Review by J

The full program comes on one DVD. No content or extra discs to install. After installation, the program advised it was ready to install service pack 3. I clicked install and it indicated the installation was successful and launched the program. However, when I clicked check for updates, it again said service pack 3 was available. I installed the service pack again, restarted and it finally said the program was up to date.

I mainly use video editing programs to trim down personal videos to make them a more watchable and enjoyable size, so I’m reviewing this from that perspective. I don’t use these for film class or to try to become the next Spielberg. I simply want to clean up and edit my video. For this particular example, I used eight clips from a Sony Action cam that I recently filmed on vacation and an MP3 song encoded at 256kbps as background music. I only used one track each for video and audio.

The only effects I added were a few transitions. I’m not really into effects other than basic titles. Since I planned to use this project as the example for my review, I added the transitions to see how theyd affect encoding. My PC has an Intel 2.8mhz dual-core i7 processor, 512GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro 1000M GPU and is running 64-bit Windows 10.

I trimmed the eight clips down to about 7 minutes and trimmed the music to match. Other than the transitions, I added no other effects. It took about 12 minutes to encode the video to a full-HD MP4 at 30fps. Although the fan kicked on, it didn’t seem to burden down my PC and the temperature hit a max of 126 degrees F while encoding. The end result was very good with clear video and sound and no dropped frames or other issues.

Usability is straightforward although those familiar with this type of video editing software will be up and running a little quicker than those coming from programs like the newer versions of iMovie.

Videostudio X9 meets my needs which are admittedly fairly basic. I can’t speak for how it will perform for someone who needs tons of special effects and features but if you need a good capable editor for simple to moderate complexity, it can definitely handle it. It does so with reasonable resource usage. My only complaint, which is not unique to this version, are the in-your-face ads to upgrade. You can click to choose not to show the ads again but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. If someone wanted Ultimate, they would have purchased Ultimate. They don’t need to be bombarded with ads featuring special upgrade pricing for Ultimate after the very first use of Pro.