Video Factory and Movie Factory Integration

hmartine_67 wrote on 8/5/2003, 11:20 AM
I am new in these waters. I am testing Ulead DVD Movie Factory, and hopefully I will buy it. But before I do that I would like ask this knowledgeable community if VF projects can be integrated with Ulead MF. Like if I want create a VCD/DVD in MF, would it be a matter of importing the VF project?
What do you think about MF as 'movie creator' application; does anyone recommend VF (for editing) and MF (for authoring) convination; what are people in this forum using to create and finish their video projects?
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 8/5/2003, 3:23 PM
To the first part of your question, yes and no. Video Factory files can't be read by Movie Factory. However, you can produce AVIs from Video Factory which, like a universal language, can be read, edited and produced, in turn, by any other editing program. So, if you want to produce a DVD from Video Factory, yes, you can produce an AVI of your final VF edit and then convert it to a DVD file using Movie Factory. Or Pinnacle Studio 8. Or Nero. Or you can wait for the next version of Video Factory (aka Screenblast Movie Studio 2.0), due this month, which will have DVD production capabilities.

As for Movie Factory's editing features, it's a highly regarded program. But, at this under $100 level, all editing programs are pretty good. In fact, Microsoft's Movie Maker 2 (which is FREE! to XP users) is also excellent.

But, for my money, Video Factory (now being sold as Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio) FEELS more like a higher-end editing software. Plus, it has two live video tracks, allows for chromakey effects and lets you pan and scan still images, just like Premier (Well, in a scaled-down way anyway). Plus, it's virtually bug-free and its fans are very devoted to it.
discdude wrote on 8/5/2003, 4:57 PM
I should also point out that the new Screenblast Movie Studio will have built in DVD authoring. It sounds limited from the description (which itself is quite limited). I hope they will have a downloadable demo.

Anyway, Movie Studio is due to ship any day now (Amazon says August 11, but Amazon is frequently off) so I don't know how that will impact your purchasing decision.
hmartine_67 wrote on 8/5/2003, 5:13 PM
I knew you could help me on this.... and fast too. I guess I will wait til the release of Screen Blast. But overall, do you recommend Movie Factory for DVD and VCD creation???

Thanks Grisetti and Discdude. I appreciate your comments.
Steve Grisetti wrote on 8/6/2003, 8:24 AM

I'm sure Ulead's software does a great job building DVDs. And so does Pinnacle Studio 8. In fact, consumer-level editing software has evolved to a point where pretty much every product does things we couldn't have dreamed possible on a home PC 5 years ago!

The real challenge is whether or not the features are to your tastes. Does it provide basic templates or does it let you customize and build your own menus? That sort of stuff. Unfortunately, I can't speak from experience with that product.

On the other hand, I'm fully confident that, based on Sony's/Sonic Foundry's current software, their version 2.0 is going to allow you to do some very professional-looking, highly-customizable work for a very small financial investment.

In other words, you're probably not going to go wrong, whatever software you use. Some software, though, may be right for you than others. And Screenblast/Video Factory certainly has an awful lot of happy customers out there!
dand9959 wrote on 8/6/2003, 6:18 PM
Studio 8 is a very strong candidate for DVD authoring, but is SO D*MNED buggy I'm loathe to recommed it. (I wrestled with it for 8 months before switching to VF.) Currently, I use VF for editing, render to avi, and then use "DVD Complete" from Dazzle, of all things, to create a DVD image...then I use Nero to burn the image to disc.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/6/2003, 6:30 PM
I used DVD Movie Factory for over a year and I loved it. I even upgraded to DVD MovieFactory 2. I primarily use DVD Architect these days but if I need to make a DVD where I want all the movies to play one after the other I still use DVD MovieFactory 2 because DVDA doesn't allow you to control the end events.

~jr