TerraTec Magix Movie Software

Today I installed the TerraTec Magix Movie on DVD (version 7.0.3.8) with different video devices.

TV Edit

TV Record


The program allows to

  • duplicate DVD’S and CD’s
  • record files from digital video, from analog video, from audio and from a PC-region
  • import videos from different sources
  • edit videos  by adding titles, motions and special effects
  • create and burn DVD’s with menus and navigation indexes

I did several tests to digitize videos from an VHS-recorder on my Media-PC with a Dual Core Intel Pentium R 3 GHz CPU running Windows 7. The recording parameters have been the following :

  • DVD PAL/B
  • interlaced
  • MPEG main profile
  • 720 x 576 pixels (maximum resolution)
  • frame ratio 4:3
  • frame rate : 25 frames/s
  • I-frames : 12
  • P-frames : 3
  • video : YUY2
  • variable bit rate per second (max=9500, min=3000, mean=4500)
  • audio MPEG-Layer 2
  • audio sample rate rer second : 48000
  • audio bitrate : 128 Kbit/s
  • VCR checked

There are no visible differences between the different quality values ranging from 1 to 15. With high quality values I noticed however some CPU performance problems (sound noise, frame skips).

The TerraTec TV device H5 with composite interface provides a good sound quality and a reasonnable video quality with a visible jitter between frames.

  • video driver : TerraTec H5 Analog Capture (USB – DShow) *
  • audio drivers : TerraTec H5 Analog Capture

The second available audio driver Ligne (TerraTec H5) provides no sound.

The TerraTec video device G3 with composite or Scart interface provides a reasonnable sound quality and a good video quality.

  • video driver : TerraTec G3 Analog Capture (USB – DShow) *
  • audio drivers : TerraTec G3

The sound levels are not displayed in a reliable manner on the screen. With the second available audio driver Ligne (TerraTec G3), the audio levels are always shown, but they are very high, and there is a lot of echo.

The inbuilt TV-Card SAA 7131 is shown in the driver window, but without providing an image or a sound.

  • video driver : 713x BDA Analog Capture (DShow) *
  • audio drivers : 713x BDA Analog Audio Capture

In general the software is not very stable and provides a lot of crashes in Windows 7. The same is true for Windows XP. New versions of the Magix Movie on DVD Software are available in USA (version 8 ) and in Germany (version 9 ), but they don’t have an optimal support for the TerraTec devices.