Comment on Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 Ultimate by Jenna Glatzer.
As Fancy As You Wanna Get,
Many reviewers have mentioned this software as being “intuitive” and that they didn’t have to crack the manual. I can only assume that those reviewers weren’t trying to do very complicated things with the software– which is totally fine. There’s a great market for people who want nothing more than to create little personal videos for family or online use. However, for those of us who want to “take it to the next level” without months or years of studying, you can definitely do that with this software.
Until now, most of my home movies were made using One True Media– a super online service for beginners that makes it very easy to make short videos combining photos and digital video clips with music and effects to share online or burn to DVD. However, I had pushed that service to its max– it gets very, VERY slow and tedious when you try to make long videos (mine were mostly around 30-45-minutes). The download times were appalling and there were certainly limitations to how much you could customize. So I was ready to try a more advanced program, and this one fit the bill.
I didn’t find it quite as intuitive as others did. Some of the basic functions were simple to figure out, but if you want to explore the nitty-gritty bits that make this program what it is and set it apart from earlier versions, then you’re probably going to need the manual and the online tutorials, and maybe some good ole’ search engine help. For instance, I had problems figuring out how to get Mercalli to work to stabilize parts of my videos. When I tried to apply it to my clips, an error message would continually tell me to try again. Some poking around online finally led me to a video where a user showed the simple step I was missing that enabled Mercalli to work– which was nowhere in Corel’s manual. I loved Mercalli– I was walking around during a parade while filming, and using this program, it looks so much smoother. Very little trial and error is necessary to figure out the right settings for particular types of clips.
I also wanted to figure out how to customize my audio tracks to fade in and out at particular intervals– to be quiet during video clips and louder during still photos, for instance– and couldn’t figure that out entirely from the manual, either. It was a video from a VideoStudio Pro X2tutorial that walked me through the steps (even though the interface looked different, it was close enough that I could figure it out).
The newly-added Boris Graffiti is nice, too, to create titles and graphics that are more interesting than you’ll find in simpler video programs. This will really allow you to get graphically creative if that’s up your alley.
The program has crashed on me once in about 20 hours of heavy use (during audio uploading), but it saved my project, so it wasn’t a big deal. However, I have a machine well above the specs required, so I was a bit disappointed that it crashed at all. It loads and uploads video, audio, and photos in a reasonable amount of time.
There are vast numbers of tutorials on YouTube that show how to really get the most out of the program using features like stop-motion animation, image correction, and advanced video editing techniques, so it really depends on how much time and effort you want to expend to get the best result. You can be satisfied with just studying the program for an hour or so and making a nice little video, or you can spend a month or two learning all the ins and outs and making really impressive videos that you can use to promote your business, preserve family memories, and so on.
I think it’s a very fair price for all it includes, and quite a versatile program.
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