Ulead VideoStudio 8 - Home Movies review:1 stars (bad product) - well i have written several previous reviews, however i believe they were not posted because of my opinions on the creators blood-alchol level when this was dreamed up. However now im trying to make a very calm review. This product is not intuitive at all. Especially if you have previously used Apple iMovie. However there is a much better alternative to this, Power Director 3. I will not take the 30mins to write such a thorough trashing of this product but believe me, don't get this product.5 stars (You can't beat it for the price) - Does exactly what it's supposed to. Some complain of a steep learning curve - I watched their online tutorials before starting, and it was pretty easy. Captures sharp-looking video from my Sony MiniDV camcorder via IEEE1394. I can edit all my clips together, insert titles, voice-over track, scene transition effects and burn a DVD with menu, all just with mouse clicks. Hasn't crashed yet. My only complaint is that the controls for tweaking the audio levels on the main video track are very fiddly, and the user guide is a bit sparse on exactly how this aspect is supposed to work.2 stars (Great for video editing, too bad no DVD authoring) - I wish this software work like it should!!!
The software is quite intuitive and I spent ~ 2 hours learning it and was able to consequently create two 1.5 hr long videos completed with open/close title sequences, scene transitions, voice, music tracks, video overlay and filtering. It's great for that purpose, although some of the preview feature is somewhat quirky, and it demands some quite odd restrictions during editing process like forcing the deletion of transitions between clips if the one of the clip is to be splitted into two sectoins, but all of the editing feature worked as advertised.
Now comes to time to bring the video onto the DVD, that where it all went down the tube. First DVD was created fairly eventlessly despite a very long video conversion sequence (I think it ran as long as the video's full run length) eventhough majority of the footage was already in DVD mpeg-2 format to start with. But the DVD created consistent skips and hicups in changing chapter,locking up the players, etc. I tried the DVD disk on several players as well on three computers with DVD-ROMs, all of them skipped on the playback and locks up when switching chapters on the disk. I have also tried 3 times to create a second disk with a bit more added effects and sound tracks the DVD disk creation process had consistently failed during video conversion step, even when I try to creat an ISO DVD image the software just could not finish converting the video and crashes every time with 99% converstion completed!!! EVERYTIME with 99% completion.
I like the video editing function of this software quite a lot, but without the ability to author the completed video onto a DVD disk, the software really is quite useless.
I have updated the software with the latest patches and have more than enough computer resources for the job, but the buggy DVD creation module is causing tremendous amout of frustration.
Updated audio synchronization problems:
If your video is longer than a couple of minutes, this software will definitely have trouble syncing the audio to the video sequence. I have tried this for many projects, unless you split a video into many, many, many projects, you will be faced with audio out of sync problems. It's so bad, after 30 minutes, the audio lag will be as much as 10-20 seconds. This is absolutely unacceptable. The software has decent editing features, but horrible audio sync.
Ulead VideoStudio 8 - Home Movies Features:
Computer software (programs)
Video
Composting
Effects
Editing
CD
Includes video tutorial, samples, and 180-page manual
Easy-to-use home video editing software
Over 700 effects, video frames, and graphics
Compose thousands of soundtracks with auto music maker
Capture from all camcorders; share on DVD, tape, and the Web

Ulead VideoStudio 8 - Home Movies is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 89.99USD.