Company listing

The popularity of making home videos is still increasing. Current consumer camcorders create superb quality in both video and audio, are within the budget of many people and are small enough to carry around. The seamless integration with Personal Computers to capture, edit and store video has created a whole range of companies that offer products related to digital video.

Digital Video Club has no affiliation with any off the companies listed. Check out the companies websites (linked to the company logo's on this page) for up-to-date information. If you miss certain companies or products in this list or you feel that information is outdated, please let us know.

Adobe

Adobe is a well known name in digital imaging. For documents they are known for the pdf format and in the digital photography world for their program Photoshop. Their flagship in digital video editing, Premiere, is considered the most versatile video editing program around. A stripped down version to also capture market in the lower price region is Premiere Elements, which also includes DVD authoring.

Apple

The vast majority of personal computers are Windows based PC's. Apple, however, survived and is still very popular in the graphical world. Their flagship for video editing is Final Cut; other programs for video include iDVD and DVD Studio.

Avid

Avid is a company with a whole range of professional digital media solutions, both hardware and software. In the consumer market they are best known for their Xpress line of products, available in various levels of sophistication and pricing. There is word that they are taking over another company in this list, Pinnacle.

Canopus

Canopus is a company more specialized in hardware rather than in software. They have a whole range of hardware: video editing cards, analog-digital converters and hardware encoders. In the field of software they are continuously expanding in various directions: the Edius product line for editing, Let's create DVD for authoring and for example VideoFX for special effects.

Cyberlink

Most well know product of Cyberlink is their DVD software player PowerDVD. From there they have expanded to video editing, authoring and burning with a number of lower- to midrange products like PowerProducer, PowerProducer and Power2Go.

Dazzle

Like Canopus, this company concentrated much on hardware to capture video, both through USB and Firewire. In 2003, the company was bought by the German company Pinnacle, who still sells the hardware under the name Dazzle bundled with Pinnacle software.

Intervideo

Just like Cyberlink, this company is best known for their DVD software player: WinDVD. And just like their competitor they expanded in video editing, authoring and burning. Their product WinDVD Creator is a lower end video editing, authoring and burning program. Furthermore they have the program Instant Movie Maker, which is a solution for people to create a compilation in a few simple steps.

Magix

The German company Magix is becoming more and more popular in its home market. Their product Movie Edit is a mid range all-in-one solution for capturing editing, authoring and burning.

Mainconcept

Another German company very active in the digital video world. They concentrated very much on codecs and encoding technology. They have their own DV codec, supply both stand alone encoders like the MPEG Encoder and plugins like the MPEG Pro plugin for Premiere. In the field of editing they have their midrange program MainActor and the low end program Eve. Other products include an animation program MainVision and DVD Video Loops.

Matrox

Matrox is a company specialized in digital imaging hardware. This ranges from professional equipment to hardware encoders and real time video editing hardware for video enthusiasts. They do not supply any video editing software but their cards are available bundled with Adobe Premiere.

Mediachance

This is a small company that pretty much was build around the niche program DVDlab, a DVD authoring program with professional capabilities for a consumer level price.

Microsoft

This software giant needs no introduction. They are not specialized in video editing, but they have to be included in the list because their basic video editing program MovieMaker is part of Windows XP. And since Bill Gates vision of PC becoming a multimedia center, you never know what they will bring next.

Muvee

This is a relative small company that developed automatic video editing technology. Their program AutoProducer is a completely automatic video editor that is reviewed elsewhere on this site.

Nero (formerly Ahead)

The German company Ahead is a long standing player in CD burning technology with their program Nero. Effective January 1st, 2005, the company changed its name to Nero. When recordable DVD technology came on the market they naturally progressed to DVD burning technology. Since DVD is most widely used for video, they expanded their activities 'forward' in the process. From burning, to DVD-Video authoring, editing, playback and capturing. It still has limited video editing capabilities, but that may change in the future.

Pegasys

This Japanese company was founded as the commercial vehicle of the popular encoder TMPGEnc. Later on it also started to distribute a DVD authoring program TMPGENc DVD Author.

Pinnacle

A long standing German player in the digital video world. They offer a wide range of products, both hardware and software. Their most well known video editing line of products is Studio which has undergone gradual but steady matured to a well advanced package. Their hardware side of the business consists of their own developed line of capture cards and the products developed by Dazzle, which are still delivered under that brand name. There is word that the company will be acquired by Avid some time in the summer of 2005.

Roxio

Roxio is an old name in the CD burning world with it's EasyCD Creator. It entered the world of video editing with VideoWave which is often found bundled with Firewire cards. Their video editing solutions are mostly entry level. They were bought by Sonic solutions, distributing their DVD authoring packages like myDVD and DVDit.

Scenalyzer

A small German company revolving completely around the video capture utility Scenalyzer Live! (the exclamation mark is part of the name). It offers an advanced way of batch capturing, quick tape indexing and content archiving. Reviewed elsewhere on this site.

Smartsound

This company develops royalty free audio tracks for video productions. Interesting of their technology is that it includes the possibility to generate music tracks based on styles and moods and that they can be trimmed to fit any length. Reviewed on Digital Video Club here.

Sonic

Keyword for this company is DVD authoring. They developed a whole range of DVD authoring packages ranging from an entry level product like MyDVD, prosumer level ReelDVD to professional level Scenarist.

Sony

Of course they are best known for consumer electronics. To support their position in the market for camcorders they also developed video editing software. Their product family goes by the name Vegas and is developed for both beginning and experienced video editors.

Ulead

Taiwanese company, that has been around in the world for digital video editing. Their strategy is to develop software that is affordable and very easy to use. The result is a line of products ranging from beginner to intermediate level. Apart from vide editing and dvd authoring solutions like VideoStudio, MediaStudio, DVD MovieFactory and DVD Workshop, they laso have some specialized products like Cool3D for animations and the program DVD Picture show to create DVD-Video from stills.