Sony Movie Studio Platinum Collection

Sony has recently come out with Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite version 12 and Sound Forge Audio Studio 10.0.

 

Let’s first take a look at Movie Studio Platinum Suite version 12. Keep in mind that this is a consumer grade software editor and I will be judging things based on that. The idea is to make it easy for the average consumer who wants quality video to be able to work with an easy-to-use software.

 

Your list of the new features in movie studio platinum 12 from the press release from Sony.

 

New Features in Movie Studio Platinum 12 include:
•More tracks, more possibilities: Users can easily produce intricate video projects or record multi-track audio by adding up to 20 video and 20 audio tracks.
•Simplified workflow: With new split and trim buttons, 3D project templates, and enhanced timeline interaction, Movie Studio Platinum provides an easier and more streamlined solution for any video editing project.
•Publish to Pixelcast?: Users can now share the movie they’re editing in Movie Studio Platinum without ever leaving the application by publishing it directly to Pixelcast (www.pixelcast.com); a fun new cloud service that provides easy ways to collaborate and share photos and videos.
•Windows Vista and Windows 7 64-bit support: Usage of additional system RAM and overall stability is made possible by installing the 64-bit version of Movie Studio Platinum onto 64-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7 machines.

 

Sony has succeeded very well with the software from a 2D perspective. “Show me how” and “make movie” make it very easy for novices to jump in and start creating 2D videos. The step-by-step process complete with colored outlines are a visual treat for anyone who’s never had to edit before.

 

They take you through everything from the basics to recording and editing media, editing video and still images, editing audio, adding text and backdrops and even exporting your project.

 

The “make movie”wizard helps you with uploading your movie to YouTube, sharing it online in other ways,  turning into DVD or Blu-ray disc, saving it back to your camera or portable device or even sending it to your hard drive.

 

Every one of these Sony’s step-by-step procedures take you through the process. I would give it an A+ for helping novice editors to achieve good results with this software.

 

Unfortunately I can’t say the same thing about the 3D stereoscopic process.

 

Like it’s big professional brother, Sony Vegas Pro, the 3D process takes quite a bit of effort to find out how to make it work. There are no helpful  “show me how” guides to help you through the process. It starts out well when you click new project. You’re given a choice of  3D Internet video but nothing else in 3D. From there how to add clips to the timeline and creating stereoscopic pairs requires you to go deep into the help files and find out on your own how to create and pair 3D stereoscopic clips or how to set the project for the various 3D formats.

 

When you’re finished editing and ready to “make movie”, I chose “Burn it to DVD or Blu-ray disc.” I was then presented with a choice of either DVD or Blu-ray disc but no choice of adding menus to either. That area was grayed out with no explanation as to why. It left me a little unsure that you can not see 3D listed in the menu. I just had to assume that it was there.
Finally in the next window after choosing Blu-ray, I was greeted with the choice of only one video format, Sony AVC/MVC. Since I know that this is a 3D frame packed 3D format, I knew what was happening. But most definitely if you’re a novice you would’ve been totally lost and probably not been able to get this far along.

 

I’ve long been a fan of Sound Forge going back to version 3. This new version offers a few new additions to make it even better. Sound Forge audio studio gives you a variety of abilities for recording editing and encoding audio on your home PC. You can even convert and record stereo sound from live performances and easily balance sound levels and synchronize audio and video.

 

Again Sony has provided “show me how”, a wonderful series of in-depth tutorials that highlight and guide you through many of the functions and tools in Sound Forge.

 

I’ve always loved its ability and ease at extracting audio from a CD. The vinyl recording and restoration tool allows you to easily clean up many the imperfections you can find in vinyl record recordings. Available audio resolutions have gone up from the standard 24-bit 96kHz to 32-bit 192 kHz. This gives you much better sound quality. Even Apples AAC encoding format is now supported for bulk import and export.

 

The Vocal Eraser plug-in allows you to remove vocals from any audio track and isolate the background music from the vocals. Great for creating karaoke mixes and for adding vocals to other tracks for remixing.

 

By: Al Caudullo

 

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