Video Editing

From within the program, you can capture video and photos from digital devices such as digital camcorders and digital still cameras and also from analog VHS or 8mm video tapes (requires A/D converter), TV (requires PC TV tuner card)and personal DVDs. The fastest way to archive your DV tapes is to hook up the camcorder to your computer and from the DV-to-DVD module select "Burn whole tape." Or have the tape scanned and use the resulting thumbnails to select which scenes to include, then select a design template, and the program will create a movie for you. Finally, you can save and/or print a "scan digest," a text and thumbnail record of all the scenes on the tape--a neat reference.

If you’re new to video editing but still want to exercise a little more control of how your DVD movie will look, the Movie Wizard module offers some great features while still creating your movie quickly and easily. For example, by using the multiple overlays feature, Movie Wizard will take the first clip from your movie and overlay it in a picture-in-picture format to automatically create a cool opening sequence, complete with music and motion. You can still capture your DV video directly from this module, select which scenes you want and choose from a wide selection of movie-themed templates. Add a title and end credits if you want and then burn a DVD disc for viewing on DVD players or PCs or create a video file for e-mail, Web or mobile device use (including formats for the iPod, Zune, mobile phones and others).

The DV-to-DVD and the Movie Wizard modules provide a quick and easy way to deal with your videos by providing many automatic features, but they do limit your choices. If you want to feel like a real movie director and have most control over your movies or slide shows, then use the VideoStudio Editor module. There’s a learning curve associated with many of the features, but help is available in the form of tool tips, on-line help and a 168-page on-disc User Manual. You’ll need to spend some trial-and-error time to become comfortable in arranging scenes, transitions, backgrounds, music, special features and the like, but you’ll have some great movies to show for it--so don’t give up.

From the folder where you put your captured video, you can drag and drop the thumbnails of desired scenes onto the story board and rearrange them to suit your story. Now the fun part of editing begins. You may not want a complete scene in your movie, so you can trim scenes to include only the part you want. Keep your story moving along smoothly by adding transitions between scenes from the dozens provided. If your original video isn’t quite up to snuff, apply one or more filters or corrections to fix color, darkness, white balance and more.

Then add titles and credits using the wide choice of fonts, color, sizes and animations included. These can be added to a blank slide or overlaid as part of the video. The program also supports up to seven video tracks, so adding multiple Overlay Tracks allows more creative possibilities. You can superimpose clips over a background video, with portions of the overlay being transparent, or add objects and frames for additional fun or WOW! effects. The program supports chroma key, so you can video your subject against a solid color background and replace the color with another scene, a technique that allows you to show someone appearing to be at the Eiffel Tower or on the beach--without leaving your home.

You can easily add music from the small selection included or from your own collection and/or record your own narration. The Timeline display lets you easily trim audio to match the scene length and adjust the volume of music and narration separately. An audio waveform display allows for precision sound trimming, and the program will reprocess stereo audio into a simulated Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound for maximum effect.

Finish your movie project by selecting a menu template and fully customize it if you want by adding motion effects, transitions and more. Then burn to disc or save to file in a variety of formats to suit your needs including DH, DVD, video CD, mobile video and others.

The program supports HD content but this extracts a toll on your computer hardware by requiring a 3.0GHz+ processor, 1GB+ RAM a few GB hard drive space and a 16X+ display adapter, so pay attention to system requirements.

We used the program to produce a promotional movie for sports. It was mostly easy, though an occasional feature eluded us for a while. But with on-line and User Manual help and a lot of patience we figured it all out and were very pleased with the results.

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