as AVIs (DIVX). In the past I've cut out commercials of those AVIs with VirtualDub, a free Windows application (http://www.virtualdub.org) via Parallels Desktop on my Mac. Native Editing with VirtualDub works perfect. I am viewing the edited videos on my Playstation 3 without any problems. Now - since I'm using a Mac - I've tried the recent version of SimpleMovieX. While I can cut and save those AVIs (DIVX) with SimpleMovieX (respecting the editing points = keyframe restriction) like with VirtualDub - and also view them on my Mac - showing those videos edited with SimpleMovieX on my Playstation 3 doesn't work: The movie and the sound are playing too fast and frames are jumping. While I've read what has been published about the AVI format I have to stick to it since it's what I get from save.tv - and I don't want to loose quality and time by re-encoding the videos. So since loss-less cutting of AVIs (DIVX) is possible VirtualDub I cannot understand why it shouldn't be possible with SimpleMovieX. I really would like to buy SimpleMovieX if it worked for me.

i LOVE this app. i don't understand why anybody would buy quicktime pro when you could get simplemovieX and also download (now free/opensource) the old techspansion visual hub for conversions... i have had zero issues cutting out segments, it just works, every time. things i'd like to see? 1) something like qipo (app for mac) - print the 'contact sheet' as an image (e.g. you see the box of thumbnails for auto-cuts, but why can't i just print it as a big jpg or whatever, like a storyboarding tool???) 2) workflow integration: eg. select an app for post trim/edit conversion, like visualhub or whatever, just like a link to 'post process as mp4 with *app* otherwise it is really nice, thank you!

I have been using SimpleMovie for a few years now, and I could not be happier with its progress and development. It has become faster, more stable, and more feature-rich. I use SimpleMovie to do all my censoring of R-rated movies. I've become so good and fast at it, that I have friends and family grabbing my edited movies on a daily basis. If it were legal, I would start a company, and 'simply' use SimpleMovieX. The power of SimpleMovieX is best demonstrated when I edited The Departed. I was editing a 2 GB mp4 file (.avi is always a disaster waiting to happen), and I quickly took out 256 f-words, and a hundred or so more inappropriate terms. It took many hours, but SimpleMovieX was reliable, stable, and easy to use. Movie files are sometimes quite unstable, especially synchronization issues. However, I have been impressed with the sync tool within SimpleMovie. It isn't perfect, but it's the best solution out there without converting the movie file a 3rd time. Also, Benoît Joossen (the creator) has been fantastic. One of the updates created a new style where the selection didn't follow the playhead. I sent him an email, and within the day, he had a new version of SimpleMovie with a preference in the Editing tab, where you change it back to the old method. Talk about customer service! This is one app that is very worthy of its price. You will get great support with constant application updates and enhancement.

This is by far the easiest app to add Chapters to iPod compliant mp4 files. However, normally QuickTime ignores the Chapter markers if the filename is not .m4v but QuickTime strangely recognise this app's Chapters no matter the filename extension is .mp4 or .m4v. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, so I make sure I rename accordingly. One major quirk is iTunes cannot add the Album Artwork to mp4 files created by this app. I overcome it by re-exporting the file in QuickTime (using mpeg4 with "pass-thru" video & audio). The newly exported mp4 is now QuickTime compliant and supports Album Cover. Needless to say, the file extension must be .m4v for QuickTime to show the chapter selector.

This is by far the easiest app to add Chapters to iPod compliant mp4 files. However, normally QuickTime ignores the Chapter markers if the filename is not .m4v but QuickTime strangely recognise this app's Chapters no matter the filename extension is .mp4 or .m4v. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, so I make sure I rename accordingly. One major quirk is iTunes cannot add the Album Artwork to mp4 files created by this app. I overcome it by re-exporting the file in QuickTime (using mpeg4 with "pass-thru" video & audio). The newly exported mp4 is now QuickTime compliant and supports Album Cover. Needless to say, the file extension must be .m4v for QuickTime to show the chapter selector.

Maybe I'm alone on this (I sent a couple of emails to the developer but he never answered): under Leopard if you save (even without editing it) an "mp4" file... well... it will just desappear! Be warned.

Well its nice to have the ability to trim mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 streams again that's been missing since Quicktime 5.x. The interface could use a bit a work for some reason i have a floating white box that seems to be part of the application but i can't move it really werid. Now i've noticed a couple werid things while using this. There isn't a seprate sliderbar from the progress bar. Which is unlike quicktime which has both a progress slider and a trim selector. If you are playing a video and the click somewhere on the slider bar it stops playback but the large button still shows the 'stop' symbol. Which means a bit of lazy coding is going on there. Now those time boxes also annoy me. You can't enter in you own time values you have to let the sliders choose the time which is annyoing. There are some problems with the shows x ammount of frames after current one. That if the video isn't saved it didn't work it just showed a black box. Also in the 'gallery' pane if you click in empty space you can get the red boxes as if something is there but nothing is there. Another annoyance with this is i couldn't find any way to turn it on and off like are supposed to be able to with a pane. I'm talking about the one on the bottom. Also if you tile though the windows really fast with (apple-~) you can end up with all the windows without the 'gallery' pane which to the understanding i have it supposed to show up in the front window only right? Just one other thing really. You should be able to resize the window to your hearts desire as well. Its a nice program it can trim movies it saves them. I dont know why the export feature is there you can't set and of the export options when clicking the options button because its greyed out. Its a good app if you want to trip mpeg's and other formats quicktime supports. And the Help thing is just a little werid.

YES, some serious interface issues. First of all, there's no File menu, to open a file we're supposed to use drag and drop on a non-resizable window that occupies the whole screen, and to save a button in the window is provided. Is it so difficult to follow interface guidelines? Then a sixth of the window is occupied by publicity. Extracting a clip is totally unintitive. Adding a caption reduces the frame rate dramatically, and there no choice of caption movement. The Aux Clip area doesn't work. Better developped it could be interesting. But now it's disappointing.

Absolutely great - a replacement for QT pro for casual users and its free? I guess, I'll buy one of their other softwares to compensate. No more opening iMovie to edit simple movies! AND you can save for the web, dsl or e-mail in different compression. AND AND you can add a caption for that quick video you want to send to GrandMa. Thanks a million. There are some interface issues - but it works! AM