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 enlarge | From: Corel
Category: Software
List Price: $99.99
Buy New: $78.13
You Save: $21.86 (22%)
New (14) Used (1) from $78.13
Avg. Customer Rating:  83 reviews
Sales Rank: 103
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows Vista
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Pro
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 8 x 2
MPN: VSX2PROENPC
Model: VSX2PROENPC
UPC: 735163122374
EAN: 0735163122374
ASIN: B001EJTO8A
Release Date: September 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Well Worth the Money! December 30, 2008
This is a great program at a descent price, Has a lot of great features, many of which I personally will never use.
All the features from the previous edition with some new stuff is what this new program is all about. It is also very user friendly and easy to operate.
 Lots Of Extras - Big Learning Curve (For Me) December 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I became fairly adept at using "Windows Movie Maker" along with my video from my Sony HandyCam (4 megapixel) and my Flip Video Ultra. But I found myself becoming overwhelmed with all of the features with the Corel Video Studio Pro X2! I saw the fact that it is blu-ray compatible as a big plus (even though my computer does not have a blu-ray drive - yet) and the ability to make a 5.1 surround sound video was a big selling point. I do like making small films with music, but had not experimented much with specials effects. The Pro X2 has almost too many options.
It was fairly easy to download clips from my hand-held Sony and my Flip Video to the editing screen. The Pro X2 takes just about any type of video from any source. Its all simply `drag and drop'. Its easy to lengthen, shorten or cut/edit any piece of video. If your video is of high quality, you can actually have a 1920 X 1080 size video which is as good as it gets for a large flat screen television. You can also drop in any music along a separate `timeline' as well as another `timeline' for vocals or narrations. I was also able to do small `montages' by overlaying other video and pictures (kind of like `picture in picture (PIP). Like "Windows Movie Maker" there are tons of various cross fades or transition from video clip to video clip. It was also very cool to be able to `slow down" (slow motion) action and not have the audio affected at all.
Special effects are numerous and when you get overwhelmed, you can actually toggle back and forth so you never have too much information on your `timelines' at once. If you use blu-ray, I understand that you can insert `menus' in your blu-ray discs just like on the ones you rent. I can't wait to get a blu-ray drive. If you have an older or poorly lit video, there is a color and tone correction and it does a fairly good job, even with old splotchy videos. If you are into titles, you can easily insert these anywhere on your screen in any font or color you choose. You can even put a backdrop in any color to make it stand out against the video. This is best for titles and end credits, but I suppose you could have it run the entire length of the video. Other extras are synching your slides to the beat of a song, simulating your handwriting (didn't use this one) and the Chroma Key is very cool. Its like a blue screen in special effects films where you can make the background anything you want and superimpose yourself or your subject onto it. The lines around the front ground subjects are slightly imperfect, but it still looks cool. Imagine yourself walking along a beach in the south Pacific instead of the city - that's the kind of effect you can do.
Sound is a big thing for me, so when I saw 5.1 surround was available, I went crazy. But, I cannot get it to work past stereo. I don't know if it s my Acer Aspire desktop, my Windows Vista or this program, but I just cannot get 5.1 to work. Now there are over a dozen or more surround sound clips you can choose from in the 5.1 surround menu that are very brief (less than 30 seconds), but you can repeat them. However, as cool as they are in 5.1 surround, they are mostly percussion and not very exciting. I contacted Corel about the 5.1 problems and they told me what to do to correct the 5.1 (you just drag the sound clip to the on-line speaker, of which there are five plus the subwoofer in an easy diagram) but it didn't work. You can easily amplify sounds, get rid of annoying hiss and adjust volume levels at any time. However, the 5.1 surround just has me stupefied. Maybe when I can figure it out, I'll come back and revise this review, but at the moment, this program is better than "Windows Movie Maker" only in the choices of extras and special effects.
I am still experimenting and this review is two months plus after playing with this program. I hope to have conquered all the problems some time soon. For the price, the Corel Video Studio Pro X2 is still a bargain, even with a bit of a learning curve.
Excellent mid-level video editing package December 23, 2008
The progress is low-priced video editing programs over the past few years is nothing less than astounding. Originally, Corel acquired what has become VideoStudio Pro X2 from Ulead. Ulead's products were always ambitious and often too quirky to use. In this case, Corel has tamed the base product and turned out a very usable video editing and DVD authoring package that compares very favorably with the stalwart Adobe Premiere Elements.
One big advantage packed into the VideoStudio Pro X2 box is a manual, a real manual! While the 200+ page manual will not teach you the art of editing, it will most certainly walk you through, albeit briefly in most cases, eery significant feature of the program. It's a matter of opinion, but I think old-fashioned ink on paper is still the best way to rapidly convey information. Kudos to Corel for including the manual, something Adobe doesn't bother to do.
And there is a lot to learn about VideoStudio Pro X2. This is no lightweight editing program: it can do (within reason) anything you need done by way of video capture, editing and output.
Video capture options include DV tape and AVCHD.
You start with three video and three audio tracks, a lot for a product in this price range. You can add up to five overlay tracks, which is actually a staggering number for a consumer oriented package. You can, of course, add effects, filters, overlays and titles. There is an abundance of trimming and cutting tools, which you can apply on the frame level.
The list of things you can do, as a matter of fact, is quite extensive and you will be glad to have that 200+ page manual to work with as you learn the program.
The work area is quite nice and you can change the view to meet your needs and desires.
You can create your own animations with a painting tool, generate your own titles, edit audio complete with a mixing panel.
Output options are surprisingly rich. DVDs with menus, of course, the now ubiquitous YouTube uploader, write to DV tape and export to mobile device.
For those of us who have roots in the days of editing film with the then conventional tools, VideoStudio Pro X2 with its low price and broaqd usability is breathtaking. In comparison with other contemporary consumer editing programs, though, it is a contender for best of breed.
Overall, it represents excellent value and a comprehensive toolkit for turning your raw video into a finished product.
Jerry
Support for MS Media Center is lacking December 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Corel VS X2 is a great product for producing home videos and slide shows. Unfortunately, it does not provide codecs for generating videos for viewing with the windows media center on your TV. While it support WMV formats, it does not allow generation of media files in higher quality MP4 or any AVI file formats. Other products like Sony Movie Studio can provide these other video formats
 You better have an exterminator in the family. December 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are far too many bugs in this software to address on an individual basis in a forum such as this. The most irksome issue is frequent crashes in which all recent work is lost. Next on the list is the time wasting function which they ludicrously refer to as "saving". It may or may not actually save it, but at what point of the production process it decides to save the file is utterly random and arbitrary. Even once a file is "saved", each time you open it you risk the file being changed from it's previous incarnation. It is absolutely impossible to create videos in a timely manner, due to the constant repetition of remaking the same files over and over and over due to the software continually reinterpreting what to save. It also takes two to three hours to burn a disc, if it burns it at all. It tends to crash during to burning process, costing you a disc. Then when you try to burn the disc again, the file differs greatly than the one you had "saved", and it's literally back to the drawing board yet again. There are dozens of other less destructive yet annoying bugs that I won't go into here.
Warning, don't let the word "Pro" in the software's name fool you, no professional would use this product. If you have ten minutes of little Susie playing soccer that you want to make into a DVD, after much hard and repetitive work, this software will eventually turn out a quality disc. But if you need to create anything of any length, forget it. Considering the value of your time, it would be far more cost effective to take your footage to a professional and have them do it for you.
And just for the record, I am using a brand new Dell with Vista, 600G of memory and 6G of ram. It works flawlessly with all the other software I use, some which is fairly sophisticated.
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