Any comments on Ulead MediaStudio Pro v7.0?

[MachineMan]

Does any body have Media Studio 7 yet? I heard it was very powerful. I was wondering peoples comments on the following:

Ease of use? Rendering quality? Options/Features? DVD authoring?

I currently use Ulead Video studio 7 and Movie factory 2 which are good simple programs but lack advanced editing features.

[MachineMan]

OK, anybody??

Im looking for someone who uses Ulead MediaStudio 7. From my research I found that it has excellent editing and converting capability but couldn't find anything about it's DVD authoring. Can it build menus and full multivideo DVD's like DVD workshop? Im thinking its not an all-in-one and would need to be accompanied by DVD workshop or DVD movie factory which would need to be run seperately.

[tyzak]

I just bought MSP7 $122 at Academicsuperstore.com (academic upgrade) $23 for MSP 5 on Ebay.
I briefly tried many of them and MSP 7 seemed the easiest to catch on to. All the audio video sync problems you hear about with other programs is automaticly taken care of when rendered. I like the contrast and brightness features, which most others didn't offer. But most of all it is a very complex program and is easy to use.
Here are some problems I had:
1 I was sent from Ulead to dll. files to solve a conflict with aeditor and Inter Video(Win DVD) it solved the problem

2 After redering my project it split my video and audio into seperate files which Movie Factory wouldn't recognize, later I found out by clicking on CREATE/VIDEO FILE that it would put it back together again.

3 Still unsolved, MSP 7 is supposed to support AC3 encoding and decoding and that option in PROJECT SETTINGS/PROJECT OPTIONS/ i think COMPRESSION/AUDIO FORMAT, says MPEG1 but is greyed out and the directions say there is an AC3 option. So when I Render my project I would like to keep my AC3 format intact. anyone else have the AC3 option greyed out on the selection list?

But in all I think it is a great program once the AC3 issue is solved.

Also I should tell you I am not an expert in video editing and I only use the basic functions about 5% of the program. Hope this helps and I hope someone can help me.

[troyvcd1]

I got mediastudio 6.5 and it rocks. You can do so much more than videostudio that I can not even write about all.

[MachineMan]

Sounds good and at a good price. It seems like the key is to creat a rendered video file(s) then use Movie Factory to build the VCD or DVD. From what I have heard the most recent Ulead product have excellent encoding quality.

[KTH]

You can download a trial version from Uleads web site. This version seems to be fully functional, but I believe it only works for 15 days (It might be 30 days, I don't remember). The plus side of this trial version over the previous 6.5 version is that you don't get the annoying Red X across the rendered video. In answer to Tyzak's AC3 greyed out question. I believe I read somewhere else in this forum that the AC3 feature will only work if you have DVD Workshop installed with the optional AC3 plug-in installed. The AC3 plug-in is a $200.00 add-on for previous owners of DVD Workshop or you can now get a version with the AC3 option included, but this package cost more. I heard that the AC3 Power Pack option for DVD Workshop will work with Media Studio Pro 7 without you having to purchase DVD Workshop, but you might want to contact Ulead to verify this before purchasing. Hope this helped!

[MachineMan]

You might be able to access the AC3 option by investigateng these settings but for MS7. When I did this for MF2 I noticed an AC3 otption. Try doing his for MS7 and see if there is an AC3 option.


Specialist wrote:

What many users of DVD MovieFactory 2 overlook is that you can enable ADVANCED encoding options that give professionals significant new encoding power.


To enable these options on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP computer, simply click MY COMPUTER>C: DRIVE>DOCUMENTS & SETTINGS>ALL USERS>APPLICATION DATA>ULEAD SYSTEMS FOLDER>ULEAD DVD MOVIEFACTORY FOLDER>2.01 FOLDER>DVDMF (INI FILE).

Then add ADVANCE=1 under the [VIODRIVER] heading.

Save the change.

Then reboot.

When you open Ulead DVD MovieFactory afterward, you will be able to enter the DISC TEMPLATE OPTIONS and click a new ADVANCED button that appears under the COMPRESSION tab to access a new array of custom encoding parameter choices.

[troyvcd1]

I have not heard anything on the new mpeg.now encoder but the old one sucked and I would not expect anything good out of the ulead encoder.

[terjeber]

I have not heard anything on the new mpeg.now encoder but the old one sucked and I would not expect anything good out of the ulead encoder.

Not to be crass, but some time it annoys the life out of me when "religious" zealots spout rubbish without any knowledge about the subject they are discussing. The codec used in Media Studio Pro 7.0 is very good. I used to use TMPGEnc for all my encoding. I do not do that any more. The MSP 7 encoder matches TMPGEnc no problems. You need to go to the "Advance" menu and set the "Quality" slider to max to get max quality though...

[energy80s]

Yeah, I use VideoStuido 6 and the MPEG encoder is fine there too. As you said, always move the slider to the quality end before encoding.

There is a problem when you cross-fade the audio. However, you can download a patch to version 7.01 which solves the problem...

[lechtin]

MachineMan,

I downloaded the trial version of MSP7 and for DVD authoring, it installed DVD MovieFactory 2, so for authoring you'll be in familiar grounds but not more power. I have not really tried editing yet.

I was also looking for more powerful software and decided to finally give a try to Vegas 4.0 from SonicFoundry. I only spent about 1 hour on it, but I have to say I'm impressed. I'm not an advanced editor as I mostly used VideoStudio 7 before and I only have put 12-15 hours on Premiere, but Vegas is very easy to get used to and has advanced features I've only seen in Avid software. For MPEG encoding it uses the Mainconcept encoder, so quality is very good and you can tweak it if you like. On the other hand, the DVD authoring software is not as intuitive as Movie Factory 2 or DVD Workshop (at least from the 10 minutes I played with it to generated one DVD)

You can read a review of Vegas at http://www.abcdv.com/article/articleview/64/1/72/

and you can download a demo at www.sonicfoundry.com (get Vegas 4+DVD, that way you get DVD authoring and AC-3 support)

My advice: get both demos of MSP7 and Vegas and try the same project on both.

Have fun,