Ulead Video Studio 6

Ulead is one of the most prominent players in budget video editing. As the list of features remains pretty much the same throughout the field, ease of use has become paramount.

Hence the completely revamped interface in version six of Video Studio. Our initial feeling on the interface was that it was a vast improvement on the previous one, which was a little too basic in our view.

In an attempt to make things easy, Ulead has placed eight groups of menus at the top of the screen. The groups match up with the different stages of video editing, such as Capture, Storyboard and Effects. Inside each are the commands Ulead thinks are associated with the group.

The result is quite confusing; working out some of the simplest tasks requires much head scratching and manual reading, coupled with the occasional prolonged screaming fit. That said, the rest of the interface uses a drag and drop method, which makes things easier once you get to grips with the group menus.

You'll spend most of your time in the storyboard at the bottom of the screen. This outlines what stage the scenes, overlays, titles and audio occur in your film. All of your raw footage can be dragged and dropped onto it from the library window on the right.

The Effects menu consists mainly of transitions, such as wipes and 3D effects, of which there are 122. Each can be dragged onto the timeline bar, or be modified from the same menu. Sadly, nearly all of the 122 are too tacky to be used for anything other than comedy value.

Filtering is basic and easy to use, but only the brightness and colour filters serve any practical purpose. The Overlay, Title and Audio Dubbing menus are dealt with in a very similar fashion.

Digital Video capture has been made simpler thanks to automatic detection of the camcorder's capture driver, and Video Studio 6 also lets you control the device from the software.

Another method of saving on hard disk space is the scene detection function. The file size limitations on Fat32 systems mean you can only store files up to 4Gb in size. Video Studio 6 puts footage into separate files, eliminating the problem. The separations are calculated by measuring the alterations in time code on the camcorder.

The Final drop menu provides options to render the footage and burn it to disc. The traditional VCD and SVCD burning options are given, as well as the option to save the rendered file to the hard disk. DVD authoring is a new feature, included to coincide with the arrival of computer DVD burners.

Ulead says that the software supports all three DVD formats. The DVD plug-in is automatically launched once the mpeg file was rendered, and gives scene selection and labelling options, as well as a short selection of backgrounds for chapter menu screens. VCD and SVCD authoring run through the same plug-in.

Rendering a 10-minute piece of footage took just over eight minutes 30 seconds on an Athlon 1800+ with 256Mb of memory. Considering that the footage had multiple effects and overlays, this is pretty average, although we were quietly hoping for a faster time.

Curiously, on both an Athlon 1800+ and a 2.2GHz Pentium 4 DDR system, preview playback tended to stall, which was something that managed to both surprise and disappoint us.

The bonus content CD includes a stereotypical variety of avi, mpeg-1and 2 and uncompressed video files, along with some audio files and picture stills. Other programs included on the installation disc are Realplayer 8.0, Quicktime 5.02 and Acrobat 5.0.

For less than £50, you can't expect anything close to professional quality editing, merely an introduction. Video Studio 6 is cheaper than many of its rivals, and the inclusion of DVD authoring plug-in sets it above them.

As a package for beginners, though, the aim should be ease of use; Video Studio 6 fails on this account, as the new interface makes life more confusing than is necessary. Sadly therefore, Video Studio 6 falls below our expectations.

System requirements: 450MHz processor or higher; Windows 98 and above; 4.5Gb of free hard disk space for installation and for video data storage and editing; 800 x 600 resolution monitor.

Contact: Ulead 01327 844 880
www.ulead.co.uk