MiniTool MovieMaker [REVIEW]

Introduction

As someone who often works with video, I can attest to the usefulness of a good video editor. Being able to edit your videos can be incredibly helpful, whether you’re trying to make a vlog or just want to document a special event. Having a good video editor can make all the difference in the quality of your finished product.

A video editor can help you with things like cutting out unwanted footage, adding transitions, and even adding music or other audio. If you’re not familiar with editing videos, it can seem like a daunting task. However, there is MovieMaker created by MiniTool, that helps you to create amazing videos, whether you are a complete beginner or an experienced professional. Once you learn the basics, it’s actually quite simple. And trust me, it’s worth it when you see the final product.

Installation

Installation could not be simpler. You just download the installer application from the downloads page and once you run it, the application will do everything for you after starting.

Plans and pricing

There are four types of pricing plans.

The first one is the free plan, which I recommend starting with. It features all the functionality of MovieMaker, without any limits for the first three videos, and since the fourth video, there is only a limit for the length of the video.

The other three plans offer unlimited length for the unlimited count of videos, and the only difference between them is how long can you use the particular license.

There is the monthly subscription plan, which costs $12.99, but it doesn’t make sense to me, considering that other plans cost just a little bit more for a lot longer period of license validity.

The next one is the yearly plan, which is discounted to $35.99 from the initial $59.99, and it can be purchased for as low as $24.99 during the holiday period.

Finally, there is the unlimited license, which will charge you $59.99, and is discounted as well as the yearly plan. In this case, I was not able to find any other „holiday discount“, and I also didn’t find any information about when it will be discounted until.

All the paid plans also include 24/7 live technical support.

Creating a video from a template

MovieMaker offers 9 movie templates, including a love story, traveling, and Christmas party invitation. When you choose your desired template, the program prompts you to select photos and videos from your drive, that it uses for creating its video. It is generally needed to choose at least 8 photos and 2 videos to achieve good results.

Then it automatically creates video slideshows, with texts, effects, and transitions. All of those effects and texts can be edited, of course. But even without any changes, the auto-generated video looks pretty fascinating.

I tried to create a love story video, and the result was amazing. It starts with a short intro, where petals of rose entered and uncovered the title of the video. Video then displayed our photos, with commentaries, like, „We met in 2016“, „We traveled together“ or „Our wedding“.

It should be noted that the texts are written in and do not express exactly what is happening in the pictures. At this point, I would welcome at least a basic artificial intelligence that could recognize the context of images and write descriptions accordingly.

Finally, the video was finished with our joint photos and short movie and supplemented with love quotes and inspirational messages.

Of course, such videos are very far from professional ones, but after short adjustments, they can be used on TikTok or Instagram, and I think your beloved half will definitely enjoy them.

Full-feature mode

Many more possibilities are offered by the so-called full-feature mode. Inside, we can find 97 transitions, 56 effects, 49 predefined text styles, 33 motion effects (e.g. „zoom in top left“ or „pan up along right“), and also 150 elements, among which there aren’t missing stars, or hearts, but also more complicated elements, such as Christmas tree, fireworks or different kinds of animals. Everything is, of course, divided clearly into categories.

Except for all of this, you can import your own media, music, videos, and photos, and you can even download Youtube videos if you have Youtube Downloader installed.

Videos are created through a classic timeline, to which you can add videos, audio tracks, images, and of course transitions and individual effects.

Subsequently, after inserting images into the timeline, you can rotate each frame or set parameters such as contrast, saturation, brightness, and even 3D LUT. Videoframes can also have adjusted speed and audio settings (volume intensity, fade in and fade out). Those settings are also applicable when you insert a pure sound file into your project.

You can always see the video, as it is in an in-built video player, and see changes in „real-time “.

Exporting video

When your video is ready, here comes the most important part of the whole video-creating process – exporting the project into a video file. In the dialog window, you can choose the name, destination file, format, and even device, that should be video made for (like Apple TV, PS4, or Nexus device).

In the subsequent setting window, you can choose the resolution and frame rate, bit rate, and even encoder of your video, as well as the final quality. However the maximum resolution is Full HD (1920×1080), which is completely sufficient for me, but for some professionals, it could be a hassle, especially when there are many cheap 4K TVs today. The dialog window will then show you the final size of your video.

The export is pretty quick. My two-minute video in Full HD 60 FPS, which consisted of 10 photos, one 28-second long video, and a music track, with transitions effects between each photo and text effects took mere 18 seconds to export. Considering that I have only integrated graphic card, I consider this time very impressive.

The quality of the video is super amazing. I didn’t have any lags in the video, nor any missing pixels, and the video was indeed in expected quality, with fluent transitions.

Who is MiniTool MovieMaker for?

As you can see from my review, MovieMaker is not a fully professional video editor, that can be compared to Vegas Pro or Corel VideoStudio, but for its price, it does a very good job. It offers many features, like effects, transitions, and predefined text effects, and as a bonus, it can help you to make a video from a template, if you are in hurry. In this price range, I can’t expect more. However, there is still little space for improvement, especially in the resolution of the video.

Every person can choose which software is suitable for his particular needs. And if you are just a casual video creator, and want to make videos as a free time activity, especially for TikTok, there is hardly anything better, than MovieMaker from MiniTool.

DOWNLOAD MINITOOL MOVIEMAKER HERE