Info:
With digital camcorders and video
editing software falling in price all the time, do not need to Roman
Polanski to make your own movies these days. Ulead VideoStudio has been
at the forefront of the market for budget video software for some time
and this latest version promises even more value for users seeking
hard-up make videos, fix your home movies or produce documentaries about
his life.
The application certainly looks good on
paper, with a series of new tools for working with HD, and a group of
templates, video effects and filters, and capturing tools. There are
three different packages with applications suite, catering to the
different needs and skill levels, as Movie Wizard and DV to DVD Wizard.
However, the main use, VideoStudio Editor, where all the action happens.
The program certainly has some decent
editing functions, including an extended storyboard to view and order
the scenes (next to the time line everywhere), another big scene preview
window, title templates and text, audio tracks voice narration and a
soundtrack, and built-in instrumental scores to fit the length of the
movie. The user interface does not make it so bad a job in making all
these features easy to avail, but still have the most virgin film
producers a while to grasp the basics.
There is no doubt that with a little
practice, you can evoke some decent looking creations in the package,
but you will experience some setbacks along the way. The main problem
with VideoStudio has always been pressure on system memory and
unfortunately, this does not appear to have been adequately addressed in
this release. Load times are cripplingly slow and unless you are using a
NASA computer previewing complex edits can be a horrible experience,
with audio clips and jumping and being frequently.
Other annoyances include the fact that
you can move forward and backward in the preview window of the scene,
and the ease of zoom in the timeline is not powerful enough.
Interestingly, given its support for the new HD disc format, Ulead seems
to have forgotten to include support for Blu-Ray as well. Another point
to note is that several users have beaten Softonic technical support
very poor, with many reports that your questions are answered
consistently. Come on Ulead, if you’re going to carry out a program
which sometimes falls at least give the customer a little help to fix
things.
Despite its flaws, VideoStudio has
enough features to allow quite sophisticated moviemaking, and is fairly
easy to use once you become familiar with the interface. However, if you
are looking for reliability, then you probably would be better off
looking at one of the other editing applications low cost as Adobe
Premiere Elements or PowerDirector.
- License: Trial Version
- OS: Windows
- Size: 135 MB