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Everyone’s favorite throwback company, NewTek has launched SpeedEdit, “the world’s fastest video editor.” It’s got a “Next-Gen Workflow” and other features of much importance!

So what’s the deal? Despite my sarcasm, it actually has some interesting features. Or at least, the marketing speak talks of some nice features. They claim to edit natively in any codec, without transcoding, and without worrying about mixed resolutions. So, instead of picking a resolution for your project before you start cutting, you just start cutting. If they can actually do it (we’ll see) it’s a pretty neat idea. Resolution independence is something that I’d love to see in Final Cut Pro sooner rather than later. Cutting natively with all the crazy formats that come off the internets is a bit more questionable – it seems like a recipe for glitches.

They’ve also got a fancy interface which appears to consist of the worst elements of Avid, mixed with a dash of Video Toaster and a pinch of TriCaster. Ugly.

Still, it’s a curious product. Nothing they’re doing is technically impossible, but it’s the sort of thing that’s really hard to do well, especially in a brand new piece of software. We’ll see…