The most recent articles from Personal Computer World

Cyberlink DVD Suite Ultra

Tom Royal — 2009-06-09T10:00:00.000Z

Tom Royal, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 9 June 2009 at 10:00:00

CD and DVD tools for the ever-increasing HD crowd

There was once a time when CD- and DVD-creation suites had a few simple jobs to do – burn data discs, rip music from audio CDs and handle disc images. Now it’s more complicated.

Suites have become bloated with features, from backup tools to photo editors, and now Blu-ray recorders are more affordable, more people want to create and watch high-definition discs.

Cyberlink’s DVD Suite Ultra is an interesting package as it combines these simple old-fashioned disc tools with cutting-edge HD features.

The suite installed without problems on our test system, and includes a launch tool called Power Starter that acts as a front end to the included programs.

This breaks the various tasks down into seven categories, with an eighth group that allows you to store your favourites for quick access.

Power Starter has a clear design and an elegant animated backdrop that looks far better than that of Nero’s Smartstart, for example.

The Music category allows you to rip audio CDs to MP3, burn audio CDs or burn MP3 files to a data disc. The data category is similarly straightforward, giving you a choice of burning files to a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc. After an option is selected, the Power 2 Go burning tool opens for you to easily drag and drop files onto the disc and burn it.

The Movie Player category launches Power DVD 8, allowing you to watch DVDs or Blu-ray video discs. Most Blu-ray drives come with similar software, but if you’re upgrading this could allow you to pick up a cheaper OEM model instead. It’s a shame Cyberlink doesn’t include the newer Power DVD 9 instead, which integrates well with Windows Media Center.

The Video and Photo category contains most of the interesting tools. Manage Videos and Manage Photos both launch Cyberlink Mediashow, which allows you to organise photos and videos by date, view them, choose a collection of photos to be used as a screensaver, print photos and so on. The ability to upload photos directly to Flickr is especially handy. Photos can be edited using the Photos Now tool, but this is rather basic compared with dedicated applications.

The video-editing tools are better. Power Director 7 allows both timeline and storyboard-based editing, with a decent range of effects, titles and transitions. More impressively, you can work with HD video files and create Blu-ray or AVCHD DVD discs. Pulling 720p video from an AVCHD hard disk camcorder then burning it to disc, complete with a graphical menu, was fairly straightforward using the Power Producer tool.

The rest of the suite comprises useful but mundane tools to copy or erase discs and create or burn disc images. The Power Backup tool can work to a schedule and back up files to either a hard disk or optical discs.

DVD Suite Ultra competes against Roxio Creator 2009 and Nero 9, but neither of these includes the ability to create Blu-ray discs without paying for an extra plug-in, which brings the price of the packages more in line. Nero in particular offers some advanced tools that aren’t present in DVD Suite, such as a recovery tool for deleted files, but then DVD Suite’s interface is far more elegant and easier for less technical users to get to grips with. Our only complaint is that the constant adverts asking you to upgrade are a little annoying in such an expensive suite.

If you have no interest in Blu-ray or HD video DVD Suite Ultra is a little too expensive to recommend. If you do use those formats, or plan to upgrade in the near future, it’s the burning suite to buy.

Camtasia Studio 6 screen video capture

Ken McMahon — 2009-02-05T10:00:00.000Z

Ken McMahon, Personal Computer World, Thursday 5 February 2009 at 10:00:00

Record and edit desktop movies

Camtasia Studio 6 is the latest version of Techsmith’s desktop screen capture application.

Aimed at those who need to produce polished, professional presentations such as application training materials, there are two elements to the package: a screen capture recording application and an editor.

There’s not much to say about the first, other than it’s supremely easy to use and can be configured for different screen sizes and capture areas.

The editor is comparable with a fully fledged video-editing application, with features for editing on-screen action.

Possibly the most useful of these is a tracking feature that automatically zooms in on the cursor to provide close-up shots of important actions such as menu selections and button clicks.

This new release adds a number of new video output formats including H.264, which replaces .flv in the Blog and Web output presets. Youtube and HD display options are also included, alongside an option to generate and upload videos to Techsmith’s Screencast.com video sharing site.

The program has good audio features; you can record audio commentary during live capture or later, and insert duplicate video frames to keep the action in sync if your words run over time. This version permits decoupling of the audio and video timelines to provide further editing flexibility and a new 3D tilt effect rotates and skews the screen.

The productivity enhancements, along with the new MPEG4-based output options, make this a strong upgrade candidate. In the absence of competitors, other than the more expensive Adobe Captivate, or a slew of lesser shareware programs, it should also attract plenty of new users. It’s a shame that the price puts it out of reach for all but professional users.

Review: Serif Movieplus X3 video editor

Jonathan Parkyn — 2008-10-31T10:00:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Personal Computer World, Friday 31 October 2008 at 10:00:00

Video editing made simple without dumbing down

Previous versions of Movieplus have been largely well received but it’s tended to be a little unfriendly towards beginners. The latest release tackles that side of things head-on.

A fresh interface lends Movieplus the air of an older brother to Windows XP and Vista’s built-in Movie Maker.

A Storyboard mode has been included this time around, making it much simpler for video-editing newbies to drag and drop clips into the order they require.

A How To pane is also present at all times, so help with specific tasks is only ever a click or two away.

These concessions don’t make the application any less suitable for more adventurous editors, however.

With a single click, Storyboard mode can be traded up to a more complex timeline workspace, where an unlimited number of video and audio tracks are available.

Trimming clips is straightforward, yet accurate, and a selection of powerful effects and transitions is available from an old Adobe-style dropdown palette on the right-hand side of the main window.

Movieplus X3 is compatible with a wide range of video format types and is also HD-Ready, so can import and edit AVCHD files. At the other end of the process, it is capable of exporting straight to iPod and PSP formats as well as provide a means to upload your finished work to Youtube.

However, on the disc-making front, it lags behind the competition in that it can only export to standard DVD. The authoring tools are easy enough to use, but the lack of Blu-ray or even HD-on-DVD options may disqualify the program in the eyes of many more serious videographers.

Unlike many of its competitors, Movieplus is happy to run on a relatively low specification system and comes with none of the bloat that hampers some video-editing products.

Review: Corel Videostudio Pro X2 video editing

Cliff Joseph — 2008-10-22T10:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 22 October 2008 at 10:00:00

New special effects features for Corel's easy-to-use video-editing program

Videostudio has never had quite the same depth or power as video-editing rivals such as Pinnacle Studio or Adobe’s Premiere Elements. It does, however, have a well-designed and easy-to-use interface that makes it a good choice for beginners who are just getting started with video-editing work.

That tradition continues with this latest version, which adds some more powerful features to its armoury. The basic interface design remains unchanged, presenting you with three different options for preparing your video projects. You can use the DVD Wizard to copy video clips straight from your camcorder onto a blank DVD, or the Movie Wizard to assemble a series of clips and then let the program automatically apply transitions and other effects for you. Alternatively, you can enter the full Editor mode, which gives you complete control over the process.

Like all upgraded video-editing programs, Videostudio Pro X2 warms up with a few new technology updates, such as preset options for quickly exporting video to an iPhone or iPod Touch, to mobile phones that use the 3GP video format, or to the Flash Video (FLV) format used by websites such as Youtube. The program also adds support for Intel’s latest quad-core processors, which should provide some quite significant performance improvements for owners of shiny new quad-core PCs.

These features are all welcome, but they’re primarily under-the-bonnet changes that don’t add anything to the program’s main editing tools. So, to speed up editing, Corel has added a new ‘single clip trim’ option. You can just right-click on any clip in the program’s Library panel to open a new editing window where you can trim a clip to the required length without having to first drag it down into the main Timeline window. And, when you do drag clips into the Timeline, you can automatically make the program add a crossfade transition effect simply by using the mouse to place the clips so that they overlap on the Timeline. If you want to change the transition you can just click on the overlapping area between the clips to see other transition options displayed in the Library panel.

Another area where Videostudio has lagged behind its rivals is with its weak selection of special effects filters. However, this version adds a new set of filters called New Blue, which allow you to simulate the effect of using a variety of old-fashioned film cameras.

There’s also a new Paint Creator that allows you to draw your own artwork and animations, and then add them to your video projects, either as self-contained video clips or as special effects that can be superimposed over other clips. This is a very powerful tool – a kind of digital update of the old-fashioned ‘rotoscoping’ technique in which artists painstakingly painted effects onto film one frame at a time. However, you’ll need a bit of time and some artistic talent to use the Paint Creator properly.

Even so, we still admire Videostudio’s ease of use, and would recommend it to people who want an easy introduction to video-editing. There’s also an ‘Ultimate’ version of Videostudio Pro X2 that costs an extra £20 and throws in a few additional utilities, such as the Steinberg audio editor and Corel’s own DVD Copy program for duplicating (non-copy-protected) DVD disks. However, more experienced or ambitious home movie buffs who want more precise editing control will probably still prefer to opt for Premiere Elements or Pinnacle Studio.

Review: Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software

Cliff Joseph — 2008-09-22T10:16:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Monday 22 September 2008 at 10:16:00

Powerful video-editing program with improved ease of use

Premiere Elements has always been one of the most powerful video-editing programs available in the sub-£100 category.

However, rivals such as Pinnacle Studio have often scored more highly for beginners without much experience of video-editing work. Adobe seems to have taken note of this, as Premiere Elements 7 has added features that allow you to create video projects more quickly and easily.

Most photo-editing programs allow you to add 'tags' to your photos so that you can quickly organise them into categories such as 'family' or 'friends'. Premiere Elements has taken this idea and applied it to video clips. The program's new Smart Tags feature allows it to automatically analyse video clips and determine if they are blurry or out of focus, brightly lit or dark and under-exposed. Like many digital cameras, it can also detect faces within a scene, allowing it to tag a clip as a 'single face' or 'group shot'.

Once the Smart Tags process is complete, Premiere Elements can use the new Instant Movie feature to sort through your clips and locate the most suitable ones. You could set it to discard blurry or dark shots, or to concentrate on using group shots for a video of a skiing holiday. The program will then edit those clips together, automatically applying transitions and other effects. This upgrade also simplifies other tasks such as creating ëblue screení effects where you superimpose one video clip over another.

Pinnacle Studio still gives Premiere Elements a run for its money by combining powerful editing features with admirable ease of use. However, this latest version of Premiere Elements can definitely be recommended to beginners, as well as to more experienced users who know how to make the most of its powerful special effects and editing tools.

Review: Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate video-editing software

Jonathan Parkyn — 2008-08-19T11:50:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 19 August 2008 at 11:50:00

Has this home movie editing app reached the peak of its powers?

Version 12 of Pinnacle Studio is hardly what we would call a drastic reinvention.

There appear to have been few immediately noticeable alterations since Studio 11.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing after all, what would be the point of junking a perfectly good workflow simply for the sake of it?

What worked last time, still works here, such as the trio of tabs (Capture, Edit and Make Movie) at the top of the screen, which keep the task of editing a home movie as close to a three-step process as possible.

Elsewhere, things look pretty similar to when we last visited Studio; there are a couple of new buttons and tabs to explore, but the layout is essentially the same.

The Album window is still context sensitive and displays a selection of clips, effects, photos or music depending on which of the tabs running down the side is selected.

For the Ultimate Edition of Studio, Pinnacle has given up pretending that Storyboard editing mode is easier than working with the Timeline.

In Studio 12, the more detailed Timeline view is the default option for editors, though it is possible to switch to working with the Storyboard instead.

One of the new buttons launches Pinnacle’s most visible (though not necessarily the most important) addition to Studio: the Montage option. This is basically a glorified transition effect, wherein it is possible to drop clips and photos to create jazzy animations (‘photo album comes to life’, and the like) and spice up an otherwise run-of-the-mill holiday or wedding video.

The selection of Montage themes available is fairly generous and they’re all quite easy to apply, but the novelty will undoubtedly wear off quite quickly and using them to any great length is likely to produce a lot of identikit home videos.

Less immediately discernable additions to Studio 12 include improved support for importing and exporting different video formats. Native importing of full (1,080x1,920) high-definition AVCHD-format source video is now standard, though a powerful multi-core system is required for actually doing so.

At the other end of the deal, editors can now export straight to iPod, PSP, 3GP or DivX formats and even upload their finished clips directly to Youtube. Full support for burning discs in the Blu-ray BD-MV format is also included, obviously a Blu-ray burner is required for this. Mini Blu-ray discs can be burned to DVD in AVCHD format, and a similar feat can be achieved for HD DVD for anyone who has the required player.

In the press release accompanying the product, Pinnacle proudly boasts that some of Studio 12’s new features were instigated at the request of users. These features turn out to be some advanced audio-editing capabilities, including master volume controls and a timeline VU (volume unit) meter with peak indicators, which seem like an unlikely selection of things for the public at large to have asked for.

If they’d asked us, we would almost certainly have requested a stable version of the Studio code that didn’t crash unexpectedly on us mid-edit and force us to reboot Windows every so often. Unfortunately, despite Pinnacle’s claims of smooth integration with Vista, we experienced the precise same application fault (Event ID 1000, for anyone who’s interested) as we did with Version 11. Further proof, perhaps, that little has changed either on or under the surface.

Review: Cyberlink Powerdirector 7 Ultra video-editing software

Cliff Joseph — 2008-07-10T14:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Thursday 10 July 2008 at 14:00:00

A welcome upgrade for this easy-to-use video-editing program

Powerdirector’s strong point has always been its ease of use.

It might not have the sheer power of rivals such as Adobe’s Premiere Elements, but it’s a lot easier for newcomers to master.

But it still provides a range of editing tools and special effects powerful enough to produce sophisticated video projects.

For the most part, the program continues that tradition with this latest upgrade, although it does stumble along the way occasionally.

For newcomers to video editing, Powerdirector 7 includes a number of ‘Magic’ commands to help you get started.

In addition to the existing Magic Movie command that automatically compiles a series of clips and transitions into a complete movie, there are options such as Magic Clean, Magic Fix and Magic Motion.

Magic Clean automatically adjusts lighting and colour settings for any photo or video clip, and provides a useful split-screen preview so you can see the ‘before and after’ versions of your video alongside each other.

Magic Fix allows you to adjust the focus of a photograph, remove red-eye or stabilise shaky video clips taken with a handheld camcorder. Finally, Magic Motion can be used to instantly apply pan and zoom effects to photos that are used as part of a slideshow, or perhaps in the title sequence for a movie project.

In addition to its predefined pan and zoom settings, the Magic Motion dialogue box also includes a Motion Designer option that allows you to create your own animation paths to control how an image moves around the screen, so you can exercise as much control over the animation process as you want.

There is improved control over the various special effects filters too, as these now include keyframe controls that allow you to modify effects across a series of frames. So instead of simply applying a sepia filter to an entire video clip, you might make the effect fade in over several seconds instead.

If you really want to go to town with these sorts of effects, you can experiment with the improved PiP (picture-in-picture) controls.

Like most video-editing programs, Powerdirector has a Timeline window that is split into a series of horizontal tracks, with elements such as audio clips, video clips and special effects each placed into their own separate tracks.

You can also add up to six different PiP tracks to your project, which means you can create complex montages with multiple images and video clips superimposed over each other as they move around the screen.

This is where things get a little more complicated, though, and we could have used a bit more help from the manual and online help files, both of which have tendency to simply list features without really explaining how they work.

The upgrade is rounded off with a few ‘me too’ features that bring it up to date with the latest video technologies.

This Ultra version of the program allows you to import the AVCHD format used by many new high-definition camcorders and to burn video projects onto Blu-ray disc (there’s a less expensive Deluxe version that omits these features, priced at £39.99).

You can upload your edited videos straight to Youtube, and we also like the ability download photos and audio clips from Flickr and Freesound straight to your projects.

We’d like to see the manual and online help files improved so that they explain some of the program’s advanced features more clearly. However, we still like Powerdirector’s overall ease of use and would certainly recommend it to people who are just getting started with video editing.

Review: Cyberlink Power DVD 8 Ultra media software

Jonathan Parkyn — 2008-05-22T10:00:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Personal Computer World, Thursday 22 May 2008 at 10:00:00

DVD player software for the Facebook generation

Most PCs already come with some kind of built-in DVD playback feature; Vista Home Premium and Ultimate can play DVD movies directly in Windows Media Player or Media Center, for example.

With many cheaper options available – including an set-top DVD players for under £20 – it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to splash out £55 on DVD software.

Well, with Power DVD 8 Ultra you get high-definition disc playback – that's assuming you have a Blu-ray drive and your PC meets the higher HD system requirements (see right). Support for advanced uncompressed eight-channel audio formats (such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) is also included. Downloading a 62MB patch will add support for Blu-ray profile 2.0 and, consequently, BD Live features.

HD DVD playback has been unceremoniously dropped from this version of the software altogether. This is not particularly surprising given the format's recent misfortunes, but slightly disappointing nonetheless.

Playback was good on our test system – motion was smooth and the picture was sharp for both Blu-ray and standard DVD. There are also lots of options for customising the viewing experience. Cyberlink claims that its Truetheater technology can enhance lighting and naturalise colours, but we found that this largely comes down to personal taste.

Perhaps the most significant new feature of Power DVD 8 is its attempt to reach beyond being just another DVD player, encouraging users to catalogue their movie collections and share opinions online. Pop in a disc and the program will download a selection of info about the film, a bit like a movie version of CDDB. You can rate, review or even remix films and share all this excitement with other users at Cyberlink's "community website for movie lovers" at www.moovielive.com. It’s a clear attempt to exploit the current social networking boom and, given that there are so many established free alternatives, isn't a major selling point.

Review: Roxio MyDVD 10 Premier

Jonathan Parkyn — 2008-05-02T11:30:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Personal Computer World, Friday 2 May 2008 at 11:30:00

The quick and easy route to the Hollywood A-list?

When we first started testing Roxio MyDVD 10 Premier, we began to get a sense of déjà vu.

It didn’t take us long to realise this was because we had, in fact, tested nearly all of its components before as part of Roxio Media Creator 10 Suite. As the name suggests, MyDVD 10 Premier focuses on video production, DVD creation and movie playback.

It is made up of a number of programs intended to help users edit camcorder footage or digital photos and output the results to a format that can be easily shared – either as a DVD movie or slideshow, a portable (PSP, iPod or mobile phone) media file or direct to home-movie channel, Youtube.

The main applications are Videowave and Photosuite but the suite also includes a fairly competent media-management program, a label creator, a format converter and a number of useful utilities for importing, enhancing and viewing video and photos.

There isn’t a massive amount of ground breaking going on here, but if MyDVD 10 Premier has one stand-out selling point it would be its slick, easy-to-use presentation. From the launch screen, it’s easy to choose which app to use, either by task or by name. Each program follows a similar workflow too, so it’s easy to get the hang of. There are also the obligatory ‘one-click’ automated movie-creation tools.

We would highly recommend MyDVD 10 Premier to anyone thinking of embarking on home movie production if it wasn’t for the fact you can buy all the same tools within Roxio Media Creator 10 Suite (which also comes with lots of additional features for digitising LPs and tapes, capturing audio, enhancing tracks and the like) for just £10 more.

Review: Corel WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray

Cliff Joseph — 2008-04-25T00:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Friday 25 April 2008 at 00:00:00

DVD player that upscales standard movies to near-HD quality

Any PC with a DVD drive will probably have at least two DVD players already installed on it – the standard Windows Media Player and another player that was bundled with the drive.

It might, therefore, seem a bit pointless spending extra money on another piece of DVD software, but Corel’s WinDVD 9 has a few interesting features that will come in handy for people who regularly watch DVDs on their PC. This latest version adds support for Blu-ray discs, as long as you have a Blu-ray player, as well as the latest Dolby and DTS high-definition audio formats.

HD DVD is also supported, but with Blu-ray’s rival all but dead, Corel has wisely left it out of the product’s name. But perhaps more interesting is the program’s ability to upscale standard-definition DVD films so they approach the quality of high-definition videos.

Ordinarily, you’d need to buy a standalone upscaling DVD player to do this, but WinDVD is one of the first programs we’ve come across that manages to pull off this trick using software alone. We tried the upscaling option with a number of DVD films, and close examination of a series of still-frame captures did show a definite improvement in perceived image quality.

The improvement isn’t so obvious when watching a fast-moving action film, but when the camera lingers on a face or a scene for a second or two you really can see the difference. Movie buffs who watch a lot of movies on their PC may well appreciate this upscaling ability enough to justify the cost of this program (there’s a demo version that you can use to check out the upscaling feature).

And if you don’t need the Blu-ray features you can buy the less expensive WinDVD 9 Plus that just provides upscaling and a saving of about £15.

Review: Topaz Moment 3.4 image capture software

Karl Foster — 2008-04-11T00:00:00.000Z

Karl Foster, Personal Computer World, Friday 11 April 2008 at 00:00:00

Grab impressive-looking images from video footage

Precious moments can can be fleeting and, sometimes, with a regular camera, it’s easy to miss the vital moment; your finger is just about ready, and then the scene has gone.

Videography offers more real-time potential, but with lousy resolution, clarity and sharpness. Many modern camcorders have a high-resolution stills-capture mode that can be used while shooting video, but it’s easy to forget to fire and extracting a frame later from video is often unrewarding.

Topaz Labs has developed still-capture software that can extract a photographic image from a video sequence. Moment 3.4 promises to extrapolate a sharp photo print from a plethora of video formats (including AVI, MPEG, Quicktime and more) by the simple expedient of analysing a neighbouring sequence of seven frames and then turning them into a relatively super-sharp still.

Results are impressive. In no way do they approach the definition of a modern digital SLR, but you can certainly haul the low-resolution output of a consumer-type 4:3 digital camcorder into something printable at 6x4in.

Disappointingly, while working with the output of an inexpensive, standard-definition Panasonic camcorder, the capture appeared squashed due to Moment messing with aspect ratio. It’s easy to work it up in Photoshop, but that’s another editing process and leads to further image-noise. Also, output choices are limited to BMP and JPEG – there’s no TIFF option.

Nevertheless, this video frame-grabber handles many video codecs, has a wealth of image-enhancing tools and could well supplant the capture software of whatever was bundled with your camcorder, such is its ease of use. Moment 3.4 is elegant, lives up to its promise and is great value.

Review: Magix Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus video-editing suite

Cliff Joseph — 2008-03-27T00:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Thursday 27 March 2008 at 00:00:00

A powerful and affordable video editor that still has a few rough edges

There’s no doubt that Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus is packed full of useful video-editing tools. However, those features are often presented to the user in a somewhat untidy manner.

The first worrying sign was discovering that the 128-page manual was accompanied by a separate 128-page supplement to the main manual.

The supplement says that it acts as an introduction to ‘fades, effects, and edits’, which are the sort of basic editing tools that ought to be covered in the main manual rather than a supplement.

As a result, we found ourselves constantly flicking back and forth between the two manuals as we introduced ourselves to the program.

The installation process is rather long-winded too; this is due to the fact that Movie Edit is accompanied by a number of additional bundled programs, including a simple 3D animation program, photo editor and a program for compiling music playlists that you can use as soundtracks for your video projects.

When you eventually enter the main editing program, you’ll see that it offers three main working modes, which are activated by buttons running across the top of the screen.

The Record mode allows you to import audio and video clips, and quickly arrange them into a simple storyboard sequence in the program’s Timeline window.

You can do some simple editing here, adding text to individual clips, or adjusting colour controls to improve image quality. However, importing clips can be a slow process as the program annoyingly keeps asking if you want to merge each new clip with the previous clip or keep it as a separate clip.

Click on the Edit button and the program switches into its main editing mode, which offers a very wide range of transitions, special effects, and other tools. In this mode, the Timeline window also changes to provide more detailed control over the editing process. It allows you to work with up to 99 separate tracks, which makes it possible to perform very complex editing work.

The program’s interface can start to look a bit crowded and confusing at this point, but there’s also a ‘1-Click’ button at the top of the screen that provides help for less experienced users.

Pressing this button activates a window called the Movieshow Maker, which can gather the video clips you place in the Timeline and turn them into a complete project by automatically adding music and some simple effects and transitions.

The program also includes some useful templates that can help you with more complex tasks, such as creating picture-in-picture effects.

Finally, there’s the Burn mode, which allows you to create DVD menus so that you can burn your movie projects onto a DVD. Other export options include the ability to upload files straight onto Youtube, and MPEG4 support for exporting files onto handheld devices such as an iPod or Playstation Portable.

Unfortunately, for some reason you have to go through an annoyingly convoluted online-or-telephone activation process to use either the MPEG4 or MPEG2 features (MPEG2 is needed for burning DVDs).

Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus provides plenty of editing power – enough to compete with rivals such as Adobe’s Premiere Elements, or Pinnacle Studio and it’s cheaper than both. However, it lacks the streamlined interface and ease of use that they offer, so Magix needs to work on its presentation and usability to match the sheer slickness of its video-editing rivals.

Review: DivX Author 1.5 video-encoding software

Jonathan Parkyn — 2007-10-03T00:00:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 3 October 2007 at 00:00:00

Generate DivX files with this simple authoring application

It certainly strikes a good balance between quality and file size, but the DivX video format’s popularity probably has a lot to do with compatibility.

Not only can almost any computer playback DivX files with the right codec installed, but many portable media players and set-top DVD players now support the format.

It was a logical move, therefore, for the people behind DivX the file format to launch an easy-to-use application for generating your own DivX movie files.

There are already several DivX encoding applications available and it’s often possible to obtain plug-ins to output the format from within your existing video-editing application. But rarely do these take full advantage of what the DivX codec has to offer.

The current generation of DivX incorporates support for some advanced features like subtitles, chapters and tag information. DivX Author 1.5 allows you to harness these features and build them into your DivX projects.

It can import a wide variety of file types, such as Quicktime, WMV, MPEG and unencrypted DVD discs, and then output to a DivX file or disc.

The tabbed interface works in a very similar way to many popular DVD authoring packages and offers many of the same features too. There’s a very basic editing interface to cut out the bits you don’t want, for instance, and the option to add DVD-like menu screens and interactive elements to projects, including motion video backgrounds for menu screens.

Everything is wizard-led, so you can’t really go wrong - advanced settings are available should they be required.

In our tests, it took less than 15 minutes to perform a two-pass conversion of a seven-minute DVD movie to a DivX file on a Pentium IV 3GHz system. That’s pretty fast, especially when you consider that the original file size was 487MB and the output file was only 82MB. Quality, meanwhile, was excellent.

Review: X-oom Internet Movies 3 Youtube Edition video-editing software

Paul Lester — 2007-07-13T00:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Friday 13 July 2007 at 00:00:00

Move your video clips to and from websites and portable media players

Transferring and converting video to and from a website or portable device is often quite an awkward process due to the deluge of file formats and resolutions used.

X-oom’s Internet Movies 3 Youtube Edition attempts to provide an all-in-one solution by offering support for online video sharing sites such as Youtube, Google Video and Clipfish.

The software fires up with a simple interface split into three categories – online content, media conversion and transfer, and Expert Mode. In addition to the sites listed above, you’ll also find media presets for portable devices such as the Sony PSP, iPod, Pocket PCs and mobile phones along with the ability to rip from or burn to optical discs.

Much of the software is based around selecting the platform you’re copying to or from. Most of the time this works well, although we did notice a few glitches and the odd crash during encoding that didn’t say much for stability.

The Expert Mode offers a bit more functionality by allowing you to create a simple storyboard of clips to copy or burn and the ability to splice out sections without offering anything else particularly creative.

The 'You Tube Edition’ moniker, is apparently justified by providing you with an alternative way to upload or download content rather than using the tools provided on the site itself. The ability to choose between FLV and MPEG formats when you download video is useful, but since these tools aren’t integrated with a conversion and transfer to a portable device it’s not really enough to sell the package.

X-oom’s Internet Movies 3 is a very basic application that collects together functionality that’s otherwise available through free tools online to manage and transfer your video files. There’s nothing particularly exciting or interesting here, but it does simplify some often frustrating tasks to a certain degree.

Review: Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate video editing software

Jonathan Parkyn — 2007-06-01T00:00:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Personal Computer World, Friday 1 June 2007 at 00:00:00

Increased high-def support puts Pinnacle's movie editor ahead of the pack

For the first time in ages there's something to get genuinely excited about in the world of home movie making.

High definition (HD) has been a term that both camcorder manufacturers and software developers - including Pinnacle - have been bandying around for ages.

But with HD hardware prices obscenely high and technology stuck in a strange in-between stage, it has been hard for even the most enthusiastic videographer to take the plunge.

Now, however, there are newer, more promising HD technologies coming into play (such as the H.264-based AVCHD format championed by Sony and Panasonic), while HD camcorders like Sony's HDR-UX3 are finally starting to look slightly more affordable.

The latest version of Studio 11 - Pinnacle's home-use video-editing application - can, of course, be used with standard-definition miniDV, DVD and analogue camcorders. It can even be used to cut something together from the blurry mess you filmed on your camera phone should you so wish. But HD is clearly where Studio 11's heart is.

On the surface Studio doesn't seem to have changed a great deal. Vista users will find that the application's interface now works properly with Aero (unlike the previous version of Studio), though this is little more than a cosmetic concern.

Other than that, Pinnacle seems to have stuck with its tried-and-tested three-tab (Capture, Edit and Make Movie) layout, which is a perfectly logical way of managing a movie project and keeps the screen relatively clean and uncluttered. The workspace is now scalable, however, meaning that users of widescreen monitors can take advantage of the shape of their display.

Useful (but hardly earth-shattering) additions come in the shape of automatic web publishing (which posts movie clips on Yahoo Video rather than Youtube) and a self-generating music engine called Scorefitter.

The biggest selling point for Pinnacle's editing app at this stage in the game, however, is the fact that Studio 11 Plus and Ultimate editions support native editing of HD footage recorded in the aforementioned AVCHD format.

This is something that not even the Adobe Premieres and Apple Final Cut Pros of this world can currently claim to do, so it makes the application a must-have among early adopters of the latest HD standard.

It's worth pointing out a couple of things here. Firstly, those intending to edit AVCHD movies will need to have a fairly powerful system in order to do so. A 2.4GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of memory is the minimum recommendation for a Vista system.

Additionally, the current cost of HD DVD and Blu-ray burners makes it prohibitively expensive to create true HD discs. Pinnacle has a clever way around this, though. With Studio 11, it's possible to burn small amounts of HD-quality footage to a standard blank DVD, producing a 'mini' HD disc with around 30 minutes of HD footage - a bit like an HD equivalent of the Super Video CDs (SVCD) that were popular before DVD burners became widespread.

It seems that compatibility issues could be a problem here, though. We tested out a mini HD DVD we created in a couple of different HD DVD players and it wouldn't play at all in one of them, though it's possible this could be due to the media we used, rather than the software itself.

Currently there's no Blu-ray equivalent either, though Pinnacle assures us that this will be addressed with a free downloadable patch at some point soon.

We tested the Ultimate edition of Studio 11, which costs £90 and comes with Dolby 5.1 surround sound encoding out of the box and includes a selection of bonus filters and effects.

Cheaper versions are available, though it's worth noting that the basic (£40) edition of Studio 11 lacks the all-important AVCHD support and HD DVD output.