SimpleMovieX 3.1 - Aero Quartet

SimpleMovieX is an alternative movie editor to QuickTime Pro, its notable feature being native Mpeg editing; that is, without recompression and subsequent loss of quality. Mpeg audio tracks can also be transcoded upon export... read more at MacUserUK

Premiere Pro CS3 - Adobe

The prodigal son returns. It’s been about five years since Premiere, Adobe’s video-editing software, made its quiet exit from the Mac stage. But Apple’s recent shift to Intel chips made it possible for Adobe to move its flagship video editor from Windows exclusivity back to the Mac, where it all began in 1991... read more at MacLife

After Effects CS3 Professional - Adobe

In many ways, After Effects is the most potent media tool in the entire Adobe product line, and with its combination of subtle interface enhancements and significant new tools for animation and visual experimentation, this latest version doesn’t disappoint. To top it all off, there’s a nice performance boost on Intel Macs, especially those with more than two cores... read more at MacLife

Final Cut Studio 2 - Apple

Apple’s Final Cut software began as a friend of the little guy working with a DV camera and a FireWire hard drive. Now, many of the new features in Final Cut Studio 2 are aimed at production professionals whose needs go way beyond those of your average indie filmmaker. Also, the Studio’s system requirements aren’t lightweight: Even fast, new MacBooks won’t run some of its applications well... read more at MacLife

Production Premium CS3 - Adobe

Adobe's Premiere is back on the Mac as part of the Production Premium CS3 suite, alongside After Effects and Soundbooth. So will it pose a threat to Final Cut's dominance on the Mac? We look at the suite to find out... read more at MacUserUK

Roxio Crunch - Roxio

Crunch is designed to help you get unprotected DVDs and video files onto Apple devices - video-capable iPods, the Apple TV and the iPhone - with as little fuss as possible. It looks similar to Roxio's Toast and Popcorn products, and has a very shallow learning curve... read more at MacUserUK

Norrkross Movie 1.0.2 - Norrkross

So you need a video editor. iMovie won't do it for you, but Final Cut Express can be daunting. Welcome to Norrkross Movie from Swedish developer Martin Wennerberg, which slots in nicely between the two... read more at MacUserUK

Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 - Apple

Over the years, Final Cut Pro (FCP) has evolved into a workhorse application that handles everything from basic digital video editing to uncompressed HD video processing. While Avid’s Media Composer, FCP’s main competitor, offers more tools at a higher price (and Adobe is readying a new Mac version of Premiere Pro CS3), FCP 6.0.1 is an improvement on an already powerful, flexible, affordable, and scalable editing program for a wide range of professional and semiprofessional users... read more at Macworld

Color 1.0.1 - Apple

Color 1.0.1, a new program introduced in Final Cut Studio 2, brings professional color correcting and finishing to the suite. Far more powerful than the basic color-correction tools found in the previous version of Final Cut Pro, Color introduces Bezier-based masking and color-selection tools, single and multipoint optical tracking, advanced effects, and creative color-correction capabilities... read more at Macworld

Soundtrack Pro 2.0.1 - Apple

Sound editors and video editors—the humans, not the software—often seem to live in different worlds. The latest version of Apple’s Soundtrack Pro, version 2.0.1, part of Final Cut Studio 2.0.1, seeks to bridge some of those divisions, at least within the suite’s workflows... read more at Macworld

Motion 3.0.1 - Apple

Motion, Apple’s motion-graphics and video-processing software, has always stood apart not so much for what it does but the way it does it. In many visual and video tools, you spend much of your time preparing graphics and then watching rendering progress bars, but Motion’s workflow is built around real-time adjustment and experimentation. With Motion 3.0.1, Apple has focused on the major capabilities previous versions lacked... read more at Macworld

Flash CS3 Professional - Adobe

So many pictures, so few people willing to sit through your slideshows. That might change if you start using FotoMagico 2.0.1 Pro, a powerful yet easy-to-use slideshow authoring tool. Its intuitive interface and high level of motion, text, and audio control let you quickly create a viewing experience brimming with ambience and anticipation... read more at Macworld

FotoMagico 2.0 Pro - Boinx Software

So many pictures, so few people willing to sit through your slideshows. That might change if you start using FotoMagico 2.0.1 Pro, a powerful yet easy-to-use slideshow authoring tool. Its intuitive interface and high level of motion, text, and audio control let you quickly create a viewing experience brimming with ambience and anticipation... read more at Macworld

Cinematize 2 Pro - Miraizon

When you burn a DVD from an application like iDVD, you may think you’ve made a copy of your original movie, but that’s not necessarily the case. Besides degrading image quality (due to the compression required to fit the video on a disc), the DVD format proves to be a lockbox: you can’t just open the media files in a video editor... read more at Macworld

Squeeze 4.5 Compression Suite - Sorenson

If you're creating video for the Internet, mobile devices, CD-ROM, or DVD, you know that the fun of editing stops when it comes time to compress your work. It's one of those things you hate to do because you usually need to make your file size as small as possible, which inevitably forces you to compromise video and sound quality. That's why it helps to have an application like Sorenson Squeeze, which specializes in compressing video. Version 4.5 of the Squeeze Compression Suite doesn't add any major new features... read more at MacLife

GreatVideo 2.1 - Software Architects

GreatVideo's advantage is that it can convert video to more than 40 formats, including H.264, DV/DVCPRO, Sorenson Video, and Cinepak. HandBrake converts only to MPEG-4 and H.264. GreatVideo also comes with ReadDVD, a handy tool that's worth the price of the whole package because it lets Mac OS 10.4 users mount UDF-formatted DVDs, commonly used in DVD camcorders and DVD set-top recorders... read more at MacLife

TubeSock - stinkbot

To convert a YouTube video, simply enter the video's URL at the top of TubeSock's window. At the bottom of the window, choose your format (H.264, Flash video, MP4, or MP3 - TubeSock can even strip out the audio from a video and save that content alone as an MP3) and where to save the file. You need an Internet connection - obviously... read more at MacLife

Avid Xpress Pro 5.5 - Avid Technology

Avid Xpress Pro 5.5 is a high-powered video editor brought to you by the company that put the digital into digital video editing. Not only does Xpress offer a long list of pro-level features, but it also sports file compatibility with higher-end Avid gear found in edit bays around the world. But Xpress still has some annoying quirks... read more at MacLife

Quark Interactive Designer - Quark

Hot on the heels of QuarkXPress 7 comes another product from Quark that's sure to get a great many designers extremely interested. Quark Interactive Designer is a plug-in for XPress 7 that turns it into a Flash multimedia authoring tool that generates standard SWF files for use in web pages... read more at MacUserUK

FotoMagico 1.7 - FotoMagico

There are dozens of slide show presentation applications available but few have the elegance and controllability of FotoMagico.Starting the application, by default, loads your iPhoto library into its asset pane, but it's easy to change this to display the contents of any folder you choose... read more at MacUserUK

Shake 4.1 - Apple

Shake has been the favoured high-end, real-time compositing tool of the post production industry for some time. It used to cost $10,000 per licence with annual maintenance and render licences on top, but this fell to half that price when the Mac OS X version (v3) came out. Now with Shake 4.1, Apple has slashed the price, with no maintenance and unlimited rendering... read more at MacUserUK

Videator - Stone Design

It's unusual these days to see a new video application launched for the Mac that isn't made by Apple. You could therefore argue that Stone Design is either being very courageous or incredibly reckless in developing standalone DV software for the Mac when other established programs such as Adobe Premiere and Digital Origin's EditDV have long since been driven off the platform... read more at MacUserUK

Jahshaka 2 RC3 - Visual Media

'Powering the new Hollywood' is the slogan, but is it too good to be true? A year ago, MacUser previewed an interesting video-editing, compositing and animation software package called Jahshaka. Now the application has matured, so how does it fare?... read more at MacUserUK

Final Cut Express HD 3.5 - Apple

The quandary that potential purchasers face with Final Cut Express HD 3.5, the new version of Apple’s intermediate digital video editing software, is that it only has three significant new features—most cocktail recipes include more ingredients. However, the advances in this update, while few, make it a more compelling upgrade than the move from version 2.0 to 3.0... read more at Macworld

Cleaner 6.5 - Adobe

Cleaner was once a must-have tool for working with video on the Mac. It was a batch-encoding whiz, able to take raw video and expertly encode it to almost any digital format imaginable, creating everything from downloadable versions for the Web to bigger, better renditions destined for CD-ROM, DVD, and more... read more at MacAddict

Adobe After Effects 7 - Adobe

The latest version of Adobe After Effects includes a redesigned interface, big keyframing improvements, and top-tier color rendering options that give even the pickiest effects artists more reason to consider After Effects for the job... read more at MacAddict

Adobe After Effects 7 Professional - Adobe

Whether you work in feature-film production, industrial video, or Web animation, Adobe After Effects has long been the 300-pound gorilla of compositing and motion-graphics applications. While competing programs such as Apple Shake, Apple Motion , and Autodesk Combustion have presented excellent alternatives to After Effects, no one has managed to completely unseat the program... read more at Macworld

Combustion 4 - Autodesk

Combustion 4 is a big, bodacious visual-effects app that serves up loads of pro-level tools; think of it as a competitor to Adobe After Effects Pro. Many effects artists—especially folks familiar with Autodesk’s big-iron effects workstations—prefer Combustion’s unique way of doing things, and the latest version won’t disappoint that crowd... read more at MacAddict

Red Giant Instant HD - Apple

The appearance of camcorders such as Sony's HDR-FX1 has given thousands of budget-conscious freelancers and prosumers licence to step up to high-definition production. Final Cut Pro now handles HDV very nicely, but what are we to do with all that archive footage we've been shooting on standard-definition DVCAM all this time? In the long-term, the correct solution is to re-shoot it all in high definition, but until then, Red Giant provides a neat working solution with Instant HD... read more at MacUserUK

iLife '06 (Keynote 3) - Apple

When Apple released Keynote 2 last year, it finally delivered on the promise to sort out the buggy and limited original release of 2003, and it seemed like there was little left to add to the application. So what has Apple added to tempt you to upgrade to version 3... read more at MacUserUK

iLife '06 (iDVD 6) - Apple

iDVD 6 borrows one of iMovie HD's most impressive features, Magic iMovies, which Apple has re-dubbed Magic iDVD. You pick a theme, select the movies and photos you want to include and iDVD does the rest. If you don't want the hassle of creating your own menus and buttons, or you're short of time, it's a great way to knock out a quick DVD... read more at MacUserUK

iLife '06 (iMovie HD 6/6.0.1) - Apple

Just as a new release of iLife has become an annual January event, so it is that each new release will heavily feature Apple's current flavour of the month. Last year, it was high-definition video; this year, it's video blogging and podcasting... read more at MacUserUK

iLife '06 (iPhoto 6) - Apple

The latest upgrade to iPhoto, Apple's photo-cataloguing and editing suite brings some much-needed improvements and extremely nice touches to an already-excellent application... read more at MacUserUK

DeBabelizer Pro 6 - Equilibrium

DeBabelizer Pro 6 is a comprehensive tool for file conversion, image editing, and media optimization. It supports an impressively large number of graphic, animation, and video formats and is capable of handling large media-processing jobs. It also includes powerful automation features that can reduce the most complex conversion job... read more at MacAddict

Comic Life Deluxe Edition - Freeverse

You start building your comic by laying out panels to hold photos or simply picking from the 322(!) included templates, which range from traditional grids to more-conceptual constructs, such as heart and fish shapes. Panel attributes (and attributes for all other elements in a comic, for that matter) can be changed to spiff things up—you get to adjust colors, drop shadows, borders, and the overall shape of your comic... read more at MacAddict

VideoImpression 2 - ArcSoft

ArcSoft’s VideoImpression 2.0 is an iMovie-like video-editing application that also can create slideshows from your digital photographs. The program, which typically ships with consumer-level digital photo and video cameras, was originally created for Windows and ported to the Mac. Unfortunately, there’s little reason to consider this program as an alternative to Apple’s stellar video-editing application, iMovie... read more at Macworld

Aperture - Apple

Perhaps only the Xbox 360 has been more hyped than Aperture. Apple's tool for high-end photo editing posed so many questions in the weeks before its launch that Apple spent a long time evangelising its benefits. So why do we need Aperture in a world dominated by Adobe? Apple's director of software product marketing, Oren Ziv, explains: 'Photoshop wasn't particularly designed for photographers. It was designed for image manipulation'... read more at MacUserUK

FotoMagico 1.2.5 - Boinx Software

The slide-show builder in iPhoto 5 is cool: It has variable times per slide, a controllable Ken Burns effect, the ability to fit your slide show to a selected song, and more. So why would you need another slide-show creator like FotoMagico? Easy: It’s a good choice if you’re looking for decent title support and more control over your slides... read more at MacAddict

Flash Professional 8 - Macromedia

Flash Professional 8 is more stable and crashes less often than its predecessor, Flash MX 2004 and Mac users no longer have to go without useful features such as tabs (for toggling between multiple open documents) that were available only in the Windows version... read more at Macworld

Shake 4 - Apple

Shake delivers compositing capabilities for everything from standard- and high-definition video to 35mm film. Its main competition is Adobe After Effects (although Autodesk’s Combustion is also in the mix). While Shake’s feature set may not differ dramatically from After Effects’, its interface is better-suited to extremely complex compositing work... read more at Macworld

First Cut v1.0.2 - Skramsoft

IF YOU'VE EVER had to wade through mountains of video that's been digitized but not trimmed, you know what a tiresome task it can be separating the wheat from the chaff in your footage. Skramsoft First Cut is a video application that's been specifically designed to ease the burden on video editors who have to grind through hours of footage... read more at macHOME

Wirecast 2 - Vara Software

Wirecast uses a simple interface to manage live video from a DV camera or iSight, integrate graphics, and transmit QuickTime video to viewers connected via LAN or the Internet. Video can also be recorded to disk for QuickTime playback... read more at MacAddict

Essentials 3 - Corel

Painter Essentials began life as an application designed specifically to be packaged with other products, most notably with Wacom's range of graphics tablets. However, Painter Essentials 3 has now become available as a stand-alone, boxed product... read more at MacUserUK

Magic Bullet Editors 2 - The Carpark

Colour grading is an essential part of the movie-making process in the world of big-budget dramas, but it's almost always overlooked at the prosumer level. Despite the wealth of colour-correction tools offered by editing programs such as Final Cut Pro, it can be difficult for even experienced editors to know how to get the right feel for their movies. Enter Magic Bullet Editors 2, a plug-in that promises to be the most indispensable effects plug-in you can add to an editing system... read more at MacUserUK

Cinema 4D 9.5 - Maxon Gmbh

It must be getting close to Christmas - Mac users are being inundated with all kinds of 3D goodies. Release 9.5 of Maxon's Cinema 4D is aimed at improving the program's interface, workflow and rendering abilities, and introduces some features that users have been waiting a long time for... read more at MacUserUK

Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro 1.0.6 - Telestream

Microsoft offers a free Windows Media Player app for Mac OS X, but what if you’re a Mac producer who wants to provide your content in the latest Windows Media formats? Enter Telestream’s Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro 1.0.6... read more at Macworld

Modul8 v2 - Garage Cube

If you're already into video, motion graphics or both, you may be intrigued by Modul8 v2, a state-of-the-art "VJ," or video jockey, program. VJs use such software to create live motion graphics pastiches of video, stills and other elements, usually for a party or performance. In Modul8, you drag media into a panel and create a composition with up to ten layers... read more at macHOME

Macromedia Studio Flash Video Encoder 8 - Macromedia

The three remaining components of Studio 8 are Contribute 3, the collaborative working tool, Flash Paper 2 and Flash Video Encoder 8. It is perhaps the latter of those three that is the most interesting, despite the fact that it's a one-trick pony... read more at MacUserUK

Macromedia studio Contribute 3 - Macromedia

Its task is simply to take existing video content and encode it into .flv Flash Video format. It boasts the minimum of controls, but you can tweak the compression settings, and the in- and out-points of the video. You have a choice of seven output settings, ranging from a modem friendly 40Kbps up to a broadband-demanding 700Kbps. The upper limits are encoded only for use with Flash 8, while the version 7 player will parse the four slowest options... read more at MacUserUK

Macromedia Studio Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 - Macromedia

Flash is now clearly a mature application, so we didn't expect to see any radical changes in its interface (which still has its quirks) or its feature set. We weren't disappointed. Flash 8, both the Basic and Professional editions, builds on previous versions with some undeniably useful feature enhancements, but no really big advances... read more at MacUserUK

Final Cut Studio Soundtrack Pro - Apple

When Apple introduced Soundtrack, the idea was to create background music and effects tracks for video. With thousands of music loops that automatically matched the project's key and tempo, Soundtrack's sound-to-picture functions made it easy to mock up a film score... read more at MacUserUK

Final Cut Studio - Apple

If there was ever a time for Apple to aggressively target its Switcher campaign at video makers, it's now. Many a fancy has been tickled by HDV in recent months, but after adopting the new format, most editors find themselves in need of a new editing system. Single-processor machines don't cut it for HDV on the Windows platform, and a suitable dual-processor system could well cost a few hundred pounds more than Apple's-top-of-the-range Power Mac... read more at MacUserUK

Tracktion 2 - Loud Technologies

Originally conceived two years ago by British programmer Julian Storer as a one-man crusade against the unnecessary complexity of the big-name sequencers, as he saw it,Tracktion successfully attracted a loyal, sizeable following. Now, with music hardware manufacturer Mackie's wholesale adoption of the package, comes Tracktion 2... read more at MacUserUK

Final Cut Pro 5 - Apple

The cornerstone of Final Cut Studio is Final Cut Pro 5. Apple’s tagline for Final Cut Pro 5 is “Edit everything. Wait for nothing.” It turns out this is not an idle boast—the sheer range of video formats and codecs that Final Cut Pro 5 can edit is mind-boggling... read more at Macworld

Compressor 2 - Apple

Final Cut Studio’s revision of Compressor, Apple’s video-compressing and -transcoding application, adds some very welcome features. Compressor 2 sports a new look consistent with the other members of the Final Cut Studio family... read more at Macworld