EditStudio 4 claims to be a “Professional Video Editing for Everyone” program and I have to concur in the first part of their claim at this time.

This product from England is featured on the site Prue Motion where it is priced for more than $100 which is considerably less than most of the full-featured programs readily available from stores and on the net.

This is a very complex program with capabilities to do so much that I simply could not keep the review to the normal length and do the program justice, so this is the first of two articles that I will prepare for publication.

Our review copy of the software came in a plain white box and contained the CD and a very comprehensive Introduction Guide of 90 pages. The guide is well illustrated and is a real guide as it attempts to explain everything about the program to you in a step-by-step method.

I booted the CD and let the program load and then prepared to install it by selecting the appropriate option “EditStudio”. I immediately got an error message with instructions to contact the company at a specific email address. I stared at the screen a bit and considered the screen offerings and decided to click on “Install Windows Media 9 Plugin”. It worked.

The next step was to type in the user ID (a ten digit number) and then enter the 48, yes 48 character unlock code. That is as bad as the Microsoft system and a devil to type since it contains letters and numbers.

I then went back to the choice of installing the basic program and it worked also. No idea why the minor glitch but that was the only problem encountered with the installation.

You also have a chance to install “Quick Time” and sample video clips for practice if you choose. Of course, you can also use your own movies and clips if you have them on the computer.

The Media Player plugin is necessary if you want to create Windows media audio or video files or to import any of the samples. Of course if you are already using Media Player the program will only install specifically needed files to make things work.

Quick Time is used to import many file formats and I strongly urge that this be installed also.

The Interface (fig. One) keeps most of what you need on this one page so you don’t have to go flipping around trying to find a screen you need. It has a HELP window that changes as you select the process you want to use although this can be turned off if you know what you're doing. You can also access HELP by using the common taskbar at the top of the screen.

Please note that the Media Explorer is the tree system used in Windows so that should pose no problems for anyone used to a PC.

Video preview is used in Storyboard and Timeline pages and we’ll go into that later. Suffice to say it is where you can see what you’ve got and can run it forward and backward, fast or slow.

You have the ability to store your projects in the Global Library files which mean you can access them and work with them without having to search around the hard drive for them. The Project Library is used for storing your current project which is a good idea if you are interrupted.

Before you can edit the video, you have to “capture” it – that is, you have to get it into the program from either your camcorder, a VCR, or even TV if you have a tuner. It requires FireWire (IEEE-1394) to transfer from the camcorder or you can get the video from your hard drive.

Personal comment: I bought my computer from a local firm and specified that I wanted front panel access for FireWire and USB. I failed to specify that I wanted them to work so I don’t have FireWire capabilities at this time. The dealer was surprised when I complained about that, but he told me I had not specified that the port be connected to a card, just that the port is there. The Dr. is In (a tremendous service that APCO offers to members hooked the USB up for me).

I have several “home movies” on the HD so I can use the program and evaluate the editing capabilities compared to the program offered by others.

The capture program is very nice – it only takes one click to start/stop the capture and all clips go to the Media Explorer so you can easily find them. You get an idea of the audio level as the capture takes place and you can modify this later on in the operation.

If you are using a digital source rather than analog you can control the device from the computer (start, stop, pause, etc.) so you don’t have to have another remote to control the camera or VCR which I like. It will also automatically detect scene changes, which are great natural clip breaks.

If you are using Windows 98SE or ME the program allows for more than 18 minutes of video can be captured at one time – another very handy feature for those happy not having to work with XP.

There are two basic ways to edit the video – Storyboard and Timeline. Each has its’ place and use and you can switch from one to the other just as long as you know what you’re doing. We’ll talk more about them in the next article.

The Build Wizard is used when you’re done editing or you want to review what you’ve done. It is also a bit complicated in that there are many advanced settings available but you can simply use it to send the video to a CD or DVD or save it as a file (which should be done anyway) and then played on either the computer or, through the FireWire, back to the camcorder.

Hopefully we’ve got your interest in this really nice program and next month we’ll look at some effects that changed a video for the better.