Ulead (Corel) Video Studio 12 - advice / plug-ins?

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hi guys,

In my continuing quest to find a vidding program I don't want to kill with my bare hands (I tried to love Vegas, I did!), I'm now noodling around with Ulead, or, Corel Video Studio as it's now called.

I quite like it because it miraculously doesn't crash and renders well which means it beats Pinnacle hands down even though I liked Pinnacle's functionality much better.

Anyway, I have three requests, on the offchance anyone has any advice (and yeah, I know I've basically traded a really obscure vidding program for a slightly less obscure one!)

- Am I being absurdly dumb or does this program, despite claiming to be a nonlinear editor, actually not support either delete-and-leave-a-gap (ripple editing partially compensates for this) or selecting multiple clips at once (as you do in most programs by holding down CTRL or SHIFT) to drag around the timeline in groups? This is probably the issue I have that bugs me most. It's not quite a dealbreaker because of how much I love the lack of crashing, but it's close.

- Can you put transitions at the start of clips on the overlay track? Can you fade in and out of overlays? I have a workaround for this (fading in/out of a .jpg file of appropriate aspect ratio at 100% transparency) so it's not a huge deal, but it's a bit fiddly.

- There's no mirror-image effect (you know, to flip the picture.) Again, workaround is simple if I do that in another program, but I'd really prefer not to have to - does anyone know of any good plug-ins for this program? I haven't found any so far and Ulead 11 type stuff doesn't necessarily seem to be compatible.

Thanks guys!

Comments

[cyren-2132.livejournal.com]

I have never seen nonlinear editing software that leaves a gap between video clips(unless Avid did, and I don't remember -- it's been six years). My first years of college were TV Prod. and as someone who's experienced true linear editing, I can tell you that ability to leave a gap in video footage is not what constitutes nonlinear (though, it IS something I've always wanted -- closest I found was pinning video clips to sections of an audio clip...I think that was in an early version of iMovie, actually).

But I've never been a hardcore fanvidder (whoo, one vid done in moviemaker, over here) and my broadcast news days were in school and thereby slim and years ago.

[cyren-2132.livejournal.com]

Oh, and to actually try being somewhat useful, when I've played around with Ulead, yes you can do fades, but they're not called fades...or something. I'll have to pull up the program and check.

[cyren-2132.livejournal.com]

Ah, here we go. (and sorry! I'm not trying to spam your post or anything, really). Ulead 11, so this might be a little different, but once I put an overlay clip in, on my workboard, under the "attributes" tab, there's an icon that looks like a few bars lined up to form an incline (here's (http://www.downloadpipe.com/images/products/VideoStudio%20Editor.jpg) a picture that includes the icon, though it's not the screen I'm looking at). Hover over it with your mouse and you'll see it says "fade in motion effect". If 11 is anything like 12, just click your overlay clip and then that button and it'll fade in. I have not experimented with adjusting the speed of the fade-in. Hope this was at least somewhat useful.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

No, no, all good and useful information! :)

Thanks for the tip about those buttons; in general in 12 they seem to be for the audio rather than video which is weird; but like I said, I have a workaround, so it's okay.

I know that the gap-leaving thing isn't a sign of a true NLE but...it seems like...really useful. (Pinnacle does it for sure - delete leaves no gap; CTRL+DEL = gap). I was sure I'd heard others mention that they had similar things.

The issue with this program is that I can't put stuff further ahead on the timeline at all unless I fill it in with a filler clip or something. Which is frustrating. Although I can in the overlay track, just not in the main video track which is quite odd. But there you have it.

Like I said the main issue is just not being able to copy-paste numerous clips at a time. Oh well.

Thanks again for all your responses.