Should I upgrade from VS11 to Pro X3?

[JamesU2002]

Hi,

Recently moved to Windows 7 and wondered whether it was worth upgrading from VS11 to Pro X3?

Will I see a big performance increase?

Also I see a lot of bad reviews on many online retailers, are there lots of problems with Pro X3?

[GuyL]

There are a lot of nice new features in X3 and I have had all the versions from 6 up. They severly changed the burning module which is a big complaint but it may have been done because of the problems some would have with the old way if they didn't follow the workflow to burn properly as posted by Steve and others over the years. Making it a separate thing seems to be an easy way out rather than fixing the problem.

[Ken Berry]

Hey! Don't blame that new burning module on Steve or any of us!! We were beta testers and repeatedly told Corel to forget about DVD Factory 2010, but they ignored us!!! It was only after lots of other complaints by other users that Corel finally agreed to release Movie Factory 7 SE for registered users of X3 because it more closely resembled the burning module in all previous versions of VS...

[GuyL]

Sorry, you took my out of context. I was not blaming anyone, Ken.

Let me clarify....

Back in previous versions there were stickys that explained the workflow for VS. Bascially, you captured, edited and then produced a file. You started an emtpy project with the same settings as you intended to burn with and then burned a disk using your saved files. It was not recommended to burn directly from a project as many had experienced problems. That is what I mean by what Steve (and others) had posted in the past.

My thinking was that being it was recommended to do this separately anyway, Corel may have thought it be best to try and change it in X3. I didn't say their decision was a wise one!

[Black Lab]

To answer the OP's question, I don't think you will see a big performance increase. X3 does have a lot of nice, new features that I think makes it worthy of an upgrade. As Guy and Ken have stated, the burn module that originally came with X3 (DVD Factory 2010) is terrible, but you can download (for free) MovieFactory 7SE which is very similar to the burn modules in previous versions of VS.

I don't know about the bad reviews (was it about the burn module?), but I don't have any problems on my machine, and it's only a P4.

Why not download the trial and take it for a test drive?

[Ken Berry]

...And just to address the 'out of context' issue, don't worry -- I wasn't upset! I was just rather surprised to see the suggestion that Corel may have somehow or other justified its decision to play around with previously tried and tested applications like the burning module because that conformed to what we call our Recommended Procedure. (The latter is indeed as described by you.) I don't think it had anything to do with that.

First, with VS11, they changed the capture modules which had worked well in previous versions. The reason they did so was to substitute all of them with just one: the IVI Capture Component. IVI stands for InterVideo, which they had just taken over... so it was largely a commercially-driven decision. And we have had all sorts of capture problems -- especially with DV -- ever since, despite many complaints from this forum.

As for the radically stupid decision by Corel to use a totally new burning mechanism in X3, that too was, as I indicated, objected to repeatedly by the Beta testers, though we were ignored at the time. And I think that too was also a misjudgment perhaps driven by ill-conceived commercial considerations on Corel's part. A few months earlier, they had launched a whole new, 'simplified' video editing and authoring suite called Corel Digital Studio 2010. As far as I can see, that has gone down as a real clunker. But they nevertheless salvaged what they could and inserted the burning module from that suite -- DVD Factory 'Pro' 2010 -- into X3. It's limited, very slow and very invasive, and was justifiably criticised by just about every user. This resulted in Corel deciding to partial reverse another silly decision which had been in effect to mothball the useful authoring equivalent to Video Studio, namely Movie Factory. Even with the most recent version (already more than two years old), MF 7, they had shown some ambivalence, marketing it only in limited regions of the world, though luckily for me that included Australia -- but not North America! But now at least we have an SE version of MF 7 made available to registered users of VS X3 to make up for the shortcomings of DVD Factory 2010!

So no, I don't think any of this was driven by a desire to implement our Recommended Procedure as a kind of 'word made flesh'... Rather it was a series of decisions -- as you say, not necessarily wise ones! -- driven mainly by commercial considerations and knee-jerk reactions to justified criticisms -- admittedly in a commercially very competitive field where Corel has not been doing overly well in the past year or so...

[GuyL]

I agree, Ken. As I said, it was not a wise decision but I was only trying to justify why they may have done it. The reason I gave was the only logical explanation I could think of other than commercial reasons as you have stated. It was a bonehead move on their part - no question.

[JamesU2002]

Wow this thread went really off-topic.

Still none the wiser whether I should upgrade really.

I've recently moved to an Intel i7 CPU and wondered which would render faster, VS11 or Pro X3?

[mitchell65]

Still none the wiser whether I should upgrade really.

As Jeff suggested, why not download the trial version and see how you get on. You will have 30 days in which to make your judgment! The downside is I don't think you can download the new authoring software if you only have the TBYB version pf VS.

[GuyL]

Yes, I would recommend the Trial like John said. I've compared versions like this in the past but I didn't do it with X2 vs X3 this time around. The software has been optimized for I7 and Nvidia CUDA rendering. You have an I7 so you should see improvements. If you have an Nvida GPU then CUDA will benefit you more, most likely. I have an I7 920 overclocked to 3.8GHz and it renders pretty fast and all 8 threads are being used with HT on.

But, give it a try with the trial version and render the same project in each. See if there is a difference for you.

[Black Lab]

Still none the wiser whether I should upgrade really.

X3 does have a lot of nice, new features that I think makes it worthy of an upgrade.

[JamesU2002]

Just an update.

Downloaded the Pro X3 trial, here are my test results:

Pro X3 vs VS11 - Test:

WMV HD 1920x1080 - 5 Minutes Long - 7000 Kbps Bit Rate

Pro X3 Render Time: 29 Minutes
VS11 Render Time: 28 Minutes


Think I'll be sticking with VS11

[Ron P.]

Wow, a whole minute difference..Glad you ran that test..

[Black Lab]

If rendering time is your only criteria maybe you should go back to using standard def!