MSP8 vs UVS9 for high definition editing

[Joe Linn]

I bought MSP 7 for home use to edit high definition video. I have the Sony HC1 camcorder. Due to bugs in MSP7, I was never able to do what I wanted. I tried the demo of MSP8 and it fixed the problems I was having. Now I notice that Ulead Video Studio 9 has a free HD plugin available. I had been planning to upgrade to MSP8 for $250, but now I see that I can upgrade my copy of Video Studio for $50 and do HD editing with it.

I have been looking for a document on the Ulead web site comparing MSP8 and Video Studio 9. I have found web pages comparing both to other products but not to each other. Does anyone know if there is a comparison available?

I'm not sure I need all the power of MSP8, so I'm wondering if UVS9 might be a better fit for me. Mainly, I want to be able to capture HD video, edit it, appply filters to, for instance, correct color and brightness, copy back to the camera or reduce the bit rate so I can copy to DVHS tape. This also requires converting between MPG and M2T (transport streams). I also need to down-convert the HD video so I can make standard definition DVDs from it.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding which product would better suit my needs? $250 seem a little expensive for a version upgrade since I already purchased MSP7 and the HD plugin, and since all I really need is a fix for the bugs in 7, not any new features in 8.

Thanks

Joe

[Devil]

If you purchased your plugin recently, the following message in the MUG forum may be of interest:

Those who purchased the MSP 7 HD Plug-in AFTER July 2005 at the FULL PRICE,
and WHO REGISTERED, will be contacted individually by Ulead, and will get a
discount coupon for USD$200 off the upgrade price. If you fall in this
category and haven't heard anything from Ulead by the end of this week, send
me a mail at my personal mail topenshaw@hotmail.com (since I'll be out of
the office)

[Joe Linn]

If you purchased your plugin recently, the following message in the MUG forum may be of interest:

Thanks! I checked and found that I missed the deadline. I actually purchased the HD plugin in January for a different camera. My evaluation copy of MSP expired today so I need to decide before long. I downloaded the evaluation copy of UVS9, but you can't download the HD plugin for the evaluation copy, so I have no way of determining if it meets my needs. Any help comparing the two, especially regarding HD editing, would help me a lot!

As I have been working with both, I have run into one question I haven't been able to find in the help or the manuals. Almost always, when I apply a video filter, I want it to keep the same settings through the entire clip. There must be an easy way to do this but the only thing I have found is to go to the beginning of the clip in the filter settings box and make my settings then go to the end of the clip and make the same settings. There are a lot of icons on filter settings box near the before and after windows. Does one of those tell the filter to keep the same settings through the entire clip? I haven't been able to find the doc for the icons.

Thanks again.

Joe

[Devil]

In MSP7, there is no way other than manually to apply the same values to the start and end keyframes. In MSP8 Effects Manager, there is a flexible system by right-clicking the keyframe in question. This allows you to copy the keyframe attributes to all other keyframes, all keyframes to the right or all keyframes to the left. By adding intermediate keyframes, you can thus, for example, do immensely powerful keyframing (16 max in many effects, but not the P&Z filter)

I don't know about VS, as I don't use it.

[DFP]

Hi Joe - in MSP7, the best way I've found is still a manual process.

Adjust one keyframe, then click on it under the "original" window. Press Ctrl+C to Copy. Click the other keyframe and press Ctrl+V to Paste.

It's quicker than adjusting the values on both keyframes, but sometimes not much quicker...

[tyamada]

VS9 HD plug in lets you capture HD Video but there is no way to get it back to the camera. You can down sample the video to write it to DVD but the only way to share it is to use the native capture mpeg2 file and write it to a disk to play it back with computer with the same codec installed. You can also take the captured file and convert it to Microsofts .WMV Hi Def format.
Conversion to .wmv hi def takes a lot of computer time. I tried to convert mpeg2 (Hi Def mpeg) to Hi Def .wmv and just gave up because of the long rendering times.

With MSP8 you can do all of the above and write the file back to the camera.