Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Avid Studio Part 2 - Video to DVD Transfer Service

We purchased and have been using Avid Studio for about a week. If you're thinking about purchasing Avid Studio, you can go to the Pinnacle website and download a trial. Included in the program is a small program called NemoCheck. This program tests the power of your computer and tells you if your computer meets the specs for different types of video. For example, our computer gets the message after running NemoCheck "Your computer is powerful and will run very well with 1080p HD video. Make sure when running the check that no other programs are running or you will get an inaccurate result. We recommend trying this with the free trial to make sure your computer has the horsepower to run Avid Studio adequately for your needs.

Some good things so far about Avid Studio:

1. The included short training videos are very good, and will help you make the transition from Pinnacle Studio.

2. Rendering times are much, much shorter than Pinnacle Studio.

3. When installing the programs and the included addons, you are asked for the codes before installation. No more adding code keys. This is a big plus.

4. There is a plugin (which can be purchased) which allows the use of SonicFire Pro. Works seamlessly from within Avid Studio.

5. The included content is impressive. Lots and lots of transitions, video effects, audio effects, titles, etc.

6. The Avid Studio window is very customizable.

7. We really like the unlimited tracks feature. You can add as many tracks as you wish, and can add tracks below or above the current track you are working on.

Some negatives:

1. There is only a timeline view, and NO storyboard view. For quick slideshows with transitions between each photo, Pinnacle Studio is much easier to use.

2. When working with motion titles, our program kept crashing. We found that inserting the text we want BEFORE choosing a motion title gets rid of this problem.

3. It's very, very difficult to use older Pinnacle plugins with Avid Studio, and those that have been successful in getting them to work with the interface have found all kinds of bugs, and they cause multiple crashes.

So far so good. We'll write more after we've worked with the program for a longer period of time.