I bought the Sony Movie Studio 3.0b a month ago and am very happy with its features and stability. I use it with a Canon Digital Ixus i camera editing its still pictures and video clips. The PC is Intel 2,8 Mhz with 1 MB cache and 1 GB RAM and Win XP proff.
Then I had to format my disc and build everything from scratch since not even my tape backups were reliable (may CWS malware rot in h...).
On this machine I reinstalled Sony MS and was surprised that when I added videoclips only the audio part could be dropped on the time line - not the video part !!
Being a newbie to Video editing I remembered that I had a trial of Pinnaccles video studio before I tried Sonys, so I downloaded the P. trial and -abra cadabra- now the Sony MS could suddenly add the video tracs. One mere good thing: The transitions were now fluent, and not stuttering like before. One bad thing: The Sony MS just disappears from the screen and memory after 5-10 minutes of editing and the work is lost.
I believe these problems are due to the codecs which seem to be in a big pool in Windows and the editing programmes just grab the first found and try to use it.
Acording to the Sony MS specification some (?) codecs are in the package, but looking in Windows XP video codecs I saw none added or changed by the installation.
My Question: How do You keep track of which codecs You use and is there a possibility in Sony MS to pick preferred codecs to use - else it would be a very improving ehancement for next release. Also it would be a good idea with an error message - saying: Can not find applicable codec for the clip You are adding - instead of just confusing the user by doing nothing.
It seems very risky that such a good and stable product as the MS seems to rely 100% on some randomly downloaded codecs of very varying quality.
(Sorry if I just misunderstood all this - I'm just a newbie :-)
PS: Rumor says, that the upcoming version of Windows Movie Maker 2.1 -comes with XP Service Pack 2 in august - has an index where you can check/uncheck which codecs to use...
Then I had to format my disc and build everything from scratch since not even my tape backups were reliable (may CWS malware rot in h...).
On this machine I reinstalled Sony MS and was surprised that when I added videoclips only the audio part could be dropped on the time line - not the video part !!
Being a newbie to Video editing I remembered that I had a trial of Pinnaccles video studio before I tried Sonys, so I downloaded the P. trial and -abra cadabra- now the Sony MS could suddenly add the video tracs. One mere good thing: The transitions were now fluent, and not stuttering like before. One bad thing: The Sony MS just disappears from the screen and memory after 5-10 minutes of editing and the work is lost.
I believe these problems are due to the codecs which seem to be in a big pool in Windows and the editing programmes just grab the first found and try to use it.
Acording to the Sony MS specification some (?) codecs are in the package, but looking in Windows XP video codecs I saw none added or changed by the installation.
My Question: How do You keep track of which codecs You use and is there a possibility in Sony MS to pick preferred codecs to use - else it would be a very improving ehancement for next release. Also it would be a good idea with an error message - saying: Can not find applicable codec for the clip You are adding - instead of just confusing the user by doing nothing.
It seems very risky that such a good and stable product as the MS seems to rely 100% on some randomly downloaded codecs of very varying quality.
(Sorry if I just misunderstood all this - I'm just a newbie :-)
PS: Rumor says, that the upcoming version of Windows Movie Maker 2.1 -comes with XP Service Pack 2 in august - has an index where you can check/uncheck which codecs to use...