Product Reviews

VideoStudio is a home-oriented video-editing package that has never been short of powerful features. However, it failed to make a good impression in our last review, with an emphasis more on quantity than quality and an interface that made certain editing tasks cumbersome.

Sadly, these core editing tools remain largely unchanged since version 10. The software caters reasonably well for inexperienced users, with a Storyboard View that shows one thumbnail per video clip and the ability to drop effects and transitions directly onto or between clips. Colour correction is available for clips without having to venture into the effects palette, and now include excellent automatic brightness and white balance adjustment. The Timeline View is less friendly, though, and it's the only way to access various editing features such as text and graphic overlays, chroma keying (green-screen) effects, incidental music and DVD chapter points. Effects are handled awkwardly, too: bizarrely, clicking the Effect tab at the top reveals the transitions rather than the effects, so instead, you'll need to rummage through 25 entries in a drop-down list and click Video Filters. There are no bypass switches for effects, and the pop-up window for editing their settings is cramped and doesn't show the result of layered effects. Overall, VideoStudio's editing tools aren't disastrous, but compared to Adobe Premiere Elements' or Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum's, they seem clunky and, at times, unresponsive.

On

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the bright side, VideoStudio covers much more than basic editing. It can transfer DV camera footage straight to DVD, edit videos automatically with its Movie Wizard, batch convert groups of video files, and capture from a huge variety of video camera types, TV tuners and capture cards. New to version 11 is support for AVCHD cameras, the new high-definition format that records to hard disk, 8cm DVDs or memory.

However, AVCHD's huge resolution and processor-intensive MPEG-4 format make it hard work for PCs to edit, and this is particularly true in VideoStudio. When we jumped to a point in the timeline and hit Play, VideoStudio took 12 seconds to respond on our Core 2 Duo PC, and even a single stream of AVCHD video with no effects failed to preview smoothly. VideoStudio does have a workaround, though: a Smart Proxy feature generates temporary, lower-resolution copies of your files for easier editing, reverting back to the originals when you come to render your finished video.

Saving grace

For all its weaknesses, VideoStudio has one trump card: disc authoring. Projects can be burned as a normal DVD Video, but also as an HD DVD or Blu-ray disc. Of course, the HD DVD functionality is all but irrelevant now, but Blu-ray writers are becoming affordable - we review one on page 40. Blank Blu-ray discs are still too expensive at £10, but VideoStudio provides a superb workaround by allowing HD video to be burned to conventional DVDs, either as a menu-less AVCHD disc (for Blu-ray players) or as HD DVD data. A dual layer DVD holds 73 minutes of AVCHD video or 42 minutes of HD DVD. It's a great idea that avoids the need for a new drive, but check your Blu-ray or HD DVD set-top player supports these discs.

As an editor alone, VideoStudio can't be recommended against the competition from Adobe and Sony. However, Adobe's Premiere Elements lacks support for AVCHD, while Sony's Vegas MSP can't export HD footage to optical disc. As such, it's worth considering VideoStudio just for its HD authoring features, alongside another editor.