Product Reviews

VideoStudio was one of the first video editors aimed at home users. Nine versions on, it packs some powerful features. Key frame-based automation allows effects to change gradually over time, unlike many inexpensive editors. There's a great collection of transitions, effects and text animations, and VideoStudio's DVD authoring wizard is one of the best at this price.

This latest version comes with loads of new features. Chroma keying is available for overlaying clips using blue-screen techniques. It isn't easy to construct and correctly light a blue screen to make this work effectively, but it's fun to play with. It's also possible to pan and zoom across video clips, although this is presented differently to the pan and zoom introduced in version 8. Distort clip allows video to be stretched and skewed, but this is one of the few effects that can't be morphed over time. The most valuable of the new features is Auto Save, which successfully recovered our work on those occasions when VideoStudio crashed.

A new DV-to-DVD Wizard

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aims to make transfers from DV tape to DVD as simple as possible. Connect your camera via FireWire, click Quick Scan and the software zips through the tape in fast preview mode and identifies all the individual clips. Then you just pick the clips you want, choose a DVD menu template and leave the software to capture the required footage and burn it to DVD. It's a great idea, but it didn't work in our tests because Quick Scan thought our entire tape was one continuous clip. We also had problems with scene detection when capturing at normal speed, although we saw the Quick Scan feature working in a demonstration by Ulead.

Little has been done to address existing problems with the software. There's a new zoom control that makes navigating the timeline slightly faster, but basic editing still feels cumbersome and there's a five-second delay between clicking Play and previews commencing. The layout of the interface is a mess. For instance, if you try to drag an effect from the library on the right to the list of used effects on the left, the left menu disappears. When applying multiple effects to a clip, the pop-up preview shows the results of only one effect at a time. This window uses key frames for effects that change over time. This produces sophisticated results, but the small preview thumbnails make it quite difficult to use.

Ulead's strategy of stuffing each new release with new features is no longer enough to keep it competitive. VideoStudio is still a long way from the sheer power of Adobe Premiere Elements and it would take much reworking of the interface and preview engine to make it as easy to use.