Not sure that I like it, the buttons are really big taking up to much real estate. you cannot edit the toolbar either as far as I can tell.

You have to hold down the CTRL key to dock a window (perhaps that is nice you don't inadvertently dock one if you did not want to) but just spending a few minutes with it I do not like the space robbing huge buttons, there needs to be a way to change there size.

The Simple and Advanced modes seem odd to me ( but for a new editor it would be less confusing, good I guess.)

Hope this is not a preview of the next pro version.

Paul B

After playing with it a while today, ll I can say is that is a lot of good software for the buck....The new Boris stabilizer is very good (too bad I bought Mercalli Pro three weeks ago:(

But all in all a good upgrade so far, the free piano VST is actually pretty good if you have a keyboard and can play.

Haven't tried the color grading yet, but if it works it worth of price of admission for me as I have 4 different cameras that shoot video.

The real question to me is real-time editing/previewing any faster? I see no mention of any performance enhancements on the feature list.

It looks like the major changes were to work with touch screens.

Anyone know which NB FX are included this time?

Thanks VK for the link, but man does that sound like a dud! I've waited forever for a new and improved version, but this sounds like mainly fluff, unless you are doing 3D, which I've never tried. I've bought every version since before it was ever SVMS, but not sure I'm going for this one........Have to wait and hear from more of the 'pioneers', as they are the ones that take all the arrows. ;)

I think the additional plugins (especially the stabilization) are much better. Also the color matching seems to work well. I'm still using Acid Pro 7, the included home version seems good (from what I've seen). Lots of little improvements which I think are good. The "easy version" was probably in response to all of the reviews that said Movie Studio while powerful was "too complex" for new users. If you are a studio suite user or premium user, the $79.95 upgrade seems to have a lot of value.

The BorrisFX and FXhome HitFilm stuff was worth that. If I had not just bought Mercalli PRO SLT three weeks ago the BorrisFX stabilization would have been worth the upgrade. 12 lasted for two years and for me $40 a year is pretty cheap for such a good product.

I agree that the new FX may make it worth it. But for those of us that are living in the past (no 3D, no 4k and no touch screen), I think that it is a disappointing entry...unless they want to push towards Pro. I would have much rathered seeing any? performance enhancements (AVCHD smart rendering would have been first on my list; enhanced use of GPUs, or better performance while editing).

Is the stabilization from Boris? The image shows 'Sony Stabilizer'

One of the Borris plugins in the Image Restoration Unit is called BCC Optical Stabilizer and seems to be very good if a little complex to use. My trials yesterday showed that it does a good job but is a lot more complex to use than either Marcalli Pro or Easy, but I think once you know it will be all most folks need.

The two new sets of plugins are so far very good.

The two BorrisFX units are $300 each, and the stabilization and noise reduction are things everyone can use. The color matching (grading) works very well. I shoot with two DSLR's, a m43, and an older Sony ACHD camera and grading alone will save me lots of time.

So while yes the are hyping the 3D stuff, for me its the plugins and the functionality that they bring to my set of cameras that made it a good deal.

The new versions of ACID™ Music Studio, Movie Studio, Movie Studio Platinum, and Movie Studio Suite are here. Save 25% during this special introductory promotion. Offers end February 28, 2014

Hello

I have just downloaded and installed ver 13 and it is a huge disappointment to me.
- Interface uses big icons and huge font size regardless of simple/advanced user interface.
- The icons of pan and fx which are displayed on top of the movie clips in timeline have pastel colors which make them totally unreadable
- the fade function that allowed to grap upper left or right corner and set the fade on clips is gone and moved to a dedicated button at the bottom of the screen
- clicing the fx icon on top of the clip does not open the fx window, you have to click on the dedicated button at the bottom of the screen
- the render (now make movie) function would be great if the fonts of the presents were not so big and if they stayed with the ver 12 navigation

I browsed through the menus and preferences panes to revert ver 12 looks but I failed.

So I guess that they tried to make it more iMovie-like and touch screen friendly, but it makes it useless for me.

Some first impressions after a short try. It certainly takes some getting used to as many of the basic functions have been shuffled around quite a bit and you'll need a few more clicks to get to them. Luckily I have managed to find now most of them :) Customizing Toolbar, as noted in posts above, sadly seems gone though.

The simple mode does live up (?) to its name, but may well be welcomed by new users. The new big buttons hit you in the face if you have say a 15 or 17 inch laptop screen as I do. On my external 23 inch monitor they don't seem to bother at all.

I didn't yet get much past the interface, seems I need to recover from this first...
It may well be worth upgrading for the points D7K has brought up, otherwise I'm not so sure.
It looks like SCS is making this even more of a consumer version to differentiate it from VPro (the current version at least).

Btw, some good pointers and interesting discussion of the new version in a Pro forum thread as well.

First time reader, but have to say that I think some people are being a bit harsh on it. It's clearly trying to make the whole package a bit more intuitive, which is something that many reviewers complained about, that it's not simple enough for people to just pick up, which is fair enough. It's not as if the functionality has been removed (or at least, I couldn't see anything missing) and in fact, moving everything about has kind of revealed to me a few features that I didn't know about before.

However, it is a shame that there's nothing been said about faster rendering, so I'm assuming that no change HAS been made, nor any new real features, such as a drag and drop picture in picture solution that doesn't require loads of messing around with keyframes. And it was probably way too much of an ask to get masking in there...

And it does work well if you have a touchscreen machine.

Basically, it's probably worth it for the Suite version and the plugins - it surely can't be the same boris fx ones that they have on their own site as going for 200 dollars each? that's nuts. They're not in the trial, but the hitfilm ones are, and they're been integrated well, with similar UIs TBH, if they've done those with the other 3rd party plugins, that's probably more than worth it.

just purchased Movie studio 13 Suite and download all the extras with no problem.

32 bit version just as fast as the 64bit and use about the same memory, so its not
limited to 3gb. task Manager is showing 5 to 6gb.

What they did to the user interface is really terrible. It takes up so much needless space and just to help with touch screen support. There needs to be an option for smaller buttons. I hope pro 13 has one.

I think it must depend on your screen size. Mine is 24" and for an older set of eyes they are just fine, I can't make the preview screen any larger and everything is nice and readable.

I think these BorrisFX units are the same ones, they have very complex settings and lots of stuff in the help files. I've spent about 4 hours using 13 and they make it a very powerful tool. I liked the old render tool better, but on my older 6 core AMD, 16 gig memory machine the renders are fast for a clean file, I don't notice the background render when I'm working.

Different stuff for different folks, but for me - I spend about 20 hours a week working on videos - I like the changes (perhaps like VKmast says its better on a large screen).

For me the two real weakness in 12 was the stabilization and the inability to color grade (which is called color match in the BFX plugins) and these have been addressed. You can always go Vegas, but I don't yet need the additional functions it offers and Sony listened to the reviewers as well as addressed my issues.

There are lots of good stuff in the BorrisFX - I especially like Motion key, two way key, and wire removal. If these are not the ones in the $299 unit then those must be incredibly powerful for these allow you to mask colors, remove "ghost objects (like in photoshop merge), and remove power lines (works better than you think it would).

Additionally on the suite besides the two normal programs, MS Acid is a great tool that is now included. I was surprised that it recognized all of my VST's for AcidPro as well as the size of the free loops included. If you need and use all of the tools included I don't think you will find a better video/audio tool set unless you are willing to pay 4 or 5 times as much.

I can understand wanting a feature that was not include but I think it is unrealistic to say that it is a worthless upgrade in comparison to 12. I think that those visiting here to find out if MS is a good option for industrial or consumer use (not movie/tv level stuff) would be misled if they came away with the feeling that something from the other consumer software providers was better.

I nearly barfed when I saw the new UI in 2013. Those big ugly icons. It seems Sony has taken notes from Microsoft recently about what not to do with an UI.

I hope Sony quickly releases an update where the toolbars and icons can be customized...

I'z confused. OK, i don't have version 13 so i'm only looking at the screenshots on the SCS website, but the UI and buttons look pretty close to identical to previous versions. Must be they updated the UI after they put together the sales material?

Well here's the old UI in Movie Studio 10:

http://screencast.com/t/PH4C2YWTT

And here's the new UI in Movie Studio 13:

http://screencast.com/t/OzCCC2YD1O

And it's not just what you see here. The menus are also big and waste a lot of space, the Options menu has not a single icon in it anymore, etc...

The buttons as they are on my screen


I agree it may be a problem on a smaller monitor, but so were the previous smaller buttons for a number of users. My guess is that the later builds will have some fine-tuning of the UI icons in the menus.
Interesting to see if the next VPro version UI will go the same route.

For those trying the stabilizer (the BorrisFX are HIGHLY configurable) here is a tip:

Use the default setting but set the final crop by using the control points on the preview screen. Then you can fine tune your stabilization, a good way to get started without changing about 50 parameters. I did not see the control points at first, but they are very useful in getting final output that works..

The BorrisFX is not for the faint of heart when it comes to settings. The stabilizer doesn't come with a lot of presets like some of the others BFX plugin do.

If I took more time I think I could get close to what Mercalli does, so if you need stabilization I think this tool will be very good for most folks.

I have no interest in MS or Borris, only someone who really uses all of the stuff in the software I use (PhotoshopCC/LR and Sony MS with Mercalli (who knows if I will go out of work flow with it, now that the BFX seem to work well).

I would not judge how good this program is by the size of the icons - lots of power in this program.

Thanks for the tip on the Boris, D7K.
And looks like a +1 to your last line as I go deeper into v 13 (Suite).

I only have the trial version, trying to decide to upgrade or not, one point I am confused on is the Hitfilm FX is the is the Hitfilm Express that is the baby brother to Hitfilm Ultimate or is it just some media FX add-on and not the After effects wannabe. I want to be able to create effects not just add some smoke and color.

Paul B

Paul B,


From the Product Page:
FXHOME HitFilm Effects
32-bit and 64-bit, whereas my version of BorisFX is 64-bit only.