Review by M Cox

It seems about all the video editor software offerings have very much the same style user interface now. And I think about all the major players have finally created 64-bit compatible code to make the rendering task much faster. And now they are all offering support for the latest XAVC S video editing standard for the consumer market announced by Sony in April 2013. Its a slight notch below the highest 4K XAVC resolution of 4096 2160. The XAVC S is up to 3840 2160 resolution still very good. Im starting to seriously consider buying into the 4K television and recorder market, but I still a bit apprehensive about the evolving standard.

Anyway, it seems to be pretty much a level playing field for video editors these days and it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish one video editor from another. Ive used at least three different brands so far from Adobe to Pinnacle to Corel VideoStudio Ultimate X8. I started using the Pinnacle software way back in early 2002, so I know it best. But there are some things on Corel VideoStudio I cant seem to do on Pinnacle. I know it is possible to split video from the audio, but I cant seem to find the way to do it. But on Corel VideoStudio, it is very easy and intuitive.

This Corel VideoStudio has a unique way of showing you all the available transition styles that Ive never seen done before now. In the other competitive software brands, you have to click on each one to see what the transition effect really does. But in Corels version, they are all flashing at once and at first that almost drove me crazy trying to focus on which one was doing what. My wife really doesnt like that, but on the other hand, you don’t have to click on any of them to know what it will do. Its virtually sensory information overload to process it. I didn’t research it enough, but I wish I could create a favorites list to eliminate the ones I don’t like so much and not go into sensory overload looking at the entire listing at once. I haven’t read the user manual yet and probably won’t unless I run into trouble.

The rendering phase went reasonably fast matter of a few minutes for her five minute video. I plan to try a one hour rendering project soon and Ill try to remember to update this review at that time. I have a fast 64-bit computer running at 4.6 GHz, so I don’t expect it to take so very long. In the old days, I would start a video rendering project in the evening and let it run all night and into the next morning for a two hour video. And it wasn’t unusual for it to crash in the middle of the night.

My wife uploaded her video to Facebook only to have it rejected because of copyright infringement. She bought a MP3 download here on Amazon and used it for her background music for her exercise video. I was quite surprised that Facebook had software that could detect random copyrighted music. Its not like she named it anywhere or maybe Corel copied the music name somewhere during the import into the background music. I wonder how they did that. So she was very disappointed after all her work to show her friends her exercise routine.

There are several video editing software applications in this price range and they are very similar to each other. If one company does something new, the others are quick to follow. Unless you are already doing 4K video projects, I haven’t seen much new from anyone in quite some time. My wife prefers the transitions on Pinnacle better, but she likes the ease of splitting out the audio on Corel better. In my opinion, it is better to be able to split off the audio and perform other functions without having to do a lot of research of how to do it. I watched her do the work and I coached her a few times, but she did it by herself for the most part. She mostly watched me when I did a short Pinnacle project. I purposely wanted to determine if she could do a project by herself on an applications shes never used. This is the first time shes ever been able to do a project from beginning to end pretty much by herself. And so that speaks to the intuitive nature of Corels user interface quite well if a pure novice can navigate herself around without any significant assistance. And she could have done it totally alone without me possibly would have taken her ten or fifteen minutes extra. Thats a lot more practical than an extensive list of fancy capabilities that you rarely if ever use. Also, Corel is a reputable company and they’ve been in business a long time.