Ulead Videostudio and Moviefactory warning

[Anonymous65]

I have just spent a few days getting Videostudio 6 (and 5) working as it is advertized, and finaly gave tech support a call. Well, they informed me that many things that the software claims to do is wrong!

1> It claims to do seamless capture, breaking the 2/4GB barrier. Well, this ONLY works if you're using NTFS and WinXP or 2K! Every capture software can do that! So, it cannot capture more than 4 gig under Win98/Me, and the PC will hard crash when this limit is reached.

2> Ulead claims WinTV is a tested capture card for Videostudio, and it should work. Well, if you try to capture anything over x240 pixels, it will not capture because it can not preview the video in overlay mode (a known limitation of the BT8x8 chip) HOWEVER, using an unknown (to Ulead) utility from WinTV, you can force preview to DIB DRAW, where you CAN capture 720x480 with winTV in Videostudio. However, Ulead does not know about this, and does not know how to make this a feature for all BT8x8 cards.
The same is the case for WDM drivers, BT8x8 cannot use overlay for capturing both fields (over x240). However, using a known feature in DirectDraw (DirectX), you can use a filter called Smart Tee for preview, which will allow you to capture 720x480 in WDM mode WITH preview. Ulead will just give you an error message saying it cannot enable the preview filter, and then crash!

So, even when Videostudio 6 is the best "all in one package" video capture, editing, encoding and burning software, it has some serious flaws and false advertising. The same goes for Ulead Moviefactory. It claims to capture video from analog capture cards and tuner cards. Yes, but only if you use the capture utility that came with the card and then import the file afterwards! Again, false advertizing.

So be carefull. It's too late for me because I have already invested some money in the software. So, I suggest register your Tmpegenc and Vdub, they do the best job around.

[Rich927]

Ulead's Tech support is crap! I have been trying to work with them for over 6 weeks. Videostudio 6 has a feature that will capture DV and convert it to MPG on the fly. It does not work properly. They have given me two diferent patches and it will work sort of.. If you capture from a Digital Cam, you can set option to where each scene change is saved in it's own file. I have captured over 40 minutes which made about 50 scenes total file space was over 8Gigs. Videostudio 6 is a good program but, it's tech support and false claims make it very hard to reccommend this product. I wanted to send the program back. They woudn't accept it.

[binkyaut]

I was able to get DVD MovieFactory to capture off of my ATI Radeon AIW - but the MPEG2 capture was considerably worse than just using the ATI TV utility capture. That, and when I burn DVD's using it, they have audio/video hangups every couple of seconds (no, it's not the media or source - play smoothly when burned with Nero). Which is really too bad, because it seemed like a pretty promising little piece of software.

[Anonymous65]

It alsmost seems like there is no feedback going to the software engineers writing the program. My guess is that it is written by someone in Asia, and the US and European Ulead office is just isolated groups of sales people, with little or no contact with the people writing the software. I could be wrong, of course, but I would surely like to talk to one of the software enginners that is working on the software.

Both Videostudio and Moviefactory has a nice interface and features (atleast features they claim they have), and the price is right.

[Tim Newton]

1> It claims to do seamless capture, breaking the 2/4GB barrier. Well, this ONLY works if you're using NTFS and WinXP or 2K! Every capture software can do that! So, it cannot capture more than 4 gig under Win98/Me, and the PC will hard crash when this limit is reached.

Don't be so sure. I am running win2k and using NTFS and VideoSTudio captures are broken beyond 2 gbytes, as well. It can, at least, create the AVI file that is bigger than 2 gbytes, but VirtualDub and TMPGEnc and CCE all complain when I try to load the file (they don't complain when the file is smaller than 2 gbytes).

However, I am only using the trial version of VideoStudio 6: I don't expect to purchase it if it can not
capture beyond 2 gbytes. A capture program that can't go beyond 2 gbytes is virtually useless.

Also, with all due respect, I think your expectation of talking to the software engineers who are working on this program is not realistic.
Those guys have much more important things to do then talk to users, most of whom are too lazy to read the manual (not you).

Tim

[Anonymous65]

Yes, I wondered if I should install Win2k and NTFS, AND then try it. If it didn't work, I wonder what the tech support guy would say then?

I see this problem over and over again, software and hardware that was written by someone that really doesn't know the video capture "hobby" by heart, and doesn't know of the problems and shortcoming that are common. If these smart people that write the code would get together with a bunch of video guru's, and get the interface and features we all want, most of the hardware and software would work the way we need it to work. That is why shareware is outperforming professional software, because the software writer listens to the users and then implement changes in the code. This two way communication is needed to make great working software and hardware.

[fredemc]

I have tried VideoStudio 6 (trial version) and have captured DV video up to 40 minutes long (Win XP with NTFS). The resulting AVI file was over 9G and then VS 6 crashed when it tried to add it to the story board. I then used Tmpgenc and converted it to Mpeg 1 file and burnt it to a VCD.

I am fairly interested in this program, but with all the complaints I have heard, I am not sure I want to buy it.

[Tim Newton]

I don't know about all that. I'm not too high on free software. I spent about a month trying to get my high-motion scenes to look good in TMPGEnc; varying all the settings, etc. Then I got CCE and my first attempt looked fine, and those are pretty much the settings I still use now. How much is a month of my time worth? Plus, CCE is 4 times faster than TMPGEnc.

The problem with all software anywhere is that programmers find it far more fun to add new features to their tool than to fix existing bugs. This problem is worth in free software were you don't customers banging the head of your boss who bangs your head to fix bugs.

I've already spent a few weeks trying to get VirtualDub to sync the audio, without success. Now I've learned that there's a $25 program, AVI_IO, which seems to do it fine, and not drop frames in the process.

Maybe the most useful function of free software is that it keeps the prices down on the other stuff.

By the way, I have an 878 capture card, and I can capture at 480x480 resolution in VideoStudio.

[Anonymous65]

It's amazing what the old BT8x8 chip can do. I can capture 720x480 compressed AVI with the card, and the video looks good.

I didn't know that CCE was 4 times faster than Tmpeg. With Tmpeg I can do 1:1 encoding to VCD, and 1:2 to SVCD. I should give CCE a try and see how fast it is. (I'm uisng a 1.5 Ghz P4)

[Tim Newton]

I do 480x480 encoding, and was using the slowest motion search in TMPGEnc. No noise reduction or filters. CPU is an Athlon 2000 XP.

Uder those paratemeters, CCE is 4 times fater, roughly, than TMPGEnc. Things might be different for your settings.

[Anonymous65]

Tmpgenc (and others) seems to love Pentium 3 and 4 for speed. I tried a Cyrix V3 running at 800 Mhz, and it took 8x for SVCD encoding. The Pentiums seems to do better juggling numbers, which is all what encoding is, pure math. The Athlon XP must have some kind of rutine to speed up math processing also, I assume.

[Lamont Cranston]

The Ligos LSX 3.5 and the Ulead Ligos encoders will lock up on some AMD Processor based systems (mmx instructions). FWIW this has been verified by Ulead Tech support. I ran into the problem with my 1Ghz Athlon. According to Intel there are some mmx instructions that are protected under intlectual property law and AMD, or anyone else, can not emulate. If you read the Ulead system requirements it specs, on most, Pentium based system but no or equavalent.

[Anonymous65]

Wel, I installed Win2K and made a 50 gig NTFS partition to capture AVI's to. I have a generic Bt878 capture card, and use a generic WDM driver.

I ran into two problems I coudn't solve. First, I cound not capture at 352x480. Every time i did, the line ordering was messed up, it almost liked like I had the wrong field order, but not as bad. I believe the lines were recorded with inverted line numbering, and at times I had video up-side-down. As long as I captured above 480x480, the problem went away. This must be a driver issue.

Second, the audio plays back fine and in sync when playing the AVI file, but after the AVI is encoded by Tmpeg, the audio is half a second of. Never seen this problem before, and it must be something with the way Tmpeg reads the AVI file because the Mediaplayer playes the audio in sync.

So, no matter what you do, there will always be some bottleneck that can't be fixed. I did try Ulead Videostudio, but of course, since it cannot capture without previewing the video in overlay mode, it will not capure anything at all.

At this point, it's like a 50/50, something negative in each mode, Win98 with VFW and Win2K with WDM.

If I can get the bug fixed in Vdub so it doesn't drop frames like crazy, I can live with Vdub and Tmpeg in WinMe with VFW drivers...

[Spicuzza]

Most ALL of the above alleged problems with VideoStudio can be directly linked to the individual computer users and or a weak link in their computer systems or using inferior beta software.

Just my opinion.

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com

[Brat]

I once had a problem when creating SVCDs using Ulead Video Studio 5.0. Problem was that when I created the files and went to burn them I was recieving messages that it was the wrong format. I called Ulead Support, spoke with a 'dire-hard' video guru who informed me that it wasnt possible to create SVCDs (720x576) using their software.

After creating the video at 720x576, I turned to Nero to burn the SVCD Disk. When prompted that it was the incorrect file format, I told the software to ignor this. The SVCDs have come out GREAT ever since and I have never attempted to call Ulead Support again.

[Brat]

Will a IEEE Card supporting Capture Size of 720x576 allow me to capture to MPEG-2, then immediately burn this as a high quality DVD without a need for further rendering?

I am looking at the Pinnacle Studio 7 which supplies a IEEE card capable of capturing at 720x576. I use this format because it looks best on either PC or big screen TVs.

[Lamont Cranston]

I once had a problem when creating SVCDs using Ulead Video Studio 5.0. Problem was that when I created the files and went to burn them I was recieving messages that it was the wrong format. I called Ulead Support, spoke with a 'dire-hard' video guru who informed me that it wasnt possible to create SVCDs (720x576) using their software.

Brat, What you are creating is an XSVCD and VS5 supports XSVCDs if you have all the patches applied. Here is the spec fro XSVCDs for VS5...

For SVCD, if data rate or frame size exceeds the SVCD
specification, the output will become XSVCD. For a MPEG-2 file
with DVD resolution (720x480, 704x480, 352x480, 720x576, 704x576,
352x576), the program will create XSVCD if the audio sample rate
is set at 44.1 kHz.

Note the audio data rate.

[Agent 0008]

I've been playing around with DVD Factory and have been getting excellent results using Factory to capture to the SVCD preset format of 480 x 480 rendering and then burning with Nero!! Near DVD quality on a SVCD.

I checked out this software after running into complications using Pinnacle Express and not being able to render, I will be purchasing DVD factory as it serves and exceed my needs.

as for the 4gb limit I can't say I know, I'm runing Windows ME and went past 18 minutes of footage but stopped the capture because I expected it to say the limit was reached, I'll try again and just let the footage pile up and see what happens.

[Agent 0008]

woah talk about luck!! I walked into my local Office Max today and found sitting on a shelf a clearanced Ulead DVD Factory with a price listing of $49.99 on sale for $25.00. When I reached the register it rang up at $52.99 but when the clearanced sticker was pointed out they let me have at the posted price. Glad I waited to purchase this software.

I also read this in the read me file don't know if it has any bearing:

All video files used in the project must have the same frame size.

For DVD video files, if the audio frequency is below 48000 Hz it will be treated as an extended SVCD (XSVCD) video file eventhough the other attributes conform to DVD video specifications. This extended format might bring you incompatibility problems with the general popular disc players.

[ratt794]

I have had Video Studio 6 for over 2 months now and because of the Poor MPEG-2 Quality I am going back to Media Studio Pro and use TMPEG for Encoding.

Video Studio 6 has a lot of major problems many which have been mentioned here but here are a few that were not:

1) MPEG coded is NOT Ligos but a customized Main Concepts codec that Ulead has modified.

2) MPEG-2 smart render generates invalid MPEG files that cant be used for XSVCD creation.

3) Motion Vector performance is poor even though 9 bit DCT precision is used.

4) Capture Quality is very poor unless "15" is used for performance and that requires at least a 3 GHz CPU to do full resolution!!!

5) DV to MPEG capture requires a real fast CPU to create a decent MPEG and not stop to transcode every minute. Probably a 3GHz + CPU is needed here too.

Built in Burning software is lousy too - only allows ONE file per disc!

As for the CCE mentioned here - the good one is $2000 and the lite is $250 - but the lite is NOT as good as TMPEG. TMPEG is only $48 registered and is the ONLY encoder that I kow that will use 2 Processors and gets much faster with 2. TMPEG's quality if set correctly is equal to CCE.

[Lamont Cranston]

TMPEG is only $48 registered and is the ONLY encoder that I kow that will use 2 Processors and gets much faster with 2. TMPEG's quality if set correctly is equal to CCE.

Ratt794, are you satisified with TMPGEnc audio or do you use Toolame?

[Agent 0008]

DVD Movie Factory is deceptive in it's movie capture, it does continue to capture beyond the 18 minute limit but all it's doing is creating 18 minute sections. I now have to figure out how to join these sections into one file so I can render a SVCD.

[Lamont Cranston]

DVD Movie Factory is deceptive in it's movie capture, it does continue to capture beyond the 18 minute limit but all it's doing is creating 18 minute sections. I now have to figure out how to join these sections into one file so I can render a SVCD.

To join them load all the segments into the editor and select using the cntl or shift key plus a mouse click just like windows explorer. Drag and drop to get the correct order.

[ratt794]

Previous versions of TMPEG have had Audio Problems for sure.

Version 2.53 appears to have gotten it right. No Glitches or problems detected. I have a 20+ year Audio Background and if there was a problem I would notice... So Far So Good with the TMPEG Audio.

A/V Sync is perfec too. If not is is adjustable using "Source Range".