Edius 6

Editor’s Review of Edius 6

Edius is a real-time standard and high-definition video editing program. What this means is that the rendering time to generate the video after it was edited, is the same as the length of the video itself. This is impressive and it’s one of the reasons that Edius is targeted at video professionals only. Canopus developed the program in 2005, and even if it’s been around for only a few years, it rapidly grew into a mature product, a statement in favor of that being the fact that the company was bought by a very large corporation (Thomson-Grass Valley).

Real-time video editing even of HD videos comes with a price though, as you not only need a powerful program, but you also need the hardware that helps it achieve the best. The company is also selling hardware, so a bundle of Edius 6 and Grass Valley STORM 3G (hardware solution for multi format 3G-SDI Editing and HDMI Monitoring Output) costs up to $1800. While this might sound expensive, it’s really not if you take into consideration the fact that these tools are used by video professionals (such as those working in Hollywood).

Version 6 was released at the end of 2010, and added new powerful features such as:

• Real-time video editing. You can edit and render the video as it plays, at different resolutions (from 24x24 up to 4000x2000) and frame rates (60p/50p, 60i/50i, and 24p).


• Raw video editing. Edius will recognize and be able to work with videos in raw formats, such as XDCAM (Sony), P2 (Panasonic), GF (Ikegami), and XF / EOS movie format (Canon).


• Multi-camera editing. You don’t have to work only with the video from one camera, as Edius supports as sources up to 16 different cameras in the same time. So you can simultaneously render a video by editing the data from 16 different sources.


• Export to AVCHD. Advanced Video Coding High Definition (AVCHD) is a video format for high-definition videos, acceptable for professional usage. Not only that, but the video can be exported in this format from the timeline directly on a Blu-Ray or DVD disc.


• 10-bit editing. Usually HD videos use 8-bit color, which means that for every pixel in the image, the signal contains 24 bits in total – given that there are 256 8-bit numbers, when you crunch down the numbers you get about 16 million colors that can be rendered by an 8-bit video. 10-bit is a major image quality enhancement, as the resulting possible colors that can be rendered reaches a billion. And Edius can edit that – now I really understand their slogan, Edit Everything.


• Software bundles. Aside it, when you buy Edius you also get other tools that normally would cost a lot of money if bought separately, such as the NewBlue Video Filters, ProDAD video effects, VitaScene and Mercalli V2 (image stabilization), iZotope VST audio plugins (Audio Effects Suite, AudioRestore, AGC, Mastering Effects Suite).

It’s difficult to find something flawed in this program, unless you use it to its full extent in a movie studio. And even in those cases I still believe you’ll end up reaching a hardware limit rather than a software issue. For a regular user, such as many of us are, all above-mentioned features are advantages. Not to mention the fact that a free trial is available, so you can fully test this program before deciding to pay for it. And if you’re new in video editing, there’s plenty of tutorials available, as well as a forum where you can interact with other users.

All power comes with its cost, this is why you carefully have to verify that your hardware matches the recommended system settings: at least a 3GHz multi-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, 6GB free space just for installation with enough space to allow video editing and RAID-0 for HD videos and a graphics card of 1GB that supports PixelShader 3 – as operating systems, works perfect on XP, Vista and 7 32 and 64-bit (the program is optimized for 64-bit, but not natively a 64-bit program). Of course, the 6-700 USD too needed to buy Edius, which means nothing if you’re doing professional video editing for a living.