Good, with warnings.
No issues at all for registering, downloading, installing, entering license key. I got the email with download link and license key within minutes or less. I used ACDsee’s download link (didn’t try installer from SOS, it’s likely the same file).
A very straighforward product. I got lost in it for a couple of hours seeing all it could do, did not need help or tutorials. Made a video consisting of 2 video files, an audio MP3 file, and two images (.jpg and .png). Had fun adding and adjusting transitions. By placing copies of photos and videos into different layers I could fade between effects. Nice that it let me delete audio from a duplicated video (otherwise it would be twice as loud and/or out of sync) and adjust volumes in other places. There’s a default setting in Options for timing on transitions, etc., but you can adjust them individually by dragging the edge of a clip or transition. I especially liked that I could overlay a picture or another video clip on top of the main video or pic, and adjust size, rotation and location. So now I can create picture-in-picture videos just like all the YouTube pros.
Warnings: all is not golden. When I tried to render my video (using all the default options) it got about halfway through and crashed, the MP4 file it created was small and unplayable. When I reloaded it “recovered” the video and played it, the program crashed again. One more try… oops. Windows blue screen. Reboot. Disk check. Should I dare to try again? Ok, one more go. Loaded program. recovered files. made some more edits. saved file. produced video. finished without crash. watched in Windows player, looks & sounds good.
Not sure if a reboot is needed to complete something in the installation. The programs open in the first crash but not after reboot: Free Commander XE, Smart Game Booster (with boosting disabled), Steam client, not sure of any others. As I write this, if I click in Start Menu to show hidden icons, I see the ‘microphone in use’ icon from Bitdefender antivirus appearing and disappearing as fast as it can, making it impossible to accurately click on it or any of the icons after it. When I exit ACDsee Video Editor 3, the ‘microphone in use’ icon goes away and all is back to normal.
So… my recommendation: this *is* a good program to have, but don’t try to run it alongside anything else and save often to a different filename each time.
Two features I wish it had (other than stability in a Win 10/64 environment): Ability to create title text (not just caption text at the bottom of the screen) or at least let me import a .png file with the title I want and a TRANSPARENT background. Ability to have motion/scaling/orientation effects over time on any object (set start & end and let program interpolate all the in-between points per frame). Note that allowing for a transparent background in a .png file would also let you create a mask file, so the underlying video would show through in the transparent places. Powerful stuff! Please ACDsee, fix the compatability issues and add these features, and possibly several more audio & video transitions, and I could replace all my other video software with this one. Oh please :-)