Review
Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7
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(Click graphic for enlargement) MSP also includes a nicely crafted character generator, CG Infinity
(Click graphic for enlargement) MSP7's character generator, CG Infinity
MSP also includes a nicely crafted character generator, CG Infinity, whose capabilities are not quite infinite, but close. Making vector-based text objects fly around and creating clean-looking text styles is made easier by the numerous templates included with the software. Also included are some very nice looking backgrounds on which you can place your full-screen text compositions. And, the finished text is easily imported into your timeline for keying and editing. Another useful part of MSP is its Video Paint module, which includes natural painting tools that let you bring a clip into it and rotoscope until the cows come home. If you get stuck with a rotoscoping assignment, you have my sympathy. It's nobody's favorite task, yet Video Paint can make the drudgery as painless as possible. Making it easier is Power Duplicate, which can place a matte you've created onto as many other frames as you designate, a feature that would be especially useful if you have a static element (say, wire removal on a locked-down shot) you'd like to change.

Now the biggest claim to fame for MSP7 -- its real time performance. In my testing, I was able to play back five layers of real time effects in real time with the software, but to do that I used a P4 3.06GHz machine and a Matrox Parhelia card. I would suggest getting the most powerful computer you can possibly afford if you want to use MSP7, and even more importantly, use a Parhelia graphics card. That makes a significant difference in the performance of MSP7, because this new version of MSP has been written specifically for the drivers of the Parhelia card. Only with the Parhelia (and I'm told to a somewhat lesser extent, the Matrox G450 and G550 or ATI cards with Theatre Mode, although I didn't test these) can you get a full screen, full resolution, real time preview of your effects. With other cards -- I also tried an ELSA Gloria DCC card -- you can get a real time preview, but it's not at full resolution, and not nearly as responsive. Anyway, your mileage will vary according to how much processor and graphics power you have under the hood. For some reason, Ulead staffers have had better luck than I, playing back eight layers of effects in real time using the Parhelia, but I haven't seen this happening myself.
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Regardless of the graphics card you're using, MSP7 works with a concept called pre-fetch, which is basically the software looking ahead and getting the processor to begin rendering any complicated effects on the fly, hoping they'll be done by the time the playback head reaches that spot in the timeline. It's not really stacking/caching frames in RAM like After Effects does, but the end result is similar. The good news here is that MSP7 is stoked with software features that can get the most out of whatever processor you're using. At the top of the timeline, red lines show where you've reached the real time limit of your system -- where frames will be dropped. So, if you've hit the wall, so to speak, just right click and choose to render only the spot that was giving you trouble. With this software, when you do choose to render, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition. And, the software is smart enough to know when not to blow away a render you've sat through, too. If you do a ripple edit, it won't lose those renders, either. Or, you can copy and paste a group of shots that have been rendered and they will stay that way unless you've added anything or changed something. That's what I call good software design.

It's also designed to take advantage of multiple processors, including the new hyper-threading capability of our Dell Precision Workstation 350 with a P4 3.06GHz chip inside that we used for this review. A nice touch is the ability to throttle this pre-fetch feature in the software's preferences. But the tradeoff of this is that there's a noticeable lag every time you want to play back a segment of your timeline -- sometimes three or four seconds with the Parhelia card. That's an annoying trait that I wish worked better. But heck, that's a lot faster than rendering the whole thing. With our Parhelia card on board, I noticed that there's not a lot of rendering necessary unless you're stacking up more than five effects. Ulead tells me that MSP7 is the only editing software that sends both video fields to the Parhelia, making it possible to record this analog output without any rendering. So, if for some reason you haven't heard me going on and on about this Parhelia card yet, read my lips: Get the Parhelia for MSP7.




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