Movie Studio 3 manual has a few errors

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/25/2003, 5:12 PM

If anyone from SoFo reads the thread, the Movie Studio 3 manuals on the Sony site have several glaring errors. The biggest is that it shows a pictures on page 24,33 and 35 with six (6) video tracks but the text on page 36 (and throughout the remainder of the manual) explains the five (5) tracks and their usage and it never explains what the 6th Text track is for and if it is the same as the Video Overlay track. Also the table on page 50 has the wrong column heading for the first column and the DVD chart on page 103 says it uses MPEG1 instead of MPEG2. And I didn’t even really read the fine manual. Just browsed through it! ;-)

Did anyone bother to proof read the manual? 'cuz you pay them way too much for the job they're doin'. :)

~jr

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 8/26/2003, 8:08 AM

I agree, Johnny, that the Movie Studio manuals are woefully lacking and sometimes incomplete or inaccurate. (I just received mine, with the new software, yesterday.)

The manual says virtually nothing about the new features in this version (not even the pretty cool one-click preview window resizing).

In fact, if it weren't for this forum and the advice of high-level users like you, I wouldn't know a fraction of what I know about using the product.

By the way, the box is kind of ugly too.

discdude wrote on 8/26/2003, 8:20 AM

Hey grisetti, how do you like the new Screenblast software? I've been holding off on buying it mainly due to the piss poor info on the product pages. A downloadable demo would help a lot too.

Anyway, what do think of it. How do the new features work. Any features dropped from VF 2?

Steve Grisetti wrote on 8/26/2003, 1:02 PM

I haven't given it a good, hard test drive yet, but a couple key features are nice.

1) A button above the preview window toggles it between a small preview and big preview -- allow you to easily proof your edit without a lot of dragging and dropping.

2) The new text timeline gives you much for flexibility with placing and transitioning your text over the two layers of video.

In addition, there are some new effects and transitions I haven't tested yet -- and, of course, that awesome chromakey feature that became a standard feature when Video Factory was first released as Screenblast.

Beyond that, not a lot of obvious differences yet. But, for $30, a pretty nice upgrade -- especially if MPEG1 and MPEG2 export features are included.

gogiants wrote on 8/27/2003, 2:36 PM

I'm curious about the "new text timeline" you mention. I've also heard it referred to as a "third video track". Is it indeed a "fully functional" third video track that one can use as they see fit, or is it somehow limited to just doing text overlays?

Probably a dumb question, but I was curious enough to risk it!