Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 (PC)

I have downloaded and spent several weeks using the trial versions of, Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10, Cyberlink Power Director 9 Ultra 64 and this new offering from Corel.

I want to be able to take footage from my Sony HDR CX115 camcorder, edit it, add some nice effects and transitions and burn it to a high definition DVD format that will play on my Blu-Ray player with nice intro menus etc. (I do not have a Blu-ray burner).

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 is cheaper, and in many respects has more powerful features such as key framing for transitions and powerful media creation tools. However, after spending a couple of weeks using it I still found it quite hard to remember how to do things. Unless you are using this software all the time, its powerful features and professional type interface does make the learning curve very steep. I also found that this software was painfully slow at rendering AVCHD video - up to 14 minutes of processing for every minute of video!

Cyberlink Power Director 9 Ultra 64 is easier to use than Sony's offering and is much faster at rendering - about 5 minutes to render 1 minute of AVCHD video at the highest quality setting. However, despite using every possible option in every possible configuration I could not make this software work correctly with the 1920x1080 50i footage produced from my camcorder - everything ended up blurry with lots of visible artefacts!

So, the third piece of software I trialled, I have now bought - Corel Video Studio Pro x4. It works beautifully with the footage created from my camcorder. Despite not being available as 64bit software (Cyberlink is 64bit, Sony is 32bit) it actually renders better looking AVCHD video quicker than Cyberlink Power Director 9 Ultra 64. Video Studio renders 1 minute of AVCHD on my computer in just under 3 minutes, and even quicker if you choose the Smart render option. The software includes loads of features, but lacks some of the functionality of Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum. I really like the fact that the user friendly interface means that you can create great effects such as picture in picture very easily and quickly with a small learning curve. The time lapse function is also brilliant - you could probably produce the same effect from the other software by manually picking frames, but it would take ages - Corel Video Studio does it all for you. The 3D function however is a nice toy to play with, but do not buy this software for this function - it is fun but very limited in what it can do.

So I now have the best software for my needs - it does everything I want easily and quickly - so 5 stars!

I suggest that if you have any doubts about the software, take advantage of the 30 day trials that Corel, Cyberlink and Sony offer and try them with your system and see what works best.

(My Computer is a laptop running 64bit windows 7 with 6Gb of Ram and an AMD Phenom II triple core 2GHz processor)

**I used this software on my computer with specs of Windows 7, with 2GB RAM & a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core Processor 5000+ 2.61GHz.**

When opening the start-up file from the disk it will give you two installation options; 'Install VideoStudio Pro X4' or 'Install Utilities', if you do not have Apples quick time or Adobes flash player, I would highly recommend installing these first via the utilities option, however most computers should already have these installed.

The main installation took around 21 minutes for me and fully completed without any errors, a huge bonus for me was that I didn't have to restart my computer like other software's require after installation, so I could jump straight in.

Upon start-up of the program you will be greeted with a message that will give you a variety of options to choose from, one being a tab that gives you a tutorial of the software if you feel that you may need it.

The interface feels very clean and simple to navigate, if you have ever used 'Windows Movie Maker' before, then you should have no problems at all in using this to edit your movie clips & adding special effects/transitions, however if you have no experience at all, then it may take an hour or two to get used to it.

One of the best things about this software is that it supports tons of different video formats; normally I had to convert my videos from my camera to a WMV format when using Windows Movie Maker, however with this software I didn't need to do this as it accepted the video straight up.

I would like to point out that when I was playing around with non-HD material I had no problems at all, however when I was selecting videos with a 720p resolution I found now and then a slight lag, this was bearable as I'm used to Windows Movie Maker crashing on me all the time, so this slight delay was nothing compared to that, so if your looking into editing a lot of HD material, I would personally recommend over 2GB RAM.

Overall I found it really easy cut and place my video files where I wanted them whilst adding some really cool transitions and FX, the end result on making my project into a video files was also very pleasant, giving me a good variety of options to choose as the output; SD, 720p & 1080p in many different formats like mpg, avi, wmv and more.

So in all, I have to give this product top stars!

VideoStudio was new to me. The first thing that struck me was how easy it was to get started, relative to other packages I've tried such as Windows Movie Maker and Sony Vegas. The main window offers Capture, Edit and Share tabs; it could hardly be much simpler or more self-explanatory than that. The interface, highly customisable if you must, maintains this clean, logical approach throughout, making it easy to achieve quality results quickly. If you do need help, perhaps with the more advanced features, the instructional videos are very useful.

`Capture' focuses on importing clips. Switch to `Edit' mode and a timeline appears along with `explorers' for a huge range of effects, transitions and titles. You can choose between storyboard and timeline editing modes, switching between them at will, depending on how much precision you want. When you've finished editing, `Share' lets you preview the project and export it to DVD or a sharing site.

You can modify the workspace to suit yourself, docking and undocking various elements. Best of all, you can save three different versions of the desktop, so can play around until you find a layout you like, reverting to an earlier one if necessary. Multiple monitors are supported, if you're lucky enough to have them.

That's enough to make this package a top-buy for many users but VideoStudio offers some fun features too, namely time lapse, stop-motion and 3D. The first of those lets you take a series of stills and turn them into a movie; it works well. Stop motion lets you create animations, using your camera attached to you PC - great fun although I didn't have much time to experiment. Must buy some plasticine! 3D was disappointing though. It doesn't create true 3D movies with separate left/right images. In fact, I wasn't quite sure what it did and gave up on it. Maybe I'm missing something.

Installation was straightforward. Performance-wise, I did most of my testing with a powerful new laptop but also tried a four-year-old machine and was impressed with how smoothly it ran on both. No problems at all.

Bottom line - I'd recommend this highly for ease of use and quick results. Unless you're into very serious movie-making, it isn't worth investing time in learning a more advanced package.