Customer Reviews

Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7.0 Digital Video

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After reading some of those heavy handed reviews of MediaStudio Pro, I decided to add my comments. Although the program is a bit tricky to learn, once you've mastered the ins and outs it's great. There's a lot of flexibilty for creating FX and transitions, but you may have to read the tutorials and extensive help screens. This is a definite step up from Windows MovieMaker2. It allows you to be much more creative. It's not for those seeking instant editing solutions. It's a great stepping stone from the consumer to real editing world. It also works on my old Pentium II machine! You don't need a $1500 P4 to use this software. It preforms well on windows XP pro. Get the free 'trial' version a judge for yourself.

This is definitely the program for those who are interested in an intense movie making experience!! It definitely takes patience to get the hang of and is not for the easily frustrated. If you have a vision for your movie, you now have the tool to accomplish that vision. If you have a serious attention to detail complex...this is the one for you. Otherwise, I would say go with Adobe Premier...excellent in its own right and still highly effective (and the cost benefits are super). Happy movie making!

I bought it 6 months ago and have yet to produce 1 respectable project. The technical support is non-existant and vague. In fact
I'm attempting another project today and I need updates and patches....ALL the websites are unavailable.
the program itself is WAY too complex and you have to carry out far too many mouse clicks to simply apply and adjust transitions. Transitions are not smooth (Audio & Video).
Ulead says it runs on 98SE,which I originally had, but when I ran into problems, their solution was switch to 2000. I did, it's still finnikey. $450 is now collecting dust. It looks like ADOBE Premiere now!

Having used other video capturing and editing programs, Movie Studio Pro is the best. Learning to use it is daunting since the documentation is quite limited and tech support consists of forums. I have never had Ulead answer a tech support question and if you attempt to call them, you'd better have a headset or a speaker phone. MSP7 is as stable as your computer. It requires a lot of computing horse power. It will capture video from camcorders, VCRs, DVD players and so forth and while you can edit and play with the captured video quality and add special effects, etc., you really need a very fast computer, lots of hard drive space (think 300 GB for video files) and a time base corrector and analog to digital video converter that will send video and synced audio down to your Firewire cable. You are talking about a lot of money in software and hardware here, so it is not for someone planning occassional video captures. If you need to put it on a DVD, you need a program such as Ulead Movie Factory (plus blank DVDs, of course). Expect to make a lot of coasters at first.

MSP7 had a serious problem with encoding horizontal motion in the AVI files it rendered to MPEG, and those MEPG files had jumpy instead of smooth horizontal motion. The faster the motion, the more noticeable it was (for example, a car moving to the right). I thought this was due to the DVD players I had, but this happened on any DVD player, on TV or computer screens. MSP8 has eliminated that problem. Rendering times have almost doubled on the same computer, but the better video quality is definitely worth it. For those who are serious about producing movies, this is an excelent product. Learning to use MSP8 (after using MSP7 for several years) took a good 24 hours. For newbies, expect frustration and daily use for about a month before you can produce what you really want.

Company doesn't care about this product. I gave it two stars only because it is a nice piece of software in many ways. It appears the company is allowing it to die a slow death by not updating it.

I put a con first, then the review, as I believe buyers need to be very aware of this:

CON:
- ** No AVCHD support (shows a trend): The company clearly does not care about the success of this product, as they have released multiple versions of their lower line product, VideoStudio, which does support AVCHD. Not one patch or even plugin can be purchased to enable this in MediaStudio Pro. There are so many cameras now that shoot AVCHD that I can only assume Ulead/Corel could care less about the longevity of this product line. I have waited quite a while thinking they would get on the ball. Maybe they will eventually come out with a patch, BUT even if they do, it is too little to late for me. My gut tells me that they will do the same thing again when the video standards change, updating their lower line product, basically saying, "screw you," to those who bought the more expensive, more powerful program.

Review:

I started with MediaStudio Pro 5, and now am using version 8 (version 8 for about the last 2 1/2 years). It is pretty powerful for an upper end consumer package. You can do blue screens (actually any color), composites, etc.. The interface is simple once you spend a couple hours with it. If Ulead would continue spending time developing this product it could become a very nice piece of software. They however are not continuing development as far as I can see.

I am taking a video class at the University. In this class I am using Final Cut Pro (a professional grade product). Making the transition to Final Cut was pretty easy, as the interface is similar enough. Final Cut Pro however is a MUCH nicer product, supporting more keyboard shortcuts, more stable software, bigger video windows when applying effects, more tools, better audio tools, .....{the list goes on to more than I know}. Additionally, Final Cut has not crashed on me once yet! But, Final Cut Pro is $1000 and runs only on Mac.

Pros:
- Simple and powerful once you spend a couple hours with it.
- Multiple tracks for video and audio (starts with 7, and can add more)
- Lots of effects
- Able to do color key (blue screen)
- Able to do composites
- Able to do proxy editing (i.e. work on lower resolution footage to increase performance while editing, then program uses high resolution footage when doing the final render.)
- Compresses to many formats.
- Imports many formats

Cons:
- Crashes a bit more than I would prefer. This is not too big of a deal, just save a lot and restart the computer every hour or so.

- ** No AVCHD support: Even though they upgraded their lower line product, the company has not updated their more powerful, more expensive product, MediaStudio Pro. The company clearly does not care about the success of this product. I recommend against buying for this simple reason.

- Not compatible with Windows Vista (Not that I care about Windows Vista, but it is yet another sign that Ulead has no intention of supporting this product).

- No DVD burning software included.

This program is as good as any of the other pro video editing software (Premiere Pro, etc.) and it doesn't break the bank. They don't plan to make this available for the Vista operating system and this means that it will probably be discontinued. What a shame.

Its a bit tricky to get a hang of, but this editor is great! You can do just about anything with it that would noramlly cost hundreds more to do on a mac with final cut. It comes with a great video editor, audio editor, and most importantly, video paint. If your film has glistches, or you want to add cool eddfects, such as a lightsaber, or lightning, this is the program to use. Once you get the hang of it, the possibilities are endless!

Now, it's rare I hate a single program because I believe
that there is a lot of potential and use in a many apps
around these days, unfortunately this is not the case for
this heinous product. Hate is definitely the apt word I
hold for Media studio pro. It is by far the most frustrating,
confusing, useless video editor on the market today.
How do these people sleep at night by charging so much for
absolute garbage.
People - heed my warning..by VEGAS 5.0 instead. I give that
product a heavy endorsement and thoroughly recommend it to
amatuers and professionals alike. It is simply brilliant
and a dream to use - THE WAY VIDEO EDITORS SHOULD BE.