O
ur dreams of moonlighting as DJs will likely never come to pass, but we
can at least sharpen our remixing skills with Sony’s Acid Music Studio. Acid
has been around for years, but this newb-friendly version of the $375 Acid Pro
has delights that are sure to please any aspiring club-thumper.
Whereas programs like Ableton come with built-in synthesizers that allow
you to create your own musical loops, Acid focuses on organizing precon-
structed loops into songs. Ingenious users can splice these loops themselves
using the program’s built-in cutting board, but typical mixmasters will likely get
their sound loops through the program itself—Acid Music Studio comes with a
number of preconstructed, downloadable tracks.
Acid Music Studio, though simple to use, takes a lifetime to master;
fortunately, your adventures are helped along by a tutorial system that
literally highlights everything you need to do. Our only complaint is that the
tutorials aren’t comprehensive enough—a bit more hand-holding through the
entire song-creation process would be ideal, as opposed to splitting the help
into individual chunks.
Acid’s capacity for manipulating sound clips has always been the
program’s main selling point—it’s as easy as dropping in a loop and dragging it
for however long you want the sequence to play. The program works on a grid/
measure system, although you do have the option of unsnapping clips to create
some wicked off-beat grooves. Transforming the clips with audio effects is a
two-click process, but again, we find Acid’s options somewhat lacking. You getall the standards—including modifications for chorus, reverb, and delay—but the
absence of unique plugins dilutes Acid’s strength. Although each plugin does come
with preset options, that isn’t much of a consolation.
Acid Music Studio is a good value, even though its features fall short of what’s
available with more expensive software. This makes it a sound investment for those
who want to get their musical feet wet; professionals, on the other hand,
will undoubtedly want more.
—DAVID MURPHYSony Acid Music Studio
As far as music software goes, it’s a trip!
J
ust bought a snazzy new camera that records to AVCHD but don’t have the
software to edit it? No problem. Ulead’s VideoStudio 11 Plus pitches itself as the
only app capable of fully editing video captured using Sony’s and Panasonic’s new
H.264-based codec, which works with mini-DVDs, hard drives, and flash memory
inside cameras. (Nero was technically first, but its editor is pretty threadbare.)
That’s not the only new feature in Studio 11 Plus, though. The app now sup-
ports burning to HD DVD, but not Blu-ray. We find this limitation odd because we
still haven’t seen an HD DVD burner on the consumer market while Blu-ray burners
are approaching the $500 mark. In any event, Ulead says it’ll offer Blu-ray support
“soon” and cites standards-ratification problems as the holdup.
Unfortunately, most of our complaints concerning Studio 10 remain true for
Studio 11: playback that halts when you change the scale of the timeline, keyboard
commands that are difficult to find, and various instances of slow performance. It’s
also clunky. If you insert video into your project, the application doesn’t automati-
cally shift audio or other elements to make space for it. That’s just plain dumb.
While we did successfully capture and edit HDV-resolution video from a
Canon HV10, performance was subpar despite the ability to use a “smartproxy”
method that uses a lower-resolution proxy. And as we mentioned, performance
hasn’t improved since VideoStudio 10. Encoding, playback, and responsiveness
were sluggish on our Athlon 64 FX-60 box with 2GB of RAM. Premiere Elements
3.0 and CyberLink PowerDirector 6—both capable of editing HDV content—felt
far more responsive.
VideoStudio does some things nicely, though. White balance and color cor-
rection are fairly intuitive. We especially like the white-balance icons, which most
people will find familiar from their digital still cameras, and a couple of new filtershelped clean up noise on video recorded from TV and the Internet. The app imported
video from unencrypted commercial DVDs without a problem as well.
Sadly, while there’s plenty that’s new here, there are plenty of problems,
too. Right now, VideoStudio’s main saving grace is AVCHD capability, but there
are better choices elsewhere, such as Pinnacle’s new Studio 11 (which also
now does AVCHD) or even Premiere Elements.
—GoRDon MAH UnGUlead VideoStudio 11 Plus
The only game in town for AVCHD editing
MAXIMUMPC December 2007
L?Pi?QM Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
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sony acid music studio
$60, http://www.sony.com6
videostudio 11 plus
$130, http://www.ulead.comAcid Music Studio allows you to string video alongside your
musical creation, but the program severely limits your video-
editing options.Setting white balance is a snap using an icon system borrowed
from Ulead’s digital-image editor.