Test Bench: Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7.0 Editing Software

D. Eric Franks
September 2003

We have no reservations about recommending Ulead Media Studio Pro 7 (MSP7). Ulead has been around as long as anyone and consistently comes out with industry-first technology before the other guys, sometimes months in advance. If you are a serious hobbyist or entry-level professional looking for a serious editing program, Media Studio Pro 7 is a must-consider application.

MSP7 is a fairly conventional editing environment with a rigid A/B-roll timeline. The user interface doesn't break any new ground, but it will be familiar to veterans of many other applications. The effects dialogs are still small and may be difficult to use, especially on high resolution monitors. Some features of MSP7, however, are quite original, even though they are not new with this version: the Video Paint module is a very cool rotoscoping animation tool that allows the talented artist to create frame-by-frame animations. It has some automation features, but, by and large, it is Photoshop (or should we say "PhotoImpact") for video.

There are several new technologies that may prompt MSP6.5 users to upgrade ($229). Some of these are nice consumer-oriented features, such as automatic slideshow creation, which works with both still images and video files. The process can be entirely automatic, or you can go into the timeline and set cues to synchronize the slideshow to your musical soundtrack. MSP7 can also convert video to MPEG-2 or WMV format on the fly during capture. This is a great way to convert your archived DV videotapes to DVD-ready or Web-ready video in a single step. The new audio mixer is an important addition and we appreciated how easy it was to group tracks into mixer channels. The coolest new feature is the ability to record mixer adjustment while you preview. When you finish riding the faders, click the Apply button (if you can find it: it's the tiny checkmark, lower-right) and your adjustments are converted into a shaped envelope on the audio track. MSP7 also includes simple but functional DVD authoring that has a stereo Dolby AC3 encoder. This is a very important feature, since stereo AC3 audio is the most compatible form of compressed audio for DVD.

In our opinion, the best new feature is the Scan DV Tape capture module. This dialog scans your entire tape in fast-forward mode (which takes 6-8 minutes), does a quick scene detect and saves a thumbnail frame of each scene. The result is a visual batch capture list. Not only is this the easiest and fastest way to execute a batch capture, Ulead exposes the time/date stamp data to the end user. Did you know that your DV tapes almost certainly have the year, month, day, hour, minute and second encoded on them right along with the time code? If your tape logging has been less than perfect, seeing the time/date info from your vacation in late June (or was it early July?) of 1997 will really amaze you. You can, of course, save the batch list as a log file (DV Album) for future reference. It is not unlike Scenalyzer or Studio 8, except that it is not saving a bulky movie as the log file and is therefore much more convenient. The visual log files aren't large at all (less than 10MB), so you can spend a pleasant weekend, reliving memories scanning your DV movies and creating a visual catalog of your entire library. Our only criticism is that the dialog box is small and cannot be resized.

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