Put yourself in the picture - Part 2

There's a growing range of cheap and easy-to-use video-editing applications on the market aimed squarely at beginners. We continue our test of the top progams available.

PINNACLE STUDIO 8
Pinnacle is one of the biggest names in the video-editing business, with a broad range of software and hardware products at both ends of the market. Its Studio software is suitable for beginners and is available both as a standalone application and as part of a number of Pinnacle hardware packages.

Over the years, Studio has matured into an extremely solid application. Version 8 isn't radically different to Version 7 but a reduced-price upgrade (£40) is available for those who wish to make use of the new features without shelling out the full amount.

The three main steps of the video-editing process are clearly distinguished from each other by the Capture, Edit and Make Movie tabs along the top left-hand side of the window. The capture screen varies, depending on your source (analogue or digital). Analogue users are able to alter settings such as brightness, contrast and even audio volume during the recording stage, which is useful if it is necessary to compensate for poor picture or sound quality.

Digital camcorder users, however, are treated to SmartCapture, which can grab clips at low quality so they don't take up as much room on your hard disk. When you have finished editing, Studio will then piece together your completed film using the full-quality footage on your tape. Very clever.

Studio's automatic scene detection is a great time saver which analyses information on your tapes and splits your captured footage up into manageable chunks. MiniDV recordings usually store date and time data along with the image and sound so it's easy for Studio to electronically discern where one scene ends and another begins. The program uses a clever alternative when capturing from an analogue source, however. It keeps an eye on the video content, such as lighting, and produces a new file whenever it notices any radical changes.

Pinnacle Studio is by far the best program to handle the complicated and delicate capture process, and it continues to excel once you have got all your footage on board. Click on the Edit tab and the interface changes to a new working environment with an Album window, preview monitor and a timeline.

All the materials you'll need to build your film will be available from the Album. Press the little camcorder icon and you'll find your clips displayed as thumbnails. Drag and drop them into place on the timeline to construct your story, or trim them in the preview window to get rid of any bits you don't need. Underneath the camcorder icon are five further sections to the Album from where you can select transitions, effects, titles, still photos, audio and so on.

There is a fine range of all of these components and you can even generate your own home-made effects and music, should you wish.

To top it all, Pinnacle Studio comes with one of the best DVD/CD authoring features we have seen at this sort of price. The program is highly recommended for beginners but we were also surprised by some of the higher-end features, which should keep more advanced editors busy.

Price: £60
Contact: Pinnacle 01895 442003
www.pinnaclesys.com

ROXIO VIDEOWAVE 5 POWER EDITION
What started life as a very basic, beginner's video-editing program has, over the years, developed into a slightly more serious product - hence the subtitle Power Edition and the biggest price tag of all the packages in this test.

Don't be put off by its aggressive-sounding name, however. VideoWave is actually a very straightforward program to use. To start with, you can choose from a number of different production templates, which help to disguise some of the complexities of video editing by providing pre-defined resolution and quality settings based on common project types. Experienced users, however, can customise these settings as required.

As you might expect from a Roxio product, the CD/DVD authoring part is something of a strong point. Rather than a separate application, all disc creation takes place within VideoWave's main interface, which means that you don't have to learn how to use two different applications. Just click on the DVD button at the bottom of the mode selector and you're off. You can divide movies up into chapters, create your own DVD menus and even set up some music to play in the background - the perfect way to show off your editing skills to your mates.

As an interesting footnote, Roxio also provides free web space for registered users of VideoWave Power Edition to post web-friendly versions of their movies to share with friends, family (and even strangers) online.

VideoWave Power Edition is a competent editor and many users will take to, its working environment quickly. Those who have already had some experience of video editing will be pleased by some of the higher-end features, but VideoWave never manages to make the process of cutting together a movie quite as intuitive as Pinnacle Studio does.

Price: £90
Contact: Roxio - no UK number
www.roxio.co.uk

ROXIO VIDEOWAVE MOVIE CREATOR
To compensate somewhat for the increasing complexity of its older sibling, VideoWave Movie Creator has stepped in to fill the gap at the lower end of the market.

Understandably, not everyone will want to spend hours hunched in front of a hot PC slaving away over their holiday video footage and if that sounds like you, VideoWave Movie Creator might be the perfect solution.

Capture and output are about as simple as they possibly can be, while three different options are available for the actual editing portion of the process. CineMagic and StoryBuilder modes provide users with an almost entirely automated construction.

Naturally, employing either of these two modes will mean that you relinquish a great deal of control over your finished product. While you can choose the clips and the music you want included, there's no guarantee that the resulting movie will tell any kind of coherent story.

Using CineMagic, what you'll get is more akin to a sort of random pop video version of your memories. This is no bad thing, of course, and means that you can capture, edit and make a DVD or a VideoCD of your movie with the bare minimum of time wasting and hassle.

StoryBuilder allows for a little more customisation - but not much. A wizard guides you through the process and you can create titles or trim clips to a manageable size, but you still have very little say when it comes to the finer points of your finished movie.

Thankfully, however, Movie Creator also allows for a more hands-on approach, should you wish to tackle trims, transitions and effects in person. Story Line mode works on a similar principle to many of the other video-editing applications on test. You'll find the familiar library and preview windows, along with the Story Line itself running across the top of the screen.

Drag and drop clips, effects and titles as required and assemble them in the precise sequence you require in the Story Line.

VideoWave Movie Creator won't really appeal to anyone other than real beginners but the inclusion of the Story Line mode means that the program should be able to grow a little with your abilities and ambitions.

Price: £50
Contact: Roxio - no UK number
www.roxio.co.uk

ULEAD VIDEOSTUDIO 7
Ulead's VideoStudio has been around for a while now and its rise to popularity is no doubt helped by the fact that it is often to be found bundled with various types of video capture card. As with Pinnacle Studio, VideoStudio's experience and longevity show through in the application's sophistication.

Over various version numbers, Ulead has tweaked VideoStudio's interface and feature set so that it is now surprisingly powerful. Evidence of these alterations can be found in its look and feel, which has in the past been overly 'friendly' and often misleading.

The program has had something of a makeover this time around and the more classic preview, library and storyline/timeline combination is a lot easier to stomach.

The application supports scores of different file formats for both import and export. You can capture from a wide range of sources, such as analogue and digital camcorders, VCRs and webcams. Interestingly, VideoStudio is one of the first programs to offer support for Sony's new MicroMV digital cassette format.

The influence of DVD is felt not only in the predictable disc-authoring features, but also in the fact that you can capture and edit entirely in MPEG-2 format, should DVD be your intended destination. As a bonus, this should keep down the amount of disk space used during your editing.

VideoStudio is also capable of the same kind of scene detection as Pinnacle Studio, which helps to organise your projects. Should any of your clips be unusually large, VideoStudio can compensate for pre-Windows XP file size limitations by chopping up clips that are bigger than 4Gb during capture and 'disguising' them as one big clip for ease of use.

All of the best aspects of previous incarnations have been retained for Version 7. Still very much present and correct are more than 150 effects, filters and transitions, while titles and animations are handled extremely competently by Cool 3D. Rather more odd is the fact that many of the major improvements in VideoStudio 7 come in the shape of hardware-dependent, professional-end features that most users are unlikely to ever exploit.

For instance, the program is optimised for use with dual processors - something that you'll rarely find throbbing away inside the average home PC. Likewise, the program's full-screen, real-time previews are only available to users with specialised graphics cards capable of simultaneous output to a second monitor - and even then the real-time aspect is dependent on a fairly lofty PC specification.

Ulead VideoStudio continues to represent great value but appears to be becoming a tad confused over its precise position in the market. Its simplistic layout will appeal to learners but the program is deceptively complex and most users simply won't benefit from its high-end features.

Price: £50
Contact: Ulead - 01327 844880
www.ulead.co.uk

The closing sequence
Video editing is a complicated process that uses a lot of your computer's resources. The best programs manage to disguise this and make video editing fun, allowing you to get creative without a steep learning curve.

It seems that the longer in the tooth it is, the better the application, if the successes of Pinnacle's Studio and Ulead's VideoStudio are anything to go by. They outshine the competition on just about every level, with well-rounded feature sets, easy-to-use interfaces and powerful editing tools. In this instance, Pinnacle Studio just has the edge.

Also in this series:

Put yourself in the picture - Part 1