Digital Video Editing 101
Written: Jun 26 '02 (Updated Jun 26 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to learn and use.
Cons: Help files are shallow. Advanced users may want more features.
The Bottom Line: No need to look any further if you just want to edit your home videos. This program can do it with ease.
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| Matt.'s Full Review: Ulead VideoStudio 6 Full Version for PC (A28-460-1... |
I am new to digital video editing and VideoStudio 6 is the first program I have used.
I downloaded the trial version from the Ulead web site and installed the program on a Windows XP machine without any trouble.
The first thing I noticed when I started the program was the user interface. It doesn't have the look and feel of a standard Windows program. Windows users are used to seeing the toolbar say "FILE, EDIT, etc." across the top, but this program has its own cartoon style buttons which are meant to lead you through the whole process of working with your video step by step. It seems a little clumsy at first, but once you learn your way around, you can navigate through the various menus with no problem.
Capturing video from my digital camcorder (Sony DCR-TRV240) was a snap. The program allows you to control the camera playback through the firewire connection to make scene selection and capture very easy. You can also use video files already stored on your computer (AVI, MPG, etc.) if you have them.
Putting your clips together is the fun part. Just drag and drop them onto the time line in any order you want and then trim the start/end points for each clip (if you need to). After you have the clips in order you can start to add titles, overlays, transitions and sounds.
It is simple to generate titles and you can place them over any point in the video you want. There are a lot of options for fonts, colors and shadows and you can also animate them to move across the screen, fade in or out, or zoom in or out. You can easily adjust the time the title appears on the screen and move the title to the exact time in the video you want. Scrolling titles are possible to give you the effect of movie 'credits'.
Overlays are a second layer of video (or a still picture) that you can place over the original clip. This is nice if you want to blend in another scene or image over the main scene, or create a "picture in a picture" effect. There are a lot of controls for the overlay so you can size it and place it where you want on the screen, fade it in or out, and also control the audio level, fade it, or mute it completely. Overlays give you a lot of ways to make your videos look more professional.
After you have your clips arranged the way you want them, you can add transitions, which are screen effects that take place between scenes. There are a wide variety of transitions to choose from and most of them have controls that allow you to adjust the way they move. You can also control the time the transition appears on the screen. Transitions can only be used between individual clips - you cannot put a transition in the middle of a video clip or at the beginning or end of your video.
Music and narration can be added to any part of your video. You can use music from any CD or audio file. For narration, you simply talk directly into your computer's microphone while the video plays. The music and narration can overlay the original video soundtrack, or you can mute the original soundtrack and just have the music or narration. Yes, you can add music AND narration - you are not limited to one or the other.
Finally, after you have your video looking just the way you want it, it's time to render it to a file. You will choose what type of output file you want (depending on how you intend to store it and play it back - DVD, VCD, AVI, etc). There are many file types supported which give you a lot of options for compatibility. Rendering blends all the clips and titles and overlays and transitions and sounds into one big file. This takes a lot of computing horsepower so the more CPU beef you have, the better. I rendered 30 minutes of video to an SVCD format (which is a .mpg file - 480 x 480 @ 30 fps) on an AMD 1800XP processor and it took one hour and 40 minutes. The final file size was 536MB.
After you have your file rendered, VideoStudio has a wizard that helps you create and burn a DVD or VCD if you want. (You need a DVD or CD burner of course.) You can make a title page with chapters that will show up on your DVD player so you can easily jump around from scene to scene. Neat. I burned an SVCD on my CD burner with no sweat.
Overall, I found this program to be very easy to use and full featured. It provides everything a home user needs to capture, edit and produce high quality family videos. The wizard for burning a DVD or VCD is a big plus. Advanced users may want more features, such as more than one overlay or sound track, or, the ability to dig into individual frames for special effects. But for basic video editing and production, I found this program to be very adequate.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Matt.
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Member: Matt
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 2 members
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