Ulead Videostudio 7

Regular PCW readers will know that Ulead's Videostudio has been our favourite budget videoediting application for some time. It makes the task of capturing, editing and recording movies so easy. But it also has some advanced features that won't disappoint.

The Videostudio workspace is well laid out with a large preview window centre stage. VCR controls below can be used to play and navigate either individual clips or the entire project. In common with most other applications reviewed here Videostudio can display either a storyboard or timeline layout. The storyboard has the advantage of simplicity, whereas the timeline provides advanced editing options and the ability to narrate a voiceover during playback.

To the right of the preview window a gallery area provides drag-and-drop access to your own video clips, application content including clips, still images and audio, and transitions and effects.

Tabs at the top of the screen split the process into logical editing tasks: capture, edit, effect, overlay, title, audio and share.

Videostudio's capture tools are as good as anything you'll find reviewed in this test and better than those available in some professional editing applications. In addition to manual capture using the on-screen device control buttons to locate the scene you want, Videostudio supports scenebased splitting of captured footage. You can also split previously captured footage.

There's a batch capture option which allows you to mark in and out points while viewing the tape and will then capture only the marked segments.

Videostudio is a good choice if you plan to burn VCD or DVD movies, not just because it includes good authoring and burning tools, but it also supports on-the-fly transcoding during capture. This means you can convert your DV (or, providing you have the necessary hardware, analogue) clips to mpeg2 format automatically as you capture them. Mpeg1 and wmv formats can also be transcoded during capture.

One of the much-vaunted features of this latest release is what Ulead calls Instaview and is generally referred to as realtime preview. Dedicated hardware is usually required to render special effects and video transitions in real time, without having to first render the affected section of the timeline. In practice, Instaview was little better or worse than any other application's realtime preview. On undemanding footage it coped reasonable well, but with anything more complicated than a dissolve the quality of the preview was so poor it was better to switch it off and go back to rendering.

The effects are among the best on offer and provide a level of control and customisation you'd have to spend a lot more money to better. Version 7 has extended the number of effects that are keyframeable. Videostudio makes good use of animated icons to provide a visual preview of effects and this goes for the library of presets, which is available for each one and is displayed in the options panel. Clicking the customise filter button opens the keyframe settings. Here you get good controls for adjusting effects and adding keyframes, plus a preview window, but it's less intuitive than the rest of the program.

Advanced editing features, such as adding overlay and title tracks, or recording a voiceover narration automatically switches to timeline mode so that you can access the video overlay and audio tracks. As with most aspects of

Videostudio these tasks are made simple by the provision of plenty of preset options with easy-to-use controls. Videostudio has excellent DVD authoring features based on Ulead?s DVD Moviefactory. Your video project is automatically added to the DVD, other clips can be imported and there's a good selection of menu templates to choose from. You get the chance to preview before committing to disc and there?s a good selection of output options, including writing to folders and producing a disc image. It's simple and it works.

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

System requirements:

• 800MHz PIII
• 128MB of Ram
• Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP
• 500MBof disk space
• 4GB for video files