Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12

The latest consumer video editing software from Sony drops the "Vegas" brand from its name, but Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 ($94.95 direct), still feels like a derivative of its pro-level Vegas Pro software rather than a product designed for consumers from the ground up. In my last go-round, Sony Movie Studio was among the least user-friendly and slowest editors I've tested. In the new version, Sony Creative has made progress in performance, and the program remains chock full of near-pro-level tools, including 3D and Blu-ray support. But Movie Studio hasn't come far along enough in usability to earn a high recommendation, nor has it kept up with competitors that offer new capabilities like 4K Super HD support.

Installation
You can install Movie Studio in Windows 8, Windows 7, or Vista?no XP, no Mac! It's now a 64-bit app, which helps with performance when keeping a lot of large video footage in memory. A pleasant wizard takes you through the process. You can choose whether you want to install DVD Architect for disc authoring along with the video editing software. Setup took just 2 minutes, and like most full-feature video editors, it took up a good chunk of disk space?over 1GB for the program plus its disc-authoring companion program. That's still a bit less than the 1.4GB used by CyberLink PowerDirector 11 ($99.95 list, 4.5 stars), our Editors' Choice consumer video editor. I tested on a 3.4GHz AMD quad core Windows 7 Ultimate PC with 4GB RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics adapter?not state of the art, but not too shabby.

On first run, a message window told me that the installer program requires administrator privileges to run, so a UAC dialog had to be OKed. Happily the installer doesn't try to load unrelated software such as browser toolbars onto your system, as is all too common, surprising as it is for software that costs nearly 100 bucks. But to run the program, I had to enter the longest serial number I've ever entered.

What's New?
I'm always happy to see a newly improved application, but for a product with as many difficulties as Movie Studio evidenced in my past testing, I'd hope for more than what Sony gave us this time around. I'll dig into what's new in more detail, but for shorter attention spans, the company summarizes it in four bullet points:

• More tracks, more possibilities. The allowable number of video and audio tracks has been upped to 20 from 10. Several competitors in the consumer video editing space allow up to 100 tracks.
• Simplified workflow. This claim is based on new split and trim buttons, as well as 3D project templates, and "enhanced timeline interaction."
• Publish to Pixelcast. Sony now offers and online video- and photo-sharing service. I can't really say this offers much over what you get free with YouTube.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 64-bit support. This is something that's been available in other products, such as CyberLink PowerDirector, for years.

Import
You can import video, audio, and still images from disk, cameras, or camcorders. Most standard formats are acceptable, but MKV isn't among them, nor is Super HD 4K content?both accepted by PowerDirector. When I plugged in a USB video camera, no AutoPlay option was added for Vegas the way other software video editors such as PowerDirector and Adobe Premiere Elements 11 ($99.99 list, 4 stars) do. Clicking the file icon let me import as though it were any other file location, but this button (tooltipped just "Open") actually added all the media to the timeline, when I really just want it added to my source tray. The folder browser didn't recognize Windows 7 Libraries, instead making me navigate down to the actual folders containing the media.

When you import media files, the program "builds peaks" for each in order to display its waveform (users have complained about the slowness and instability of this process, but I didn't find it excessively obtrusive). The capture option let me get video from a webcam and camcorder, but there's no stop-motion capture tool like the excellent one in Corel VideoStudio Pro (4 stars, $79.99).

Once you've got the content in the app, there's next to nothing in the way of metadata to help you organize your media?no keyword tagging, let alone face recognition or auto scene-type detection that you get with Adobe Premiere Elements and Final Cut Pro X.

Interface
The program has a professional, usable, no-nonsense feel, but it lacks some important aids for consumer-level video editors found in Corel VideoStudio, PowerDirector 9, and Premiere Elements 9. Sony Vegas' interface still looks dated when compared with those three apps. Unlike those apps, Vegas doesn't have an interface organized by "modes"?such as one for acquiring media, another for editing, and another for output options. These helpfully lead users through the movie creation and delivery process. Another thing missing in Vegas Movie Studio is storyboard view, which can make arranging clips and applying transitions simpler.

When you first run Movie Studio, you'll see its still somewhat too-light-gray interface (you can fortunately change this color), with a Welcome window in the center, offering to let you create a new project using common presets, start tutorials, or simply start the editor. The intro tutorial is a wizard that highlights and explains each program feature. Another helpful touch (and almost necessary for this program) is the "What's This?" button that gives you a cursor that you can click anywhere to open a help page about a program element.

The interface is actually one of the most flexible around, in terms of letting you resize and move around panels. You can break any panel out into its own window, and the video preview window has a button that lets you send it full-screen to a second monitor. The preview window lacks a helpful button you see in most consumer video editors: jump to last/next edit point, though it does have play-from-start and frame-by-frame advance buttons.

The interface looks like most video editing software, with a three-panel layout dividing the top half of the screen into a left-side source panel and a right-side video preview window, with a timeline running across the entire bottom half of the window. Along the top are the menu row and a toolbar row loaded with small, perplexing icons, but thankfully tooltips appear to explain their functions when you hover the mouse over them. Another help is the Show Me How button, which opens tutorials for common procedures like adding fades or crops.

One thing I don't like seeing in a consumer editor is the Media Bins folder in the left source pane?the term "media bins" should be left to pros from the past. (This is a recurring theme in the program: Another example is the top choice in one of the program's menus: "Quantize to Frames." What's a budding enthusiast supposed to make of that?) I'll concede that the bins offer a way to organize your project assets; you can create sub-bins to taste. The bins are really no different from folders, except they're local to the program; they don't actually correspond to PC folders. But Premiere Elements' comparable Project Assets panel is far more useful, letting you collect transitions, effects and audio files, rather than just clips and photos allowed by Sony's bins.

The timeline is easily navigable. Unlike most apps, spinning the mouse wheel expands and contracts it, rather than just moving back and forward. In fact, there are more ways to zoom and unzoom the timeline than you can swing a cat through: Plus and Minus buttons, a magnifying glass icon, the scroll bar, and the up and down keyboard arrows can all do the same. But just moving back and forth in the timeline is less straightforward than in other apps, because when you drag Sony's insertion point head, it only moves at the actual speed of playback. And the mouse wheel doesn't advance you in the timeline as it does in most other apps. If you click above the play head in just the right area, though, you can jump around in the timeline.

For the version 12 update, the maximum number of video tracks you can use has increased from 10 to 20, and even though this is likely to be enough for most hobbyists, it's still far more restrictive than what you get in PowerDirector or Premiere Elements, which let you go to town with 100 tracks.

To get to transitions, FX, and the trimmer, you click on tabs below the source panel. It's not very visually intuitive; every other consumer editor and even the pro-level Apple Final Cut Pro X has icons that visually indicate their purposes.

Scores of keyboard shortcuts let you perform operations quickly. Within each clip display on the timeline are icons for Event FX and Pan-and-crop, and these useful choices are also available from a right-click context menu. Audio tracks are separately shown as Voice tracks, and these display the audio's waveform view. As in most apps, you can drag line down in this waveform track view to lower the clip volume.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/fj5e76PhCi0/0,2817,2374255,00.asp

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