Monthly Archives: October 2005

Ulead VideoStudio 9 – free plugins

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I don’t know whether this is a limited time offer, or just an attempt to keep the product “fresh”, but I just noticed that Ulead are now offering two great VideoStudio 9 plugins for free. Both used to cost extra, so I never bought them. Now I can read/write MPEG4 and HD video.

The most important thing about this for me is that it now allows me to simply transcode any of my videos into a PSP (and, I hope iPod) compatible mp4 format.

Unfortunately, it’s not all rosy. The new MPEG4 possibilities don’t make it into the options for Quicktime export, so I still can’t use it to make a Quicktime file with MP4a / AAC audio. And no sign of an improved Quicktime export option offering H.264 and iPod options. Even with the latest Quicktime 7 installed.

Apple’s pages claim that the iPod will only play video with AAC audio, but there are a whole lot of Quicktime movies out there that use the likes of IMA or QD audio codecs. Has anyone tried these to see if they work anyway?

Read more at: Video editing software: Ulead VideoStudio – Plug-ins & More

Adobe releases Premiere Elements 2.0 and it can do ASF

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One of my biggest gripes about video editing is the awful file format support from major editing software manufacturers. It seems astonishing to me that top names like Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid/Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Sony Vegas, Ulead Media Studio Pro and so on are so snobby about video formats. How they can advertise themselves as a “step up” from low cost software is simply baffling. For example, none of the above names will read the ASF mpeg4 video files produced my my video camera. I have to stick with supposedly “inferior” products like ArcSoft ShowBiz, Ulead VideoStudio and Serif VideoPlus 4.

Surely supporting extra input formats is easy compared with all the effort they put into UI and internal processing features?

There’s a hint that things may be changing, though. Adobe has just released version 2.0 of “Premiere Elements”, the “baby brother” of their main offering “Premiere Pro”. Apparently this new version of Premiere Elements supports a much wider reange of file formats.

I say apparently because, although they have a “tryout” version available for download, the “tryout” is still version 1.0. I’ll report back when the new version is actually available to try.

Interesting that they have jumped straight to version 2.0, when the heavy hitter “pro” version is still at 1.5. I would not be surprised if we see a new release of “Pro” in a few months, once any bugs have been dealt with in “elements”.

Read more at: Edit digital video, add amazing special effects, personalize DVD menus, and easily burn your masterpiece to DVD

Vlog Europe 9: My Session

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OK, I know I said I wasn’t going to do any more Vlog Europe posts, but then something happened that both surprised and delighted me.

I was cleaning out my MP3 player recently in preparation for a long journey. After taking off all the podcasts that I have already listened to, I found that there was a large unidentified MP3 file lurking in the memory of the player. When I listened to it I suddenly remembered that I had switched the little machine to “record” during the Saturday sessions and pretty much forgot about it. I have now spent a few hours trawling through it and trimming off other material, and I’m left with a roughly 45 minute audio recording of my Vlog Europe presentation and the accompanying discussions.

I didn’t do anything fancy to record this. I just laid the player on the table and it recorded using its tiny internal microphone. I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality. A few times the discussion gets a bit mumbly but it always quickly comes back to full and clear audibility again.

If you are at all interested in the topic of long-term videoblogging, and have 45 minutes spare in your listening schedule, please give it a try.

In many ways this is my first (albeit accidental) podcast. Yippee 🙂

Listen to the audio by clicking here (MP3 43:30 40MB), or fetch the associated enclosure as usual.