Chris Gohlke
09-21-2007, 03:00 PM
<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-ulead-09092007.jpg" /><br /><br /><b>Product Category:</b> Video Editing and DVD Authoring<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> <a href="http://www.ulead.com/vs/features.htm">Ulead</a><br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> <a href="http://astore.amazon.com/digitalmediathoughts-20/detail/B000PDNHNO/104-5494781-3858369">Amazon ($30 rebate through 4/30/08.)</a> [Affiliate]<br /><b>Price:</b> $99.99 ($59.99 upgrade) MSRP<br /><b>System Requirements:</b> Intel® Pentium® 4 (equivalent) or higher recommended and 512 MB (1GB RAM or above recommended)<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><br /><li>Easy to use;<li>Most features perform quickly, even with minimum system requirements;<li>HD and 16:9 support.<br /><b>Cons:</b><br /><li>No direct YouTube support.<br /><b>Summary:</b><br />Ulead make a pretty big promise of video editing software that is easy on system resources, simple to use, and has a plethora of features. I was skeptical about whether it would be true, but after playing around with the software I've got to say, from the perspective of a newcomer to the video editing field, their product completely surpassed my expectations. <br /><br />Read on for the full review!<!><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>I Am NOT a Video Pro</b></span><br />I admit, I've done very little work with video. It's not that I've not wanted to, but I always figured it would be too complicated or that I'd end up spending a bunch of money to get software that ended up not having a lot of features. When I saw the press release for Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus stating that it was easy to use and powerful I jumped at the chance to review it.<br /><br />As you can see from the system requirements, they're pretty tame by today's standards. I've often found that publishers understate the requirements of software to make more sales. As a consumer you get software that technically does run, but is so painfully slow that you don't want to use it. For this review, I'm using an eMachines box with a 3.06 Ghz Pentium 4 and 740 megabytes of RAM and a basic integrated video - pretty much the low end of the system requirements for this product.<br /><br />When you first start up the application, you're given the choice to enter the wizard mode or the full video editor mode. This is the mechanism they use to give you both an easy to use and advanced product. Since I'm approaching this software review from the perspective of a complete newbie, we'll be looking at the wizard mode.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-wiz-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 1: You can choose which mode you want to work in.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Import Your Video</b></span><br />For this review, I'm going to work with some video files I captured with my Canon S2 of an Arnis class I am taking. Obviously, the first step needs to be loading your source material into VideoStudio. VideoStudio supports a wide array of video formats, specifically AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, M2T (only MPEG Transport Stream), MPEG-4, H.264, QuickTime, Real Media, Windows Media Format, 3GPP, and 3GPP2. You can also import still images and pull video directly from a DVD or mobile device. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-wizardinsertvideo-091307.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 2: Insert your media.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Crop Your Video</b></span><br />Unless you are a perfect shooter, chances are you are going to at least need to crop some of the video you just imported. It's a simple matter to select the video you just imported and go into edit mode. As you can see, VideoStudio offer you a pretty simple interface to crop down your video. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-cropvideo-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 3: Edit to your heart's content.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Credit Where Credit Is Due</b></span><br />Now that your video is ready to go, it's time to get fancy and add some opening and closing credits. VideoStudio includes 26 premade templates that cover both generic offerings as well as some event specific offerings, such as birthdays and vacations. What's really cool is that some of the credits will actually incorporate scenes from your video. The templates also allow you to use their preselected music or add your own. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-credits-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 4: There are plenty of premade templates for your opening and closing credits.</i><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Output</b></span><br />The video portion of the project is now complete. VideoStudio gives you a bunch of output options. One of whch is to open your project into the full VideoStudio editor for further editing. You can also export the video in formats optimized for iPod, Zune, PSP, PDAs, and mobile phones. A nice option here would probably be for them to add a YouTube optimized output format and perhaps a direct upload option. The other option is to create a DVD and that's the option we will explore here. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-create-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 5: You have many output options.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Making the DVD</b></span><br />Now it's time to actually create your DVD. The first step is to create your chapters to allow the watcher to navigate your creation. If you imported multiple video clips, you can have VideoStudio automatically create chapters based on the clips. Then, you can create the menu system for your DVD. Again, VideoStudio provides almost 50 premade templates. Like the credits, you have the option to include actual video in the menus, and the chapter listings also play video loops of the chapters rather than just using a still image. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-createchapters-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 6: Break your video into chapters.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-menus-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 7: Create your menus.</i><br /><br />Once you've done this, you're ready to go. A great feature is that you can preview an interactive version of your project to make sure it looks as expected before finishing up. You have the option to burn a DVD on the spot, but I chose to create an ISO file to burn later since I knew I wanted to make multiple copies anyway. As expected, it took a while to process the project. This was a fairly small project at a little under 800 MB and it took about 25 minutes to process. Larger projects would obviously take longer. Once I created my DVDs they worked flawlessly and looked great.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-complete-09132007.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 8: Finish your project.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Conclusions</b></span><br />I'm very satisfied with this software. It performed well on my older computer and did exactly what it promised to do. After running through it a few times I'm confident that I can create a professional looking DVD very quickly with just the wizard mode. I'm also impressed that this software will grow with me since I've not even entered the full editor mode. <br /><br /><i>Chris Gohlke is a Contributing Editor for Digital Media Thoughts. He loves Sci-Fi and loves to get his hands on real-life tech gadgets. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, USA with his wife and three cats.</i>