Basic improvements go a long way for speedy NLE.

For those of you who are new to Canopus products, Edius 1.5 is the long-awaited enhancement of the RexEdit and StormEdit NLE products. When I reviewed RexEdit in 1999, I arrived at two conclusions. First: “RexEdit's human interface was inadequately implemented. For example: the Bin window does not auto-scroll when one tries to drag a clip to a new position; a clip can't be renamed; clips in the Timeline have neither images nor names; transitions have no symbol or name; and in the Timeline or Bin, one cannot select more than one clip prior to a delete, cut, copy, or paste.” Second: “I really loved editing with RexEdit because it was both intuitive and unbelievably fast. Most operations were performed instantly!” My final evaluation of RexEdit: “currently primitive, but very, very fast.”

Edius 1.5 maintains Canopus' reputation for speedy products. It's internally multi-threaded and capable of unlimited realtime title and graphics layers.

Editing speed has always been a prime virtue of Canopus products. With enough computing power and adequate disk bandwidth, a DVStorm2 supported up to five simultaneous realtime DV video tracks. Of course, the number and complexity of realtime effects that can be applied to these tracks is limited by the total amount of CPU power remaining after DV decompression tasks.

At that time, StormEdit also supported Xplode 3D Alpha Vapor Dissolves, Xplode 3D Objects, and Xplode 3D Alpha Wipes. The NLE also enabled access to realtime 3D Picture-in-Picture plus Pan and Zoom as well as seven realtime audio filters.

While all these capabilities were great to use, installation required you to load 18 software packages from five CD-ROMs. And, despite the addition of all these functions, StormEdit itself didn't get enhanced. For example, in my 2002 review of StormEncoder, I stated, “One enhancement, which StormEdit users have been awaiting since Canopus promised an enhanced release in the fall of 1999, is the ability to obtain an audio track from a DV clip.”

Well, that was then, and this is now. At long last, Canopus has released StormEdit's successor, called Edius, with an MSRP of $599. The relation between the old and new products was so close that Edius version 1.0 continued to share one of StormEdit's critical defects — only a single Bin, making complex projects nearly impossible. Thankfully, in version 1.5, Canopus rectified this limitation.

Edius is designed to run with DVRaptor RT2 series, DVStorm series, DVRex RT, and DVRex RT Professional. I tested Edius 1.5 with a DVStorm on a 2.8GHz, Intel P4 PC under Windows XP.

The Edius interface is brushed chrome with a minimum of buttons and a maximum of design. Think Final Cut Pro. The user interface supports unlimited video, audio, title, and graphics tracks. Other enhancements include an audio waveform display, voiceover recording to timeline, and unlimited undo/redo. Extensive timeline editing capabilities include three-point, four-point, ripple, and slip-and-slide editing as well as audio/video split editing.

Canopus Edius 1.5 features a stripped-down interface that recalls Final Cut Pro. The interface supports unlimited video, audio, title, and graphics tracks.

Edius internally is multi-threaded and supports multiple CPUs, plus Intel and AMD Athlon special CPU instructions (Hyper-Threading, MMX, SSE and SSE2, and 3DNow!). It also features full YUV color space processing and is resolution independent as well as frame-rate independent.

Edius provides all the realtime video and audio effects from StormEdit. All effects in Edius are adjustable and may be combined. Edius also features Xplode for Edius and Edius FX for advanced 2D and 3D video effects. These transition effects packages feature more than 40 transition groups to choose from, each with customizable options for control and numerous presets. With Edius you can play in realtime as many layers as your system can sustain. And, as befits a software-based effects engine, transitions can occur from any layer to any layer. The Edius engine also supports plug-ins such as Xplode Professional 4.0. However, some popular plug-ins like Boris are not supported.

Like StormEdit, Edius is capable of unlimited simultaneous realtime title and graphics layers. Motion and opacity controls allow each layer to behave differently. Title motion effects within Edius include Blur, Dissolve, Slide, Wipe, and Laser. Inscriber TitleExpress, bundled with Edius, allows users to choose from more than 170 pre-designed titling templates. Text placement, sizing, kerning, width, leading, and slant can also be specified. TitleExpress can generate realtime credit rolls and crawls.

Edius provides a tiny step toward “gestural” editing. Using your mouse, gesture clockwise in the preview window and video plays. Gesture counter-clockwise to play in reverse. Clever, but I wasn't overwhelmed. Why not simply hit the spacebar? Of course, Edius also has such highly useful features as a waveform monitor and a vectorscope. These are highly valuable functions when used with the supported realtime color-correction capability.

Improved bin folder structure and search capabilities allow for enhanced clip organization and management, and the ability to remap missing or moved clips within a project for easier updating. Enhanced timeline management features include batch delete, which lets users elect multiple clips on the timeline and delete them.

Edius 1.5 also introduces support for 32-bit uncompressed video with alpha channel, allowing editors to insert directly onto the video track clips made using applications such as Ulead Cool 3D.

Edius provides multiple-format exporting facilities. Using the Canopus software ProCoder, Edius allows you to export to MPEG-1, MPEG-2, QuickTime, and Real Media formats, in addition to Canopus' own proprietary DV AVI format. The bundled ProCoder LE supports hardware-based MPEG encoding if either a StormEncoder or Amber board is installed. ProCoder LE also enables export to any Video-for-Windows or DirectShow AVI codec, including Cinepak, Indeo, and DivX.

Is Edius the enhancement to StormEdit we have been waiting for since 1999? Certainly the multi-track timeline is a welcome feature. And it's great that the disparate realtime functions offered by Canopus have been integrated into a single product. At the same time, the release of Adobe Premiere Pro has changed the environment, rendering many issues that were important in 1999 less relevant now.

To sway an editor towards Edius, Canopus would need to demonstrate that one of its boards with Edius 1.5 offers significant advantages over the same board with Premiere Pro. However, beyond the result of any feature-by-feature comparison between the two NLEs, Adobe's ability to offer a comprehensive and increasingly integrated solution — Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore, Audition, and Photoshop — gives that company a marketing edge. This edge is further enhanced by Premiere's ability to function with any OHCI 1394 interface, plus the availability of hundreds of plug-ins and tens of thousands of Premiere editors.

Of course, were Canopus to bundle Edius at no cost with its boards as well as offer OHCI support so the NLE could be used on laptops, the value proposition would shift. Edius' value would be increased further were Canopus to bundle the full version of its ProCoder software, thereby providing the valuable feature of two-pass VBR MPEG-2 encoding. (At press time Canopus announced that Edius 2.0 will be released in January and now supports OHCI FireWire as well as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 editing.) It would be nice to see Canopus take these steps, as well as use its architecture to support the new HDV format.