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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Probably the best consumer-grade Video Editor Software under $100, January 27, 2006
ULEAD's Video Studio 9 has a lot to offer considering the under-$100 retail price, although there are a couple of annoying aspects to using it, and there is one glaring omission in it's feature set.
To start off this review, I downloaded and installed the trial versions of several video editors, so as to have a base of comparison. In addition to ULEAD VS9, I tried Roxio's and Pinnacle's video editors, Cyberlink Power Director, and Video Edit Magic - these are all in the same retail price category as VS9, between $49 and $100. I also tried a GPL freeware editor, ZweiStein Video Compositor from "T@B Software".
My computer came with two other packages, Windows Movie Maker (this comes with Windows XP) and Cyberlink Power Producer, and I already had some familiarity with those products.
What I was primarily looking for was a Video production package with more user-customizable features than Windows Movie Maker offers, especially Titles and Transitions; also more stability and reliability - I could not get WMM to compile and render a movie project longer than about 35 minutes without crashing or hanging (these hang-ups always required a full cold reboot to recover from). Power Producer isn't really a video editor, it's only function is to take finished videos, add a menu structure, and burn them to VCD or DVD.
As for the other trialware packages I downloaded:
1. Cyberlink Power Director refused to load and run, and I was not able to figure out why. My computer more than met the system requirement, so perhaps the archive got corrupted during the download? Anyway, I gave up on it after a couple of hours of non-success.
2. Roxio and Pinnacle. These are very similar, and might even be the same core program with different splash screens grafted on. They are VERY limited in what they can do, especially for the $89 price tag. Windows Movie Maker is a more robust video editor and it's free to download as long as you have Win XP. They also have a "fixed" application window size of 1024 x 768, a real annoyance on my system which usually runs at 1600 x 1200.
2. Video Edit Magic. Somewhat better features than Roxio/Pinnacle, but still not as much there as WMM.
3. ZweiStein. Unusual, non-intuitive user interface, very different from most other video editors. It was also pretty limited in capabilities, and again WMM has more features.
4. Windows Movie Maker. Looks like it could be a decent video editor if MicroSoft can get the bugs out of it in a future build. It's one serious shortcoming in features is that it's text title capabilities are all "pre-fabricated". You can only overlay text titles in positions pre-determined by the program, and only one block of text can exist within a title. You can at least change the font and color of a text block, but without the ability to position the text exactly where you want it, it's very frustrating if you have experience with top-end software like Adobe Premiere.
Okay, now on to ULEAD VS9. First the good news:
FEATURES: In terms of overall video editing capability, it shares the first place rating, with Adobe Premiere Elements, in the best-under-$100 Video editor category, for what's currently available (January 2006). It has a wide array of video filters and transition effects, probably more than most amateur and home users will ever need. It has significantly better text titling capabilities than any of the other packages I tried: In addition to the usual font and color controls, you can place multiple text blocks within a title frame, and each text block can have it's own individual color, font, size, position, transition, and animation settings. If you need better text title capability than WMM provides, ULEAD VS9 should satisfy almost any non-commercial video editing need. In addition to actual video files, VS9 can import and use almost any digital still photo image, to make title screens, or string together into a slide show.
STABILITY / RELIABILITY: No complaints here. On my AMD Athlon 1900 system, with 1500 megs of RAM and a Radeon Dual-head video card, VS9 has never crashed or hung up. The largest compilation I have tested was a project with 67 minutes of AVI video and 25 minutes of a still-image slide show. Remarkably, there were several instances of "Out of Memory" conditions while editing this video, where Windows 2000 popped up a warning dialog, and VS9 lost it's ability to preview/play the video clips. Amazingly, it never crashed or suffered a hang up - I just clicked "Okay" on the warning dialog box, saved the project to hard disk, then closed and and reloaded VS9 and reloaded my project. It always came back just as it was saved and I was able to continue working right where I left off. Note that VS9 can be configured to "auto-save" at user defined intervals, so an unexpected power failure or system crash won't cost you hours of lost work even if you forget to manually save when you broke for lunch (or whatever).
INPUT/OUTPUT: VS9 appears capable of importing most of the common Video formats, like AVI, MPG, MOV, WMV, and VOB. Outputs are the same. VOB is of course the file structure for DVD movies, and VS9 can compile and burn DVD-Video, VCD, and SVCD. I have not tested all of these, just DVD-Video. VS9 also claims to be able to capture video streams direct from your camera, or write back out to a camera, assuming your PC has the necessary video capture hardware and software (I have not tested these features personally). The files I used for my testing are AVI's, up to 650 megabytes each, from a Canon A-620 camera.
THE BAD NEWS:
I'll list the minor glitches first.
1. VS9's primary application window is hard-coded to be the maximum size of your video screen (or minimized to the task bar). Not being able to size the application window to be something less than maximum is really a pain when you want to do something else, like check e-mail or create a graphic in Photoshop for use as a title backdrop in VS9. When exporting your finished product (rendering it) to either a hard disk file or disc burner, you can not minimize VS9 so as to make room on screen for other tasks. This is really annoying, especially considering how slow the rendering engine is (more on this issue in the next section of the review).
2. If you run a dual-head, dual-monitor video system, VS9 can not be restricted to one monitor or the other, even if your video driver software has been set up to force all applications to a single monitor. It will occupy the entire desktop, spanning both monitors, regardless of what resolution you have set. It looks like the people who wrote and developed VS9 deliberately put code into the program to force this to happen; no Windows API-complient software should be able to over ride the one-monitor video driver setting, yet VS9 does.
Now for the real bad news: VS9's rendering engine is unbeliebably slow, taking not less than 8 to 10 minutes of real-time to render each minute of your compilation. In other words, if you have 60 minutes of home video clips that you would like to turn into a nicely edited DVD movie, with an audio track, text titling and scene transistions, the final output of your video will tie up your computer for as much as 10 hours! I'm not exaggerating here - my 67 minute video took 525 minutes to render out as DVD-VOB files, for a 7.8-to-1 rendering time ratio. Rendering was actually a two-step process: First, VS9 translated (rendered) the project input files (the 67 minutes worth of AVI video, JPG and BMP still frame titles, and MP3 audio backgound music) into MPEG-2 format, stored as a single 4500 megabyte MPG file in the scratch directory; this operation took 98% of the 525 minutes. Then, it took the MPEG-2 file and split it up into four 1000 megabyte chunks, re-writing them as VOB files in the VIDEO_TS directory. This only took 10 minutes or so, I guess MPG-2 to VOB doesn't require any additional rendering, just a straightforward file transfer from one folder to another. Still, the whole process took all night! On the plus side, I have to say that the image quality of the resulting VOB files was sharp and clear, as nice as any other home movies I've seen from a digital camera.
One other nice feature to counter the slowness complaint is that VS9 gives the user a lot of control over the rendering process, expecially the exact amount of MPEG compression (and resulting image quality degradation) that the user is willing to tolerate. Even better, VS9 has a command "Burn to Fit" that tells the program to calculate how much comopression to use so that the final output VOB files will just fit on a standard DVD-5 disc (or SVCD, whatever you are burning).
To compare rendering times: on the same 67 minute project that took VS9 525 minutes to produce the finished VOB files, Cyberlink PowerProducer required only 100 minutes, but the image quality was noticeably fuzzier. PowerProducer has only 3 quality levels, High, Standard, and Long-Play, representing three pre-set levels of MPEG compression. I guess the lack of user configurability allows Cyberlink's rendering engine to operate faster and more effieciently than ULEAD's.
As for the "glaring omission" noted above, VS9 appears to have no way to save the Menu and Chapter settings for your DVD. When you exit VS9, or if the computer crashes or there's a power failure, those settings are gone when you reboot the program. The dialog that opens when you click the "SHARE" command from VS9's main application window makes the DVD burning tools look like they might be a completely different program, written by a consultant rather than a ULEAD employee software engineer. Anyway, it's hard to believe that something so basic as a "save" command could have been forgotten, but I can't find one. Just remember that if you spend a lot...
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Long time Video Studio User, December 13, 2006
This review will help potential buyers of Ulead's Video Studio (Hence forth referred to as VS) understand this product and make sense of the contradicting comments on this review board.
I have used several video editors over the last 10 years and though they all have their own pros and cons, VS is by far a better product, but it is not perfect.
What must be first understood about the whole subject of Digital Video Rendering, is that it is the most complex and strenuous thing that you will ever do on your computer. No matter what kind of computer you own, editing and rendering video will push it to it's limits. PC's by their very nature are multi-task oriented machines. What this means is that they are designed to do several different types of work, like web browsing, typing, gaming, etc. In layman's terms, PC's are jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. Most people have dozens of programs running in the background aside from the standard windows processes, all doing different task, like anti-virus, spyware protection, msn messenger, apple quicktime, AIM, AOL, so on and so forth. All these programs are using different resources on your PC and occasionally require the processors attention. Unless you have a new dual core system, you only have one processor and no matter how fast it is, it can only do one thing at a time. To make it clearer to understand, imagine you are taking and end of semester collage calculus exam, and you have 20 kids screaming at you wanting your attention. Now you understand what your processor feels like!
The first thing you need to do before running VS or any other video editor or sequencer is dedicate your computer to nothing else but that. You can do this clicking on the start menu and clicking on run. In the Run dialog box type msconfig. The system configuration editor will come up from which you will choose "Selective Startup". Clear all the boxes except for the "Load System Services" box. Click OK and restart your computer. You just got rid of the 20 screaming kids. Those virtual screaming kids are what caused 98% of all the complaints found in this review board. The next thing you need to do is defragment your hard drive. You need to do this on a regular basis anyway, but it great to do it just before you do anything with video. If you have a large hard drive (which you should if your going to do serious video editing) defragmenting could take several hours in which you should leave your computer alone; so start it the night before and let it run all night.
Good morning! Now your are ready to do video editing.
First off, VS is not a video editor in the truest since of the word "Editor", because it cannot enhance your video (brighten, sharpen, add color tone, cut out a region of a frame etc.) What VS is, is a sequencer which allows you to add video clips, images, graphics and sound together in your desired sequence. VS, is great at what it does. As far as sequencers go, VS gives you 10 times more control over your final product then any other product I have tried. All that control makes it a lot harder to understand then a program the uses a bunch of presets to do the job for you. Most people that have reviewed this product, have reviewed it as a whole, but that is not fair. I will review the individual aspects of the product for you to have a better idea of the program.
One last thing I want to talk about before I issue my final review scores, is rendering. There were a lot of reviews that complained about how long rendering took. I also noticed that the same reviewers stated that the final video was of excellent quality. There was one reviewer that had tried some other programs that rendered much fast, but the final product was fuzzy and distorted. The simple truth about video rendering is that the longer it takes to render, the better the quality of video. Rendering time is also drastically effected by the build your overall system (CPU, RAM, Graphics Card etc.) and whether or not you have 20 virtual screaming kids in the background.
Now for my final review. Scored 1 to 10 (10 being the highest)
1. INTERFACE, Score 6: The interface borders on professional level, because there are so many customizable options. This can be confusing for new comers with little experience. Once you get use to the program though, you will find the interface mostly intuitive, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
2. CAPTURE; Score 8: This is a hard one to rate because there are thousands of different capture devices and it is hard for any software developer to keep up with them all. VS will not work with most legacy devices. VS allows for RAW (or DV) capturing, which a lot of other programs don't. RAW is best if you want to produce a high quality DVD, but it takes up about 10GB for an hour of video.
3. RENDERING; Score 9: Glaciers move faster, but the quality of the final product is worth the wait. Most freeze ups with this program will occur during the rendering process, but these will be due to you not following the steps above to get your system ready to render video. It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you walk away from you computer and leave it alone during the rendering process. Don't even think of touching you computer while it is rendering. Doing so will cause it to freeze up. If you still get freeze up after doing the things above, you may need to reinstall the program. It is always important to remember that computers are built by imperfect humans and are therefore imperfect. Sometimes you do everything right and bad things still happen. You just try again.
4. OUPUT; Score 9: VS has preset for just about every standard output you can think of, and gives you configurations option (if you know how) to produce all the rest.
5. DVD MENUS; Score 7: VS gives you a lot of options for creating nice menus and a nice assortment of ready made templates, but you have to have Ulead photo impact to edit the templates or create new custom template. Where this area really lacks is a save option. As stated multiple time on this review board, any changes you make to the timeline will result in you having to start the dvd menu from scratch. This can be a real bummer if you have a customized menu, but not that bad if you use the ready made templates.
6. INCLUDED GRAPHICS: Score 10: VS come with the most extensive assortment of transitions, graphics, sounds, etc. of any other program. I am talking about professional level transitions and stuff. You will not be disappointed in this area.
7. COMPARISON WITH ADOBE PREMIERE: You really cannot even compare the two because Premiere is a video editor and VS is a sequencer. Is Premier more powerful? Yes it is in some areas, but VS slaps it silly in other areas. First off Premiere and intuitive interface is an oxymoron. To even start using Premiere adequately you will have to go to school or spend months stumbling along. Second, you had better have one heck of a tweaked out computer before you even install it, or all of your hard work will end up in a freeze. Third, Premiere can only edit and sequence your video. It can render it, but only to a file on your computer. It cannot create DVD menus or burn it to your DVD or VCD disk. For that you will need separate Adobe DVD authoring program (where the heck did my $300 go?) The bottom line is, unless you need a video editor to enhance or repair the quality of your video, 99% of us do not need a program like Adobe Premiere. I spent the big buck to buy Premiere and it is just gathering dust.
8. OVERALL IMPRESSION: If you are serious about producing nice DVD's, SVCDS and streaming web video, this is the program for you. I have produce DVD's with VS for public showings that many people have reviewed as bordering Hollywood quality. Can VS be improved? Name something that can't be improved.
If you just want to make some streaming web videos for your blog or website, you can use this program but there are many free programs that can do that just as well.
If you just want to copy old VHS tapes to DVD disk, buy a dual deck VHS/DVD-R combo unit at Wal-mart for $98 and save yourself a lot of time and trouble. Why stress your poor home computer out? Most of these combo units even have DVD menu and chapter options.
I hope this review has helped you out.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
VideoStudio has a great product, September 15, 2005
I have used several video editing products and find VideoStudio version 9.0 one of the easiest to use and with excellent output. It does an great job reading numerous video formats which other video editors have choked on (like the AVI files generated by my Canon PowerShot S230 camera). It is not without some faults (what do you want for sub $100). Here are a few observations that may save you some headache. First of all, there are some strict restrictions on upgrade and competitive rebates - so beware (e.g. no bundled versions). When creating a DVD note that transitions between photos in slideshows will cause a subtle yet annoying pop in the image and the very start and end of each transistion. Digitize your video as the DV type 2 format (not type 1) if you would like edit the video in Adobe Premiere (at least this was true for my ver 6.0). After creating a menu system for a DVD, close out of the process and save the project file. The menu information will be saved with the project. This will prevent the loss of all of your menu info for this project in case the DVD authoring process bombs. I have found their DVD buring to be about 75% reliable. A safer pathway is to create a video directory (see the check boxes at the buring stage) and burn the project with software like Nero. This has been flawless. Lastly, take the time to tinker with the pan-and-zoom tools for photographs, as well as the automatic music track creation tools. It's worth the time.
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