Is VideoStudio 11+ really this bad?

[Nigehenry]

I was just wondering if anyone else had expierience of Videostudio 11+? I recently downloaded the trial version as I had to edit a mini DVD recorded by a friend. I know Permiere Elements does not handle vob's well and videostudio is supposed to be better, so I thought I'd give it a try.
I did like the way the media is downloaded into the program, it automatically converts the vob's to mpegs, and assigns the correct aspect ratio (16:9) to each clip and stores them on your hard drive. This is all that I liked about it though.
The program workflow seems overly simplified, but even so on one occasion I walked into a "blind alley" where I could not go back and had to exit the program to get out of the screen I had unwittingly entered.
It also seemed pretty unstable, crashing at both the menu creation screen and during editing. Worst of all was when it crashed during rendering of the finished project, after 2 hours it simply stopped and gave the error message "Unspecified Error". Helpful. Not.
All in all, not a good experience. It has now been removed from my computer never to return.
Thank goodness I can do most of my editing in Premiere Elements!

[Briantho]

I started some years ago with Pinnacle Studio 9 (lots of out of sync issues), then 9 Plus (had to keep my left hand over Ctrl-S cause it crashed continuously - especially if I'd forgotten to save for a few minutes) and then I tried version 10. Total disaster and almost had to reformat the hard disk to get rid of it.

Then I tried Visual Studio 10 (I think it was) followed by 11 but I always got juddering DVDs out. Apparently there are ways of producing something that doesn't judder, judder but why go through all the hoops (clear this, stop that, hold your breath) when with Premiere you can still be connected to the web and running all sorts of other tasks as it burns the DVD. The only time I don't interfere with my machine is during Capture but otherwise Premiere coexists very well.

So, in answer to your question, yes, it really is that bad.

[Chuck Engels]

There are some pretty good workarounds for editing in Premiere Elements, converting the VOB files to DV-AVI using mpegstreamclip (free) seems to work very well for many. VideoRedo is another option for conversion and simple editing too.

[Nigehenry]

Yes converting the vob's was what I had to do eventually. There were so few edits requried on the original DVD that I thought I could save myself some time by using a program which supposedly could edit without having to do any conversion. Of course I spent so much time struggling with it that it took far longer. You live and learn.
I guess it just surprised me that a trial version, which is supposed to induce you to buy the full version, was so full of bugs. It certainly would not persuade me to move away from Premiere, even for "simple" jobs.

Nige

[Briantho]

My experience(s), above, are all based upon full, paid for versions.

Actually, I believe all these trial versions are basically exactly the same as the normal versions except that there are time limitations or watermarks overlaid on the edited/encoded footage. Otherwise, as you say, unique bugs in a trial version would certainly dissuade potential purchasers ;-)

[Nigehenry]

I guess it is difficult for software companies to bug test a wide variety of machines and configurations with their products. However there is nothing spectacular about my own machine, it's a fairly basic Dell which hasn't been modified (much). Some companies just seem to be better at spotting the bugs than others. For those companies that do put out a product that give alot of problems, I'm amazed they stay in business. The internet has done a lot to help spread the word when there are problems and some companies just cant seem to raise their standards.

Nige