New User Question

Steamboat wrote on 8/30/2004, 7:44 PM
Well I ordered Sony Movie Studio+DVD, sight unseen. I am a Studio 9 user and I downloaded the Movie Studio 3 Demo. I am having a hard time with the interface, it does not seem as intuitive as Studio 9.

1. Does Movie Studio have "real-time" preview of my project. I can get it to preview the clips that are in the "Media Pool" but when I try to preview the project it is more like a slide show of pictures of the video clip. Not very helpful. I can hear the audio playing but I just have a picture of the video clip for 5 to 10 seconds and then it movies to another picture etc. This is a DV-AVI clip.

2. I tried to do a quick slide show with pictures and do you really have to manually set the overlap between pictures for the transitions? In Studio you just dropped the transition between pictures. You could easily edit the length of the transition. You do not have to manually drag the "cross-fade".

3. I knew this program did not have a "storyboard" view, but I did not realize how much I would miss it.

I should have looked at the demo first. But I wanted to get something that would help in the eventual transition to Vegas Video 5 or whatever it is when I do it. Plus this has the reputation of being a much more stable program.

I am sure over time I will get used to it, just does not seem as easy to use - and the lack of real-time preview of my project is disconcerting. Is that a feature not present in the demo?

Well I will see the real thing in a couple of days! thanks

Comments

moron wrote on 8/30/2004, 10:40 PM
Howdy. Movie Studio (i.e. Vegas Studio) most definitely has realtime preview but the performance there of will be limited to what your system can pull off. The more layering, transitions and effects and such you add, the harder it will be for your system to keep up. There is a reason why professionals have render farms to do this stuff - it is very resource intensive.

One possibility comes to mind though. Upon initial import into the program clip have a preview file generated for them. Perhaps you are trying to do realtime preview before this index has completed (there is a progress bar when this is happening)?

My machine is hardly a high end machine at this point (1800+ Athlon based system) but I find that I can add what I think is a decent amount of transitions and effects and still get a reasonable display that may be slide showish during dense periods but is very good at avoiding dropouts and such (and personally I feel satisfied with its responsiveness compared to the performance of other apps). From the stuff that I have used (Media Pro under MacOS, Pinnacle Studio 8 on 98, Cinelerra and Main Actor under Linux plus some freeware stuff), Movie Studio is by far a more intuitive and reliable product to my point of view. It is pretty much exactly analagous to Sound Forge and audio editing and I have yet to have it crash on me where as Studio 8 was all but unusable. I honestly will never buy another product from Pinnacle after dealing with their support and product issues, terrible company.

There are differences of course. I would say that Movie Studio us much more intended as an editing program as opposed to a slide show generator (which most DVD software plrobably can do anyway). The way that zoom pan and effects automation works is very cool and I find the time line setup a million times more sane than all of the other software I have used so far (markers and sane time layout). Coming from a musician background I feel instantly at home in it where as Adobe stuff I have played with was as counter intuitive as setting up masks in Photoshop (long live the Gimp!).

=)

As to the story board, since the clips support thumbnails, you can quickly zoom in and out using the scroll bar and/or zoom buttons and you have markers which you can name this should hopefully make the story board redundant. If you want an effective storyboard just zoom out enough so that your clips are shown smaller. The story board view I have seen in other programs seems more of a necessity because the editing side is lacking. Since the timeline is stable in Movie Studio this is less of problem.

But that's me. Whether it will work for you will depend on your point of view I guess.

Regardless, welcome aboard!

Cheers
gogiants wrote on 8/30/2004, 10:50 PM
1) Yes, there is definitely real-time preview. Would be in the demo version, too. Not sure what would cause what you're seeing other than overall system speed. What are the specs of your machine? Are you able to preview the same movie clip in the media pool?

2) Yes, as far as I know you have to manually set the overlap between pictures. I grew to really like this level of control over the length and type of transitions, although I tend to do movies as opposed to slide shows, and Movie Studio is definitely more oriented towards movies. One thing you might not yet know: for a still, you can drag the edge of the still to lengthen it and simply overlap it with the other still to the right or left.

3) Fair enough! People like working in different ways. Try playing with the + and - buttons in the lower right of your track views (top half of screen). This will zoom in and out on the timeline. Zoom out far enough and you can get a good overview of the entire project, semi-storyboard-like.

I think home-movie audiences would benefit if all programs had timelines instead of storyboards... best that the movie creator can easily see that a given segment is 5 minutes long and really needs some editing!

All of these answers are just a way of trying to make you'll be willing to ask all of my detailed questions once you get Movie Studio + DVD. We'll all be anxious to know just what is inside the box!
gogiants wrote on 8/30/2004, 11:22 PM
One other thought on the preview performance: I see a big difference in my performance depending on the size of the preview window. The bigger the window, the worse the performance. You can resize the window either by toggling the little "TV" looking icon above the window, or by mousing over the edges of the preview window and resizing.

I've not used Pinnacle a lot, but on rare occassions I've popped into ULead Video Studio. The mammoth size of the preview window seemed odd... I always want to get to where the action is, which is within the editing timeline!
cbrillow wrote on 8/31/2004, 5:05 AM
It will take some adjustment to the MS interface, after using Studio 9. No question about it, a correctly-functioning Studio 9 is a very versatile thing of beauty. Especially for story board enthusiasts, of which I am one. For simple editing projects, the story board is a great convenience. Studio's integrated burning module is also very convenient. In MS, you'll have to get used to invoking a second program, DVD Architect, to create your DVD project. The two functions work well together, but they are two separate programs.

That stated, you'll find MS to be more powerful than Studio, in that some features that are only available as plugins for Studio are part of MS's repertoire. For the projects I do, the additional video track that MS provides is more than worth the cost of admission, when you compare the ease of A-B roll edits against the "flying blind" Studio workaround.

I only flirted briefly with MS, but use its workalike bigger brother, Vegas 5, almost exclusively these days. When you become thoroughly acquainted with the timeline, you'll find that you don't miss the storyboard quite as much as you thought you would.

And I'll offer a somewhat different answer to your question about previewing your project than the other responses thus far. I agree with them that a preview window provides you a view of the timeline, but you may also considering your "project" to include DVD preparation, menus, chapters, etc. (because this function is available at any time in Studio) MS doesn't do this. Your timeline must be rendered to a file and imported into DVD Architect to create your DVD. THEN you may see a simulation of the DVD.

You'll learn that Studio and MS are quite different animals, but I believe MS will prove to be more flexible, powerful and reliable in the long run. It will take some work on your part, but it'll be worth it. And, if Studio works ok on your system, keep it around, too. You can't have too many tools in your toolbox.
Steamboat wrote on 8/31/2004, 5:57 AM
Well thanks for the responses. My system is not a low end systyem I have an Athlon 64 3200+ with 512 meg and 200 gig hard-drive. If I can not get realtime preview with that then I do not know. Also I did allow the "Building peaks and valleys" to build. This was just a simple 7 minute video no transition. Again the audio was playing but the video was "stuck" and then it would go to another picture and stick.

I was able to watch a preview of the video clip in the Media Pool, but not a preview of the project. With what I could see I would not even be able to go through a clip and edit at a specific point.

I have had a real problem just precisely placing the cursor on the timeline. But I did learn just to place in the general area and then use the arrow key to move it. In Studio you had a tab at the top of the cursor you could grab and move or you could go to the clock and modify it on a frame by frame basis if you wanted.

Again it will take some time to get used to it and maybe I will just stick to Studio for the picture slideshow part. I am not going to go and individually drag the overland on a 100 pictures. Not when I can just drop them on a story board and set a default transition time and drop in the transitions.

Well maybe they have upgraded the interface for this new version. Again did not hesitate to get this because of the exceptional feedback it has received and I know it has some advanced features that I have not been able to play with before.

Thanks
dand9959 wrote on 8/31/2004, 4:15 PM
Steam, (or may I call you Boat?),

As a past user of Studio 8, all I can say is "hang in there." MS may seem strange now, but once you climb the learning curve, you'll never go back!
(Although, I admit the lack of the capability to apply a single transition to a whole range of adjacent clips/photos is a pain.)

Anyway, you'll find the help on this forum is far far far better than any you'll received on t he Pinnacle forums (mainly because people here aren't all pissed off about the product they are using.)
Steamboat wrote on 9/1/2004, 6:05 AM
Well Studio 9 is relatively stable for me. I will probably continue to use it for photo slideshows or perhaps even to assemble a complete movie. But I can see where Movie Studio is going to be the program of choice for editing video clips. As I have been going through the demo at work during lunch(still have not had it work at home yet). I am getting used to the interface. Well I should have my copy of Vegas Movie Studio in a couple of days:-)
IanG wrote on 9/2/2004, 1:09 AM
>3. I knew this program did not have a "storyboard" view, but I did not realize how much I would miss it.

The pain goes away! I felt the lack of a storyboard was a major shortcoming at first, but once you start to think in terms of what multiple video tracks allow you realise that storyboarding's a mixed blessing.

Ian G.
wbader wrote on 9/26/2004, 5:55 PM
Howdy Steamboat.
I have been struggling with an attempt to drag hundreds of stills into a timeline and keep some semblance of order (by date picture was take) when I stumbled across a way too cool feature. In an explorer window I sorted my images by date taken and then switched to thumbnails. I then selected several images (ctrl click) and dragged them directly onto the timeline, bypassing the media pool. Isn't this kind of like the storyboard feature that you were missing?

Also, I read this piece of advice on bulk transition shifts:
Crossfade a Group
I'm assuming you have the pictures side by side
1. Turn Ripple Edits off and Automatic Crossfade on
2. Switch to Selection tool (Edit-->Editing Tool-->Selection
3. Select all the pictures and create a New Group (right click -> Group> Create New)
4. Copy the Group (right click --> Copy)
5. Position the cursor where you want the transition between photo 1 and 2
6. Paste the Group. Finished.

Regards
...Wes
Steamboat wrote on 9/26/2004, 7:16 PM
Thanks that is a good idea and works out fine! I still think that Studio is a better program for a slideshow, but it does not do things like pan and crop (without a plugin) so I have both in my toolkit for doing stuff.

I have had Vegas MovieStudio for a couple of weeks now and it is definitely a great program. Eventually I want to get Vegas, but that is a year or so away.

Mike
BigEgg wrote on 9/27/2004, 5:41 AM
Yesterday I created a mini slideshow (only 7-8 pics) and everything was ok.

I'm an ex and disgusted Pinnacle Studio user too.