Corel Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus [AMAZON.COM EXCLUSIVE]

Manufacturer: Corel Format: CD-ROM Platform: Windows Vista | Windows XP Release Date: Mar 01, 2008

Average Customer Rating: List Price: $129.99 Our Price: $49.99 Your Save: $ 80.00 ( 62% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Other offers: 9 new starting from $43.89 Easily produce professional-looking videos, slideshows and DVDs Capture video from the latest HD camcorders and create High-Definition HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs Work quickly with timesaving template-based Wizards, or express your creativity with powerful hands-on tools Fix common video problems with one-click corrective filters, generate Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround audio tracks, and add pro-quality titles and transitions Share your movies everywhere, from iPod to DVD to YouTube to the latest Home Theater systems

Editorial Reviews: Brand new Full Retail box

Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Be careful - no video capture hardware included Comment: It seems like a good video editing product - unfortunately I can't use it yet. Nowhere in the Amazon listing and only in VERY tiny print on the box does it say that you have to already have a video capture card on your PC. Well, I guess you can use the USB or firewire input but that doesn't help me import videos from older cameras or VCRs, which is why I bought it in the first place. Not such a good bargain like I thought it was. Customer Rating: Summary: smart proxy is the way to edit HD Comment: Ulead has one very wonderful feature to edit AVCHD and HD, HDV it is called Smart proxy go to smart proxy manager after u paste any had clip on timeline and tell smart proxy manager to create a proxy file after it finish making smart proxy file ulead can edit hd footage very easily Customer Rating: Summary: Very nice product Comment: This product is far superior to Microsoft Windows Movie Maker! I used Movie Maker for several projects and finally gave up on it crashing all the time and just the lack of options it provided. I really like the quality and control I get from VideoStudio. Very nice for the price. Strong recommendation. Customer Rating: Summary: Wish I'd read David Carlin's review... Comment: Boy, I wish I'd read David Carlin's review before buying this thing. I also have a hi-def camera and was hoping to find a decent piece of editing software to do just some basic tasks -- trimming video, splicing a couple of clips together -- nothing too fancy. Unfortunately, while Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 says it supports being able to import .m2ts files, I think you have to interpret "supports" as "opens the file without crashing." If you're hoping it means, "opens the file in any way that might be usable," you're going to be severely disappointed. Even doing something as presumably simple as moving backwards 5 seconds in some of my movie clips would take a ridiculously long amount of time to process, and this is on a pretty darned good machine. In the end, I also decided to switch to Sony's Vegas product; the only software that seems to be able to import my video files in any useable way. While it's got its own issues (if you actually want to output any video in AVCHD format, you've gotta buy the $600 professional package), it seems to be the only real option available for me at the moment. Customer Rating: Summary: The best reasonably priced video editing software on the market today Comment: I've long looked to Ulead VideoStudio as the best amateur video editing software out there, so I'm happy to finally get the chance to compare this package to those I've used in the past, namely the ubiquitous Windows Movie Maker and Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 10. I have to make clear here that I'm wholly an amateur when it comes to video editing (as anyone who has seen one of my YouTube videos could tell you), so all of the technical specs of software such as this are quite over my head. The beauty of this product, though, is that it meets the needs of the newbie just wanting to edit his home movies as and offers up a huge buffet of options for advanced amateurs who know all of the acronyms, like to argue with other gurus about formats and resolutions, and produce darn-near professional quality videos for any and all occasions. The software may initially look difficult to learn and use, but it doesn't take long to learn the basics - and then you can learn more advanced features at your own pace. It goes without saying that you're going to need a pretty powerful computer if you want to use this software without tearing your hair out. The system requirements are, in my opinion, something of a joke. There's no way I would try running this with a mere 512 MB of RAM (or, in the case of Vista, even 1 GB); I would recommend at least 1 GB of RAM on Windows XP and 2 GB on Vista - anything less, and you're just asking for problems. Memory becomes even more of an issue if you're going to be taking advantage of the wealth of HD capabilities this package boasts. Those HD capabilities really are a big selling point, by the way (as you can tell just by a quick perusal of the box cover or product summary). You certainly aren't going to be saving any HD videos to Blu-Ray using Windows Movie Maker. The package comes with an impressive number of templates, filters, effects, etc., and the complete novice can rely on wizards to help him/her put together an impressive project. Once you've mastered the basics, you have all kinds of enhancement options to choose from. If you've thought about paying someone to put together a slideshow using old family pictures, forget about it. It's easy to create a slideshow of images in VideoStudio, and you can basically control every aspect of the production, from inserting music to specifying the transformation settings from any one image to another. It's almost as easy to create a video and truly customize it to your desires. One particularly nice feature is the ability to add a voice track as well as a music track rather than limiting the user to one "audio" track. You can also insert multiple overlays, which is another powerful feature. And you can export your finished projects all sorts of ways: to your PC, to DVD, to online sites such as YouTube, and to iPods and a number of other portable devices. VideoStudio isn't perfectly intuitive. For example, you have a plethora of formats in which you can render a given file, but the rendering option is by no means prominent on the display. I would also like to have seen some kind of cheat sheet for basic operations included alongside the manual, but I have to say this product manual itself isn't all that bad (although, as with most such software, your best source for information and guidance can probably be found in online forums and the like). The manual is especially instructive in terms of setting things up and connecting to different digital and even analog video sources. As far as the installation goes, I had no problems whatsoever (for the record, I'm running Vista with 4 GB of RAM). Right off the bat, it came up saying I needed Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable SP1 Package and Microsoft DirectX Feb2006 Runtime, but the setup program installed those for me. From then on, it was smooth sailing, including the extras that come on the bonus CD: WinDVD 8, MediaOne Plus Photo & Video Manager, and ULead Disc Image Recorder. The bottom line in this: Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus is, in my opinion, the best and most economical video editing program for amateurs on the market. Even if you're only interested in making the most basic of videos for any purpose, I would definitely recommend that you take a look at this package. More Reviews