Product Reviews

If you're thinking about spending £40 to £70 on video-editing software, there are two routes you can follow. The first is to go for a cut-down version of a professional video editing package - either Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Both are extraordinarily flexible programs, and neither differs much from the £500 package on which it's based. However, Ulead hopes that you'd prefer the other option - going for a program that's specifically aimed at home users, offering plenty of hand-holding for novice movie-makers.

VideoStudio offers a choice of a storyboard or a timeline on which you can arrange your clips. It also comes with a range of wizards and templates to manage a variety of editing functions. Still, it isn't short of other features, and some of these are pretty useful. Version 8 already offered a vast collection of transitions and effects, plus the ability to morph effects settings over time. A huge range of video, image and audio formats can be imported, and there's a useful set of export templates, as well as some elegant DVD authoring tools. Text animation looks superb, although it can admittedly be awkward to edit.

A new DV-to-DVD wizard aims to make the transfer from DV tape to DVD as simple as possible. A 'Scan DV tape' feature zips through a tape at around six times normal speed and divides its contents into separate clips, with a thumbnail image for each.

All you have to do is tick

Despite some improvements, the program's Movie Wizard isn't much better than in version 8. It automatically edits footage based on a range of template themes, but it's still incapable of producing anything worth savouring - its templates are simply too garish. At least the new video effects are more useful. Ghost Motion produces video echoes that can actually look pretty eerie. Video Pan and Zoom allows you to scan smoothly across video clips. Chroma key makes it possible to achieve 'blue-screen' overlays (as long as you have a blue screen handy during filming), while Distort clip offers some fun warping effects - it's a bit of a shame that these can't be morphed over time, though.

The downside to offering such an extensive collection of features is a sprawling and often confusing interface. Each new version of VideoStudio has simply crammed more features into roughly the same screen layout. A few improvements have been made to the accessibility of key features - selecting a clip now brings up buttons to adjust its colour and playback speed or to reverse or rotate it. However, other effects and their associated settings are oddly located and confusingly named. There are some bizarre inconsistencies, too, such as the fact that Pan and Zoom is accessed in different ways for photos and videos.

VideoStudio's storyboard editing and DV-to-DVD Wizard might make it seem a better choice for inexperienced users than Premiere Elements and Vegas Movie Studio. Ultimately, though, even the simplest projects rely on precise, efficient core editing tools and a timeline that's quick to navigate. In both these areas, VideoStudio can't compete with Premiere and Vegas, which makes them better options for inexperienced as well as advanced users.