Corel VideoStudio Pro X3 review

VideoStudio is a veteran of PC video editing – the X3 suffix obscures the fact that this is its twelfth incarnation. Years of development should produce a beautifully honed editor, but because it’s often easier to add rather than refine, mature software often feels bloated and confused.

Previous versions of VideoStudio were particularly guilty of this, with a tabbed interface that didn’t relate to the available features in a meaningful way. This time, Corel has finally overhauled the interface, consolidating down to three tabs and using buttons rather than drop-down lists for its various editing tools.

As a result, VideoStudio is quicker to navigate than before. The controls can still be sluggish at times, though, taking a second or two to respond to mouse clicks. Preview performance wasn’t great, dropping a few frames when attempting to play two simultaneous AVCHD streams on our Core i7 test PC. However, VideoStudio’s Smart Proxy feature boosts preview performance by making lower-resolution copies of HD footage, returning to the originals for export.

Clicking the Create Disc option now sends the project to the bundled DVD Factory Pro 2010. This classy authoring tool can generate DVD-Video, Blu-ray and AVCHD discs, the latter writing HD video to cheap DVD media that will play in most Blu-ray players. We’re impressed to see support for BD-J menus on Blu-ray discs. This Java-based format allows greater interactivity in menus than the BDMV format used in other low-cost authoring tools. Not surprisingly, these menus have little scope for customisation, but just four BD-J templates seems a bit stingy.

We also experienced various bugs, so it seems there’s still some work to do before DVD Factory Pro 2010 can be relied upon. It’s telling that Corel has added Movie Factory 7 SE as a free download for VideoStudio Pro X3 users. Talking of bugs, we also found that VideoStudio crashed when attempting to play some cameras’ files.

The main editing tools are comprehensive but various niggles make them less suitable for advanced users. Clips can have multiple effects applied, but only the selected effect is shown in the preview monitor when its settings are being adjusted. The animated text designer is great for casual users, but those who want precise control will be frustrated.

Colour correction effects can’t be keyframed to vary their settings over time, and their quality is below par with a tendency to skew colours in unnatural ways. A new Picture-in-Picture effect finally makes it possible to move videos, photos and graphics around the screen with some degree of precision, but the pop-up preview doesn’t show other tracks, making it hard to get objects on different tracks to interact. Clips and images on the six overlay tracks can be faded in and out but there’s no control over the speed of the fade.

Most of these problems won’t affect people who just want to edit home videos, but the disappointing colour correction is an exception, and the occasionally sluggish interface is another. We’re also disappointed by the less-than-comprehensive web-based help, which comes in place of a local help system. Smart Proxy keeps VideoStudio in the running for those who want to edit HD video on slower PCs, but on balance we recommend that these people go for Cyberlink PowerDirector 8 Ultra.