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Software and Games : Software Categories : Video & Music : Video Creation & Editing
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Ulead
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Apex Web Media
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Cosmi Europe Ltd
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X-oom
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Adobe Systems
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Cosmi Europe Ltd
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Ulead
With more and more folks diving into the joys and challenges of digital video editing at home, VideoStudio 5 offers the aspiring videographer the latest in digital video technologies in an easy to utilize package. Presenting itself as movie-making software for everyone, VideoStudio is designed to reduce the learning curve while improving upon the previous version's capability to create fairly sophisticated videos and output them in a variety of useful formats.VideoStudio 5 comes with two CDs--the program itself, and a content CD of source material. In addition to VideoStudio, the program CD will also install QuickTime, Windows Media Format, RealPlayer, and Acrobat Reader. VideoStudio 5 supports the IEEE 1394, or FireWire, video capture card; but, if you have Windows NT, FireWire cards are not supported. You can use one of a number of other capture cards if this is the case. If you have a FireWire card and a DV camcorder, this means smooth plug-and-play operation. Just connect your DV camera and, with a couple of mouse clicks, you're controlling playback of your camera, capturing video directly to your hard drive.
In fact, several new enhancements of VideoStudio 5 improve upon the video capture capabilities. For example, there is now automatic plug-and-play capture device detection. VideoStudio will recognize most DV cameras when plugged in, and select the appropriate capture plug-in, eliminating the need to restart the application and manually select the plug-in. There is now support for batch video capture, an extremely useful tool for capturing multiple sections of the same tape in one pass. Just set the mark in and out points of all the scenes you wish to capture, run batch capture, and go make coffee or change Junior's diapers while the footage is imported. New scene change detection will recognize date and time changes of an AVI-formatted DV video file, and break it into multiple clips, as in many cases these breaks indicate a content or scene change. This speeds up the organization of your source footage.
Other new features include video filters, such as emboss, mosaic, and oil paint, that can be applied to clips directly. Titling has also improved, allowing for basic or 3-D-style text with transparency, edges, and shadows. An important enhancement in light of the popularity of video streaming over the Internet is support for the latest video streaming protocols like RealVideo and Windows Media files. You can also edit in MPEG-2 format, for DVD-quality video, and export to QuickTime, AVI, and other file formats.
VideoStudio 5 continues to improve on Ulead's elegant, if slightly overdesigned, application. The goal is clearly to present a user interface that is as fun to look at as it is easy to use and create with. Ultimately, the latter is what really matters, and to this end VideoStudio succeeds. --John Bosch
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FastTrak
Whilst there are plenty of at-home music-making CD-ROMs to choose from these days, Ultimate Dance Music & Video Maker has the facility for making your own videos to accompany your music.The package is broadly aimed at beginners and boffins alike. For those who are novices at computerised home recording, an integral Song Wizard is constantly on-hand to help you through the process. With a little nudge, the Song Wizard will show you how to use your mouse to select your musical instruments, to decide the length of song, and to create and modify sounds and samples which will eventually go in the mix. Facilities for echo, reverb, "timestretch" and "pitchshift" are also available at the drop of a finger. The truly clever bit comes when you press the video button: a number of "modules" will appear, with little preview pictures to show you what you're getting. Choose one of these, and figures dance, screens go wild, landscapes and cartoon characters do your most whimsical bidding . It's a bit like being Steven Spielberg without all the effort. Or money.
Extras include a rather splendid retro-style techno synthesiser, a similarly sassy hip-hop synth, a mixer, a copy facility and a kaleidoscope. And when you're finally done with your Quincy Jones impression you can send your proud production to a friend via e-mail, or, remarkably, post it on the Magix Web site. --Sean Thomas
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Magix
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Lotus
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Adobe Systems Inc.
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Adobe Systems Inc.
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Apex Web Media
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Apex Web Media
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Pinnacle Systems (UK)
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Pinnacle Systems (UK)
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Pinnacle Systems (UK)
A multifaceted yet user-friendly solution, Pinnacle Studio makes movie production both fun and rewarding. Whether you're just adding titles to your home movies or spicing them up with 3-D animated transitions and audio effects, this affordable video-editing software is perfect for all your home-editing projects.Although it may take days and perhaps weeks to become truly proficient--as indicated by the program's 300-page user's manual--Pinnacle Studio should have you tweaking your footage within minutes. Its intuitive and extremely polished interface, generous help section, slick tutorial, and massive online FAQ section are superb rookie aids. Unfortunately, you'll be far better off asking specific support questions via e-mail than through the company's telephone support lines, where hold times can be very long indeed.
Pinnacle Studio has been designed to look both elegant and visually appealing. It is divided into three main areas--Capture, Edit, and Make Movie. To upload a video, merely click the Start Capture command in the Capture interface. Control your video device by clicking various buttons on the program's large camcorder icon, and formulate edits on a large filmstrip spread across the bottom of the Edit screen. Pinnacle has smartly hidden secondary functions in pop-up windows to keep the screen uncluttered and easy to navigate.
The program offers several perks not found in other budget editors. When a video is uploaded, it automatically deciphers each new scene and creates a corresponding thumbnail image that may then be drag-and-dropped to any position on the filmstrip. Screen transitions can be drag-and-dropped, too, as can titles and sound effects such as music or voice-overs. If you want to deviate from the prefabricated special effects, Pinnacle Studio allows you to modify or create your own from scratch. For pinpoint edits, you'll want to access the timeline view, wherein you'll see an exacting second-by-second account of every video frame and every special effect you've added. Furthermore, the program helps conserve valuable hard drive space by converting your full DV-quality video to a more economical format for editing purposes, then reconverting it back to DV quality for the final product.
Veteran moviemakers may find some of the program's special effects rather basic, but anyone new to video editing will undoubtedly have a blast turning their home-grown movies into dynamic works of art, saving them in any number of video formats, and perhaps even sharing them at the Pinnacle Web site.--Gordon Goble, Amazon.com
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Adobe Systems Inc.
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X-oom
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Adobe Systems Inc.
After Effects is widely used in professional and semi-professional circles for creating advanced 2-D and 3-D video and animation effects. Version 5.5 adds considerably to its repertoire.After Effects is Adobe's visual effects and motion graphics application for digital video and Web sites. This is a half point upgrade from version 5 and includes new features, as well as full support for Windows XP. This is reflected in the documentation, which consists of the full After Effects 5.0 manual and a 50 page supplement, detailing what's new.
The look of the program has been improved by the introduction of an effects palette, where you can gain easy access to an improved range of effects, including grids, roughened edges, four-colour gradients and cell-patterns. You can view them by category or alphabetically.
Key new features start with projections and coloured shadows. You can specify a coloured layer to be translucent, so light shines through it to cast a colour onto another surface--think stained-glass windows for the concept here.
When working with 3-D objects it can often be difficult to easily visualise the relative positions of objects in a space, so Adobe has introduced the ability to open different views of the same scene, either as 2-D or 3-D panes. An advanced 3D renderer helps to ensure more accurate reproduction of the finished 3-D animation, too.
Finally, After Effects now supports a wider range of file formats. These include full support for RealMedia streaming video and the import of Macromedia Flash, MPEG-1 and several more esoteric 8-bit and 16-bit file types. After Effects 5.5 is a worthwhile upgrade if you work seriously with the moving image, either in video or in Web page animations. --Simon Williams