Thanks Ian. Agreed - the norm these days is downloadable trialware, and not having that seems to be a mistake.

From a compatibility standpoint, I have a Dell P4, 512Mb RAM, 80 Gb drive. Have a firewire card in it from Dell. Computer came with MGI Video Wave 4.

I do not have a DVD burner YET, but I see that on the horizon. Mostly, I want to edit digital video I shot (Sony Digital 8 - 3 yrs old, not the latest I realize) as well as assemble combination photo slideshows mixed with video from the camcorder. Need the ability to enhance video shot under less than ideal circumstances, and need the ability to add a bit of excitement to the photo portions (ie, pan, zoom, transitions, etc). Need to add text to the entire production. I would like to output for view either on computer, then someday, to DVD.

I've seen some nice slide show applications that can generate autorunning CDs... nice feature, as the resolution there seems much higher than VCD and SVCD.

When I read my own message, its clear I need to demo this software!! :o) Just to hard to pin down exactly what features I want/need/can live without.

The one flag that jumps out at me is that you'e got Video Wave. You may have to completely uninstall and purge it from your computer before MovieStudio will function properly. Video Wave installs lots of garbage and changes lots of settings that interfere with other software working properly. Do a search in this forum for MGI and you'll see lots of ... ummmm ... comments about it. ;) You may also have to determine if your firewire card is completely OHCI compliant or not. Dell and MGI are pretty notorious for shipping stunted firewire cards that only function with MGI's software. I would say that otherwise your computer is probably more than adequate for the task.

I would definitely uninstall MGI if I got something else. "stunted firewire cards"??? If so, is there a way to undo it? How would I determine if it is OHCI compliant (Whatever that is)?

If its any consolation, I have a Dell Dimension 8100 that came with MGI VideoWave 3 and a firewire card and I never uninstalled VideoWave and my PC and the firewire card work flawlessly with both VideoFactory and Vegas. I don’t know what Dell model you have but my firewire card was OHCI compliant. You can check your specs on the Dell website. I’m sure others have had problems but I did not have to remove VideoWave. (of course I never used it again so I might as well have uninstalled it.) ;-)

~jr

djcc, have a look at this example of what can be done in VideoFactory. Granted that I'm biased towards anything that involves astronomy and rock music, it's still an impressive demo!

Ian G.

Thanks JohnnyRoy - if I do get the package, I will feel at least a bit better. I also have a Dell 8100, P4, 512Mb Ram, 80 Gb HD.

Nicely done Ian - Is the resolution the max available, or was that a choice of yours to limit the file size for faster downloading? This was produced with video factory, or vegas?

MovieStudio is capable of full broadcast or DVD quality resolution. It can handle frame sizes up to 800x800 and can encode WMV files up to 3Mbps or MPEG better than 15Mbps (6Mbps is typical DVD quality). It can output DV AVI files at 25Mbps and uncompressed AVI at 232Mbps or better.

Of course, these file sizes are impractical for web downloads. People who submit videos to VegasUsers.com usually encode them at 256 or 512Kbps so that viewers can download them in less than a month. At these low bitrates the output can look a little blocky and blurry. At the higher rates listed above it looks as good as digital video can get.

Sure wish I knew what all that meant, but I'll assume the product is capable of producing any quality I desire....

Sure wish I had a better handle of its application if my first intention is for PC based delivery only (not download - direct distribution, ie CD, exe, DVD, etc).

djcc, that example was made with VF, but not by me! I wish it was, but I just put it forward as an example of what can be done along the lines you were talking about... or something like that.

If you're going to watch your work on your pc then I think the bottom line is you have a lot of choice. Exactly how you do it involves a trade-off between picture quality and disk space - the higher the quality, the more disk space you'll use. This is true for all video work, it's not a VF issue.

Ian G.

Thanks again Ian. I'm not terribly concerned about disc space - what I would like to do is occasionally put together a show that includes mostly still shots, with a few, short video clips mixed in.... burn that to a CD or DVD, and give it to friends and family who live out of the area.... a sort of video christmas/birthday/event card.

Now, if I happen to also get a good tool for video editing, DVD authoring, output to flash (should I wish to expand my horizons)... all the better.

I am liking ProShow Gold for stills, but it lacks in 2 critical departments: pan & zoom, and text transitions.

Just got this link from a tech support at Sony..... didn't know up until now that there was a separate web site for the product. The "Demo" button is a flash presentation (I think).

http://www.screenblast.com/main/content/index.jsp?name=software_main&men#

Well, they're showing the old version - it's only got 2 video tracks, the new version has 3. Also, it's interesting that the music track they add is exactly the same length as the video, rather like Pinnacle's Smart sound (or whatever it's called). VF doesn't have that feature. It's not a big deal, I never used it when I had it!

Ian G.

In the thread "Product Choices"

http://sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=211614&Page=1

That product will not run - it asks for a serial number, and Sony is not providing one... after I downloaded it, and discovered that it is not a demo, but rather the full product, I sent an email to Sony asking for the unlock code/serial number/demo ID/whatever. This was there response on 9/17/2003:

Thank you for writing. At this time it is still being determined if a downloadable demo will be made available in the future. Please check back to our website for updates.


Regards,
Jane Pearson
Sony Pictures Digital
1617 Sherman Avenue
Madison, WI 53704

** For clarity, please include previous email thread when replying **

1-800-577-6642
Fax: 1-608-250-1745
www.sonicfoundry.com
www.acidplanet.com
http://sonicfoundry.com/support/


Here was a second response I received:

Thanks for writing. Unfortunately there is no demo for MovieStudio 3.0. If you would like more information please visit our website at http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/showproduct.asp?PID=856 or
http://www.screenblast.com/main/content/index.jsp?name=software_main&menuPath=%2Fsoftware%2Findex.jsp .
Or if you have anymore specific pre-sale questions feel free to reply to this email or to contact any of our Customer Service Representatives at 1800.577.6642 weekdays from 9 AM till 5 PM CST.

Thank You,

Sam Fares
Customer Service
Sony Pictures Digital
1617 Sherman Avenue
Madison, WI
53704