Sony Movie Studio HD: Platinum Suite 12 (PC)

I've recently purchased a Polaroid XS100 action camera, as well as a Sony DSC-HX300 bridge camera. I've been getting some great videos and pictures, but really wanted a way to join some of them together and make my own movies, either for upload to YouTube or to burn to blu-ray for friends and family. I was using Windows Movie Maker, but it's very limited in what you can do, although is very easy to use. I spent quite a while researching video editing software and eventually opted for this based on the user reviews here on Amazon primarily. I've never used video editing software before, so a lot of the technical detail was way over my head...just thought I'd give it a try. So, I'm not technical by any means and a complete novice to this stuff.Installation was simple, slot the disc in, enter the licence key and you're up and running (I'm on Windows 8 and had no problems here). Then comes the hard bit, figuring out what everything does! There's a really helpful 'show me' feature on the software itself, that can be used as you go along. That said, I spent quite a while on YouTube watching video tutorials. The Sony creative website also has tutorials and is worth checking out. I picked up some general tips from the tutorials and just got straight into it. Based on my (fairly) limited use, a simple edit is actually very straightforward really. Create a new project, select the video(s) you want from the one(s) in your library and then add to the video timeline. This automatically places the audio from the video in the timeline (which is beneath the video timeline) and away you go. So far, I've been able to trim start and end points, split a video (for footage I don't want in the final edit) and attach it back to the main footage. Of course, there's a lot more to it than just that such as whether you want to match the output to the original video source, automatically join videos together etc. but I found this through the video tutorials.The most daunting thing initially are the sheer amount of features available to you, including titles, colour correction, audio correction and pan/zoom to name but a few. I'd recommend checking out some tutorials to understand the basics, but after that just get involved! If you make a hash of it, you make a hash of it. You can either undo the changes you've made if you do go wrong, or just start again if it's really terrible! There's a preview window that again, with a bit of help from tutorials will make a big difference to how you begin, continue and then complete the editing process. It's probably taken me a few hours of tutorials to get the basics and a similar amount of time to actually get my head around how these operate in practice. There's a LOT more to learn with this software, but don't be put off by this. It's very impressive and I'd say if I can get a grasp of it, most people should be able to as well.

I previously used Premiere Pro 2.o for editing my DV footage, received on a deal many years ago. I was more affluent then, as we all were, so finding a bargain by way of updating to a SD-card-based AVCHD format camcorder would also require updating my editing software. I was quite happy with Premiere Pro, knowing where everything was and enjoying the power it provided on an ageing laptop (my portable edit studio) but it would be no use going forward.I investigated the latest Premiere Pro and nearly had a heart attack at the price - on it's own I might add! I had a bad experience with a version of Premiere Elements and reading current reviews was not convinced that was the way to go. Questions of instability seem to remain, and so to does my relative scepticism.My trawl through the opposition and as many reviews and user experiences I could find led me through the various packages available before investigating Sony's lines. "Vegas" was a brand known to me, having been used by a friend with it first emerged all that time ago. Then, it was produced by Sonic Foundry (creators of the excellent Sound Forge audio editing program) and his prognosis was that this was, after going through its learning curve, an excellent investment. Today, there are various levels but the one thing I found is that the (shall I say) 'domestic' user-level version, "Vegas Movie Studio" had all but disappeared - except that it had not, and Sony had simply dropped the "Vegas" brand for the 2013 version, which offered a re-vamped 64-bit version that could use as many gigabytes of RAM as I cared to throw at it.So, for less than 40 Quid, bundling Movie Studio Platinum 12.0 (64-bit), with Sound Forge Audio Studio, plus a full DVD Architect Studio 5.0 seemed quite a bargain. a learning curve would be required but I was glad I was prepared to give it a go. All programs in this suite do exactly as described and are quite stable, a major point in Movie Studio's favour as all trial versions of Premiere Elements, and those of other programs in Movie Studio's price range have often proved to be anything but - the reason I stuck with an old version of Premiere Pro for so long. Only operator error (asking my Windows 7 PC to do too much, while it was crying out for a long-overdue reboot) forced a needless crash of Movie Studio itself.Loading interlaced AVCHD files from the SD card is a cinch. Playback of footage is smooth, including simple cross fades and titles without utilising many video and audio tracks at once (as when using Premiere Pro) although many more are easily available. I don't do as many multi-layered tricks as I once did - viewer feedback illustrated that the complex eye-candy looked good, but in the context of the end product they may only see the once, didn't always make for a watchable movie. On my single 24" monitor there is ample room for all elements of the program to work, and the preview window automatically downscales the preview size to reduce RAM overheads. Perfect, as long as you don't want the full HD-resolution playback along the entire length of the Timeline at all times, in which case you will need direct outputting to a dedicated monitor and a graphics card. I have on-board graphics, which cope perfectly well, and quickly reviewing a rough cut on TV is as easy as copying a rendered file onto the SD card and playing it back through the camcorder, making notes as I go along and fixing in one last editing hit.Working with Movie Studio has revealed some handy touches in editing tools. Unlinking audio from its video can be as easy as 'ungrouping' it, as long as you do only this on a cut section to separate, otherwise the entire clip will be unlinked and any future edits all move independently, and on complex segments audio and video may become unsynched and way past recoverable, meaning starting again. Thankfully, as all clips are self-contained files, not much will be affected if you do make a mistake and de-synchronise picture and sound. 'Grouping' many video, audio and title elements on the Timeline becomes intuitive and efficient, allowing the bringing together of large compiled segments and smaller complex edits in one final 'master edit', as I call it. Plentiful RAM on newer PC's will cope with all this nicely and help me avoid the dreaded de-syncing from the old days of editing one massive DV file. In the old days, desynchronising the lot without realising led required two solid days of correcting without restarting entirely from scratch. I didn't do that again in a hurry!It also has a few quirks, although I eventually found out how to change the volume of individual clips without adding an 'effect' to do it. 'Ripple deleting' mind you, remains an oddly inconsistent affair, used as I was to the Adobe way for so long. But this is a minor quibble, and the longer I work with Movie Studio the more normal such 'quirks' become. Although requiring a different thought process to be learned, for the money Move Studio Suite has brought HD editing in to me on my necessarily constricted budget, and more practise with it has evolved movie making into a greater pleasure as it was always meant to be. It's well worth working with to produce good-looking movies, and make DVD's from the HD master edits while I look into the last step of upgrading, in getting a Blu-Ray burner for future-proofing my cherished memories.

Installation is a bit tedious with all the license key entries and updates that occur but it all went according to plan. No blue screens, no whimpering drivers. Installed this onto Win7 Home premium. 32bit OS 8gb Ram ddr3 / CPU amd Fx 6300 3.5ghz / graphics amd radeon HD 8450 2gb memory / 1Tb Hdd. So far had no crashes / stuttering / video preview blackouts or sound issuesThis is a beast of a package, more bang for your bucks than Ulead videostudio10 -- as simple if you want. Been using it for around 3 weeks, there's a lot to familiarise yourself with but you can achieve results without blowing your mind away, the built in instructions are not brilliant ---- the show me how tutorials get you started. Then the fun begins.Thank goodness for google and youtube where there are many hobbyists willing to share some of their experiences and tips.As I have plugged away, hour after hour and got more ambitious with the editing, I would have conceded defeat if it was not for those guys on the net. Overall its been worth it so far, the learning curve is steep, not always intuitive, usually frustrating but rewarding. There does appear to be one or two bugs in the editng which I have come across but the links on youtube have illustrated the correct method / work arounds. I am now doing more than just transferring video tape onto DVD, I'm also importing various media of both sound and picture files which I then crop / paste / fade as necessary. Nice results when they work.A big thankyou to everyone posting and sharing solutions, they have saved this software from a fate worse than my 1990's Amiga computer !Should I later discover this software is not fit for purpose then I will update my review. As it stands I have given 3 * but its actually worth a tad more ( at the moment ) I suppose for the money its worth a pop.