Reasons to upgrade from VS8 to VS9?

rodak · Post by **rodak** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:15 pm

I've been using Pinnacle Studio (8 and 9) for a couple of years (with mixed results), and am now the proud owner of a copy of VideoStudio8 (an actual legit CD, not a "copy" - came free with a firewire card I bought on eBay -such a deal!), and have only begun to work with it, but I'm excited, because I've heard good things about Videostudio compared with Pinnacle.

I couldn't find a product features matrix anywhere at the ulead.com site - can anyone point me to one, or highlight the major changes between version 8 and 9? I don't know that I'm ready to fork over $50 just to get the current version, but I'd like to know what features I'll be missing if I stick with VS8.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:46 pm

Be careful, a bundled version may not be a full version. With that said, version 8 was troubled with many bugs and audio out of sync issues. Version 9 seems to have fixed those problems. Also, new with v9 was improved audio controls, chroma-keying, and auto music (or did that come out in v8?). Just those new features made upgrading a no-brainer for me. So should you upgrade? Absolutely, positi....but wait. It has just been announced that v10, with even more enhancements, is on the horizion:

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=12293

You may want to hold off on that upgrade for a little while.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:49 pm

First-off, Video Studio 10 has been "pre-announced".

The two improvements that come to mind are - VS9 comes with a Dolby AC3 encoder (2-channel) and it has a much-improved DVD-import tool.

I'm sure there are other important differences, especially since the free SE version that came with your hardware is more limited than the full retail version.

rodak · Post by **rodak** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:01 pm

Thanks for the info. I also thought perhaps this CD I got was the "SE" version (the serial# sticker even has "SE" on it), but after installing, it sure seems to be the full version - no sign of "SE" anywhere to be found. Also, I downloaded the 8.01 update - the one that's NOT supposed to work against the "SE" version - and it applied just fine.

Except for the bugs with audio sync, none of the features mentioned is of particular interest to me. My needs are pretty basic, just being able to cut up into scenes indexed by a menu with fadeout/fadein transitions is about all the fancy stuff I ever get into.

daniel · Post by **daniel** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:04 am

Black Lab wrote: Also, new with v9 was improved audio controls, chroma-keying, and auto music (or did that come out in v8?).

Yes SmartSounds were added in VS8 and are unchanged in 9.
Not very useful anyway. Whatever style you select the audio play is too short and proceeds to the next style after end. Boringly repetitive.

It's best to use real free use musical scores that you can find by the thousands on the web.