Studio Ultimate Version 12

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DV, HDV, and AVCHD capture remain unchanged from the previous version. This means that Studio offers the basics but lacks niceties like batch capture and high-speed DV tape scan, both available with PowerDirector. The program's timeline editing features, though easy enough to use, haven't been updated, either, so they lack advanced features like the Multi-Trim tool of PowerDirector and Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus, which makes quick work of carving out the desired scenes from a long capture file.

And as before, the in-program preview screen is the smallest in the category. You can, however, supplement it. One way is to preview using a DV camcorder connected to your PC via FireWire, which enables full-screen display on a television or other NTSC device attached to the camcorder. Alternatively, if you have a dual-monitor display, you can run the program on one monitor and configure the other for full-screen preview.

I tested the software on a dual-processor, quad-core, 2.83-GHz Hewlett-Packard xw6600 Workstation with 3GB of RAM and running Windows XP. The system certainly qualifies as more powerful than the average consumer desktop, but it's not out of reach for those in the AVCHD and HDTV set, and it proved much more responsive than the HP xw4100 Workstation, with its 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor, that I've used in the past.