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Ulead is on a bit of a roll at the moment. Following its merger with Intervideo, it's been busily releasing new products as well as updating several of its existing titles.
The entry-level Moviefactory video editor got an update last month, and now its big-brother, Videostudio, gets an even more extensive upgrade.
No video-editing program is complete these days without support for HD (high-definition) video, so the ability to import and edit HD video is top of the list of new features for Videostudio 10.
If you read our review of Moviefactory 5 or caught our Test Bed blog you'll know Ulead had to remove all mention of support for Blu-ray.
The rival to HD-DVD complained that since the Blu-ray specification hadn't officially been released, Moviefactory 5 couldn't claim to be compatible.
As such, Videostudio 10 only touts support for HD-DVD, but a software update for Blu-ray should be available once the specification is finalised.
You can also choose whether to edit in standard 4:3 aspect ratio or the widescreen 16:9 format.
These are quite common features now, but Videostudio does come up with one interesting trick when editing HD video that we haven't seen outside more expensive professional editing systems.
The fact is, HD video files can be enormous, and many older PCs will struggle when trying to edit them (Ulead recommends a 3.0GHz processor for HD work). To make life easier for owners of older PCs, Ulead has added a feature called Smart Proxies.
When you turn this option on, Videostudio automatically creates lower-resolution versions of your HD video files, allowing you to edit the low-res files without slowing down your PC too much.
When you're finished, the program will automatically apply your changes to the original HD files while you go off and do something more interesting than staring at a progress bar.
At the other end of the video spectrum, Videostudio can also import video clips from devices such as mobile phones.
A click of a button also allows you to select any video clip and convert it into a format that is suitable for putting onto a web page or sending as part of an email.
We also like the batch-conversion feature that allows you to convert multiple video clips from one format to another - perhaps converting your home movies into the mpeg4 format used by both the Ipod Video and Playstation Portable.
On the audio side of things, Videostudio now supports Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, and Ulead has come up with a couple of useful features here as well.
The first is the ability to upsample ordinary stereo recordings to simulate 5.1 audio.
Second, it's possible to then use the new surround sound mixer to control the placement of sound effects simply by using the mouse to move the audio indicator around on the mixer display to create your surround sound effects.
There are plenty of new editing tools as well; the most important being the ability to add five extra video tracks to the program's editing Timeline - giving a total of seven video tracks in all.
This makes it possible to create complex montages and picture-in-picture effects.
There are also several new effects filters, such as Fish-eye and Anti-shake - the latter can stabilise clips shot on a hand-held camera.
The program's interface has been tidied up, but it's still a little chaotic at times, with an assortment of tabs, buttons, pulldown menus and dialogue boxes that sometimes seem to just pop up out of nowhere.
Matters aren't helped by the online help files, which have an annoying habit of listing features without clearly explaining how they work.
Even so, the sheer variety of new features in Videostudio 10 make it excellent value for money and it does a good job of simplifying complex tasks so that even complete beginners can get good results quickly.
A basic version of Videostudio 10 is also available for £39.99, but has a reduced feature set. See Ulead's site for a version comparison.
System requirements:
Intel P4 or Athlon 64 processor
512MB of Ram
1GB hard disk space
Windows XP(SP2)/2000(SP4)
All Video Recording, Editing & Mixing
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