Customer Reviews

Ulead VideoStudio 8 - Home Movies

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

After a few failed attempts with other video-editing packages, I was pleasantly surprised with VS8. All I was looking for was some easy-to-use, **stable** software to convert unwatchable raw home videos into something more palatable on DVD. For this, the most important tool is cutting out the unwanted video sections; VS8 is good at this task, allowing you to quickly pick and delete sections of the raw footage. VS8 also provides a decent package of effects, filters, audio, and overlay capability; IMO, this is sufficient to keep the amateur video buff happy for years to come. However, the implementation of it's features are a bit quirky; Ulead could improve by embracing standard Window's editing semantics. The quick run-down:

Pros:
- Stability!! This is by far the most important question when shopping for a video editor and, at least for me, VS8 is perfect.
- Pretty good tutorial included.
- Quick, easy editing of raw video.
- Lots of fun, easy-to-add effects.
- Easy to add video overlays, text, narration, and music.
- Greatly exceeds the needs of the home video artist.
- Intelligent DVD burner; after rendering for an hour, but targeting the wrong drive, it didn't start over when I changed to the correct drive.

Cons:
- Missing basic cut and paste capability for clips.
- Instead of using standard Windows look and feel, the program takes over the whole screen and implements functions in it's own quirky way.

Bottom line: the pros overwhelm the cons.

I wish this software work like it should!!!
The software is quite intuitive and I spent ~ 2 hours learning it and was able to consequently create two 1.5 hr long videos completed with open/close title sequences, scene transitions, voice, music tracks, video overlay and filtering. It's great for that purpose, although some of the preview feature is somewhat quirky, and it demands some quite odd restrictions during editing process like forcing the deletion of transitions between clips if the one of the clip is to be splitted into two sectoins, but all of the editing feature worked as advertised.
Now comes to time to bring the video onto the DVD, that where it all went down the tube. First DVD was created fairly eventlessly despite a very long video conversion sequence (I think it ran as long as the video's full run length) eventhough majority of the footage was already in DVD mpeg-2 format to start with. But the DVD created consistent skips and hicups in changing chapter,locking up the players, etc. I tried the DVD disk on several players as well on three computers with DVD-ROMs, all of them skipped on the playback and locks up when switching chapters on the disk. I have also tried 3 times to create a second disk with a bit more added effects and sound tracks the DVD disk creation process had consistently failed during video conversion step, even when I try to creat an ISO DVD image the software just could not finish converting the video and crashes every time with 99% converstion completed!!! EVERYTIME with 99% completion.
I like the video editing function of this software quite a lot, but without the ability to author the completed video onto a DVD disk, the software really is quite useless.
I have updated the software with the latest patches and have more than enough computer resources for the job, but the buggy DVD creation module is causing tremendous amout of frustration.
Updated audio synchronization problems:
If your video is longer than a couple of minutes, this software will definitely have trouble syncing the audio to the video sequence. I have tried this for many projects, unless you split a video into many, many, many projects, you will be faced with audio out of sync problems. It's so bad, after 30 minutes, the audio lag will be as much as 10-20 seconds. This is absolutely unacceptable. The software has decent editing features, but horrible audio sync.

First off, this is a fairly easy program to learn and use, even if you are a beginner at video editing. Capture from DV works like a charm. The program includes a decent amount of effects and transitions as well as many other features. This program is the only one I know of (in it's price range) that will allow you to do video overlays (i.e. picture-in-picture effects.) So overall, a great program for beginners. However, you will soon outgrow this software if you are serious at all about video editing. Some of the quirks that are frustrating to me are the fact that when you do an overlay, if you add another file or media to the main video track, your overlays do not "stick" in the timeline and are moved. This means you should complete the main video track before adding any overlays, or you will need to correct their timings later. Another thing I wish this program would let you do is add transitions between overlay tracks, and allow more than one overlay at a time. Also, the DVD creation part of the program is very bare bones. The software has other quirks that bug me, but for the price, it does a good job.

After using this program for a couple of weeks, I am already looking to upgrade to more robust video editing software. If you just want to make DVD's of your DV footage, this is a good choice. It just has some limitations.

I've used Roxio's Videowave and Pinnacle's Editing program and neither can compare with the ease of Ulead Videostudio 8. I'm sure I could get a better system for more money, but for less than $100, I love the ease of creating the timeline and adding and editing audio. I did have the system crash on me once, but since I had saved not long before didn't lose much, and crashing once, in about 300 hours of editing time, isn't bad. I wish the title feature had more options, but other than that I think it's great.

This is a good product for beginners because of one very important reason... it comes with a disc that shows you how to do each step. I've used this to create a DVD for my nephew's 5th birthday. My in-laws had tons of video on VHS that I went through, transferred much of it to my digital camcorder, then to my computer via this product. Worked like a charm. Added tons of effects, graphics, and music. Turned out great. I really like this product. Only knock I have against it... I'd like the ability to add words in the stock footage provided, replacing the words within that footage. For example, there footage of the world, with "ulead" going around it. I'd like to put my own words. Other than that, I think this program is easy to use, fun to use, and worth every penny.

This product is extremely difficult to use. I have registered my product with Ulead and cannot access any type of help whatsoever. I have several problems with using the software namely sound/vision sync problems; menus/chapters do not save, rerender and you lose them and have to type them all in again. Input a video clip into the timeline and you have to manually alter every title, sound track, overlay after that point. White rolling credits on a plain black background (simple eh!) take forever to render. Can't enter cda or wma files into menus as background music. All very frustrating. What is more frustrating is that the video quality was very poor as I rendered several times as it doesn't say not to. I took the trouble of using Uleads tutorials on their open web pages. When the DVD came out picture quality extremely poor, and then when I improved Video Quality, the sound then suddenly became out of sync! Everytime I entered menus/chapters etc again, as they were lost and everytime was several hours inputting and rendering/burning DVD. Have also updated this software with latest releases. My computer is 2.8ghz/80gb/512mb and brand new and nothing else running! I have emailed Ulead customer support with very intricate details and they have been no help whatosever, I have 20+years computer experience professionally and privately. I can't even access registration page without going into a perpetual loop with it keep sending me a new password and then it sends me another and another!!! Extremely frustrating. On the face of it, product is excellent, but when you actually use it that is a different matter altogether, and then when you want help, again none whatsoever. I ask a question, does the product actually work satisfactorily and is there such a thing as techinical service from Ulead?

I found VideoStudio 8 worked pretty well for editing movies, but it failed miserably when burning DVDs, and was not without problems in loading video from a digital camcorder. Apparently it can make DVDs, but not good ones, or not on my computer (which is a new one designed for audio/video). Apparently a lot of people have a wide variety of problems at this stage, and none of the suggested fixes on the ULEAD forum worked for me. Technical support suggested upgdating Windows, reinstalling software, downloading patches, etc, but none of this could get the jitter out off the resulting DVDs. I would guess there is a good chance VideoStudio may work for you, but then again you may be stuck with software that only does 90% of what you need.

This program is unreal. I was given it as a gift to help me pass time during the day, and i couldn't believe how easy it was to use. The other programs i played with kept blowing up the system, and id have to restart, but Ulead never crashed out once.
Ive been able to edit all my old footage, and its been fun to do. At the same time, the software was even able to edit a bunch of my footage for me!

Does exactly what it's supposed to. Some complain of a steep learning curve - I watched their online tutorials before starting, and it was pretty easy. Captures sharp-looking video from my Sony MiniDV camcorder via IEEE1394. I can edit all my clips together, insert titles, voice-over track, scene transition effects and burn a DVD with menu, all just with mouse clicks. Hasn't crashed yet. My only complaint is that the controls for tweaking the audio levels on the main video track are very fiddly, and the user guide is a bit sparse on exactly how this aspect is supposed to work.

Overall I like Video Studio 8.0. It seems relatively stable and has some stunning visual and audio effects. It has two shortcomings that I see: 1) It does not allow you to save your overall DVD project (i.e. Chapters, backgrounds, music, etc.) and 2) Not the most responsive technical support. They never even wrote back when I asked them to address that issue. Otherwise it seems much more sophisticated than MyDVD 5.0, and more stable as well.