Ulead VideoStudio 7

Looking for easy to use, inexpensive but full featured video editing software package that you can use to create streaming video movies or DVD disks? Check out the latest from Ulead - VideoStudio 7.  According to Ulead, VS7 "makes editing your movies as fun as shooting them. Use fast, cutting-edge technology that allows first-time users to easily create professional-looking video. And do it all in real-time! Share your movies with others on tape, DVD, Video CD and the Web."

VideoStudio 7 is pretty good and is easy to use. And with a list price of just $90 or so, it is much more affordable than video editing solutions like Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Studio and Vegas Video. Of course, you don't get the power of those program, but for most home and consumer video producers, VideoStudio 7 provides all the editing options, effects and transitions you will need.  Included with VideoStudio 7 is Ulead® COOL 3D™ 3.0 SE for creating cool titles and graphics. You simply place the finished Cool 3D images in the VideoStudio overlay track to add them to your production.

Like most video editing programs, you use VS to capture video from camcorders, PC cameras, TV tuners and VCRs. VideoStudio automatically detects what type of video you're capturing, saving you time getting it into your computer. Once you have your clips loaded on your hard drive, you then can trim and organize your video clips, then add a soundtrack and voice narration. You can also add titles and special effects - you select from over 190 customizable transitions and filters. After you are done editing, you can share videos with family and friends on VHS tape, streaming Web media, DVD, VCD, or SVCD. 

VideoStudio 7 works with a wide breadth of file formats, now including Windows Media Video as well as industry-leading support for Sony MICROMV™ . It fully supports the DVD–VR and DVD+RW Video Recording formats as well as leverage their “on-disc” editing capabilities. If you own a camcorder that records to DVD or DVD set top recorders, you can capture, edit (directly on disc) and write video back in the original format

VideoStudio "InstaView" real-time preview enables you to see your editing choices with great picture quality and in a large preview window without having to wait for the effects to render. .

A cool feature is  MulktiCut and Extract Video - these let you select multiple video segments at the same time. Select those that you want to delete (like commercials) or keep from one video clip and VideoStudio will automatically make those edits on the timeline. Non-destructive editing allows you to always get those segments back if you made a mistake

VideoStudio's has five cool new video filters. They include: Old Film, Lightning, Lens Flare, Comic and Bubble effects. Another new feature is content-Based Scene Detection - VideoStudio cuts your video into easy-to-manage clips based on lighting or scenery changes and are conveniently placed in the timeline for editing. You then move them around and add effects and transitions to create your movie. This is a easy way to quickly create a chronological documentary of an event. 

The new speed control capability allows you to adjust the exact speed of your video with slow/fast motion effects. You get 10x slow down and speed-up. Slow clips down to as little as 10% of the original speed for nostalgic or dramatic scenes. Speed clips up to as high as 1000% for time-lapse effects and humorous fast motion

When you are all done editing, you can output your finished movies in a variety of formats. You can create video to stream over the Web or email using either Windows Media, QuickTime or RealVideo formats. You can do Video E-mail - Automatically attach videos to e-mails from within VideoStudio 7 and send easy-to-open Video Greeting Cards (.exe files) to family and friends.  By using InstantPlay, you can also record video directly back to DV camcorders through FireWire without having to create a final movie file..

You can also burn your videos to CD or DVD and play them on you DVD player,  complete with intros, chapters, and interactive menus.

VideoStudio can burn to CD or DVD. You can burn up to a two-hour video onto DVD, or place up to 74 minutes of video on CD discs in VHS quality, MPEG-1. If you have a short video (up to 34 minutes long) you can burn video on CD discs as Super Video CDs (medium-quality)

VideoStudio make sit easy to author movie DVDs. You can burn multiple videos onto each DVD disc. Your videos can be imported from any format without the need to have it in the appropriate format first. VideoStudio 7 takes the guess work out of file formats. You can also create dual level menus - Create a main menu that displays all videos. Then, with a simple click, navigate to another menu to reveal each video's scene selections

Round-Trip Editing - By the way, during the burning process, if you notice that something is not quite right - you  now have the option to stop the burning process and return back to the editing process to fix your mistakes. VideoStudio will automatically save your new changes and continue your DVD making from where you left off

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System Requirements and Other Specs

Intel® Pentium® III 800 MHz or higher Microsoft® Windows® 98SE, 2000, ME or XP 128MB of RAM 500 MB of available hard drive space for program installation 4 GB+ hard drive space for video capture and editing (NOTE : 1 hour of DV video requires 13GB of hard disk space) Windows-compatible display with at least 1024x768 resolution Windows-compatible mouse or pointing device Windows-compatible sound card   Real-time features perform best with at least: Pentium 4, 1.4 GHz CPU 512 MB RAM 7200 rpm IDE Hard Drive Also optimized for Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology and Dual-CPU systems   Input/Output Device Support Sony® MICROMV™ (Input) 1394 FireWire cards for use with DV/D8 camcorders Support for OHCI Compliant IEEE-1394 and 1394 Adaptec 8940/8945 Analog capture cards for analog camcorders (VFW & WDM support) USB capture devices and PC Cameras Windows-compatible DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-R/RW   File Format Support   Input Formats: Video: AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, FLC, FLI, GIF, QuickTime, UIS Image: BMP, CLP, CUR, DCS, EPS, FPX, GIF, ICO, IFF, IMG, JPG, PCD, PCT, PCX, PIC, PNG, PSD, PXR, RAS, RLE, SCT, SHG, TGA, TIF, WMF Audio: AIF, AIFC, AIFF, AU, AVI, MOV, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, QT, WAV   Output Formats: Video: AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, QuickTime, WMV, FLC, FLI, FLX, UIS Image: BMP, CLP, EPS, FPX, GIF, IFF, JPG, PCX, PNG, PSD, PXR, RAS, RLE, SCT, TGA, TIF, WMF Audio: WAV, MPA, RM, WMA Disc: DVD, Video CD (VCD), and Super Video CD (SVCD) movie titles

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