VideoStudio 6.0

Rating:
Summary: VideoStudio will capture and edit video.
Review: When I bought my DVD burner it was bundled with a lot of software that was supposed to allow me to create DVD movies. VideoStudio 4.0 SE was one. I ran into many problems with the bundled software's light versions. I could not capture a video to an mpeg file and ended up with a lot of very large AVI files. The DVD authoring would clip off the last ten minutes of audio. I could not trim the beginning and ending of each clip. I decided that I needed an mpeg encoder, some way of easily editing scenes and a way to author a DVD that contains all the sound.

I took a leap of faith and bought VideoStudio 6.0 in hopes that it would get me where I wanted to go. I have since found out that none of the home software solutions will do it all. There are plenty of professional packages that will do much, much more but they are out of my price range for what I want to do. You will need a professional quality mpeg encoder to put a 2.5 hour movie on a DVD.

I use VideoStudio 6.0 to capture digital video from my Sony Digital 8 Camcorder to a mpeg file. The mpeg encoding is not a professional quality encoder as far as size compression goes. There are some parameters that can be changed, but going very far outside the bounds of the default settings will cause errors or just allow the capture to proceed and not much change in file size. This encoder will compress a 30 minute video down to about 1.5 gbytes. Forget about putting a 2 hour video on a DVD. Picture quality is decent and so is sound quality.

Editing the clips is not very intuitive for one that is new to the video world. But the manual is sufficient and explains most of what is needed. There are many small samples that are included so that you can experiment with most of the functionality. This is good because, when experimenting and learning, you don't want to spend a lot of time just watching video go by while waiting for your experimental transitions, titles and sound clip to come around.

The plug-in for authoring would only let me author a video CD. The DVD option was disabled and would not enable. I had to by DVD Movie Factory to create the DVDs. But it does the job, although not as efficiently as one would expect. It increases the size of the mpeg file when it creates a `movie' mpeg file.

If you want an easy way to capture digital video from a camcorder with an acceptable mpeg encoder, edit the start and end points, add transitions between scenes, add some titles and voice over and create video CDs. VideoStudio 6.0 will do it for you. But you will need additional software to author DVDs.

Rating:
Summary: VideoStudio will capture and edit video.
Review: When I bought my DVD burner it was bundled with a lot of software that was supposed to allow me to create DVD movies. VideoStudio 4.0 SE was one. I ran into many problems with the bundled software's light versions. I could not capture a video to an mpeg file and ended up with a lot of very large AVI files. The DVD authoring would clip off the last ten minutes of audio. I could not trim the beginning and ending of each clip. I decided that I needed an mpeg encoder, some way of easily editing scenes and a way to author a DVD that contains all the sound.

I took a leap of faith and bought VideoStudio 6.0 in hopes that it would get me where I wanted to go. I have since found out that none of the home software solutions will do it all. There are plenty of professional packages that will do much, much more but they are out of my price range for what I want to do. You will need a professional quality mpeg encoder to put a 2.5 hour movie on a DVD.

I use VideoStudio 6.0 to capture digital video from my Sony Digital 8 Camcorder to a mpeg file. The mpeg encoding is not a professional quality encoder as far as size compression goes. There are some parameters that can be changed, but going very far outside the bounds of the default settings will cause errors or just allow the capture to proceed and not much change in file size. This encoder will compress a 30 minute video down to about 1.5 gbytes. Forget about putting a 2 hour video on a DVD. Picture quality is decent and so is sound quality.

Editing the clips is not very intuitive for one that is new to the video world. But the manual is sufficient and explains most of what is needed. There are many small samples that are included so that you can experiment with most of the functionality. This is good because, when experimenting and learning, you don't want to spend a lot of time just watching video go by while waiting for your experimental transitions, titles and sound clip to come around.

The plug-in for authoring would only let me author a video CD. The DVD option was disabled and would not enable. I had to by DVD Movie Factory to create the DVDs. But it does the job, although not as efficiently as one would expect. It increases the size of the mpeg file when it creates a 'movie' mpeg file.

If you want an easy way to capture digital video from a camcorder with an acceptable mpeg encoder, edit the start and end points, add transitions between scenes, add some titles and voice over and create video CDs. VideoStudio 6.0 will do it for you. But you will need additional software to author DVDs.

Rating:
Summary: Learning curve
Review: When I bought the IEEE1394 card for my notebook, it came bundled with a copy of Ulead's VideoStudio 4. After playing around with it for a day, I figured out the logic behind the storyboard format for editing the various components of a project. After a little more experimenting, I realized that VS4 was a very easy & useful tool. The only shortcoming I could think of was that it couldn't output to any format directly compatible for use in VCDs.

Ulead has quite handily taken care of this problem and added a few cool new tools to boot!

If you've used VS4 or VS5, you'll find the controls are almost exactly the same. The batch capture feature makes capturing (a lot of) scenes from your digital camcorder a breeze. The overlays, filters, titles and transition effects are a snap to use and give your final product a slick, professional polish.

One of my few criticism would have to be the choice of including the DVD/VCD authoring tool as a plug-in. While the DVD wizard is easy to use and produces great results, I think the it would be more useful as a stand-alone application. Also, VS6 claims that the direct MPEG capture mode decreases render time (for making DVDs & VCDs), it seems as though the "buffer" time to capture to MPEG negates any time saved during the final render.

If you're looking for an introductory DV editing application that's easy to use and and still makes your home movies look better than traditional "home movies," get this program. Considering the features and the price, you don't have to think too hard to figure out that VS6 is definately the way to go for beginners and intermediate users.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a No-Brainer...
Review: When I bought the IEEE1394 card for my notebook, it came bundled with a copy of Ulead's VideoStudio 4. After playing around with it for a day, I figured out the logic behind the storyboard format for editing the various components of a project. After a little more experimenting, I realized that VS4 was a very easy & useful tool. The only shortcoming I could think of was that it couldn't output to any format directly compatible for use in VCDs.

Ulead has quite handily taken care of this problem and added a few cool new tools to boot!

If you've used VS4 or VS5, you'll find the controls are almost exactly the same. The batch capture feature makes capturing (a lot of) scenes from your digital camcorder a breeze. The overlays, filters, titles and transition effects are a snap to use and give your final product a slick, professional polish.

One of my few criticism would have to be the choice of including the DVD/VCD authoring tool as a plug-in. While the DVD wizard is easy to use and produces great results, I think the it would be more useful as a stand-alone application. Also, VS6 claims that the direct MPEG capture mode decreases render time (for making DVDs & VCDs), it seems as though the "buffer" time to capture to MPEG negates any time saved during the final render.

If you're looking for an introductory DV editing application that's easy to use and and still makes your home movies look better than traditional "home movies," get this program. Considering the features and the price, you don't have to think too hard to figure out that VS6 is definately the way to go for beginners and intermediate users.