Corel has no shortage of video-editing programs. Its flagship program, Pinnacle Studio, is powerful, and once I got the hang of it, thanks to tutorials built into the program and available online, I found it to be a worthy competitor of Adobe Premiere Elements and iMovie. My initial review of Pinnacle Studio a few weeks ago was harsh, no doubt, due to not spending enough time with it. Now I use it for movie-editing tasks. Score one for perseverance.
Corel also has smorgasbord programs, like Roxio Creator NXT Pro.
No software is perfect. Often, the flaws become evident only when one is in the middle of a project, when the choice is either to start over with a new program or muddle along with the one you're using. Roxio Creator, with its Swiss Army knife's worth of programs and utilities, will tackle just about any multimedia task you throw at it. Its photo- and video-editing components are basic, but for folks who don't have the need for standalone programs such as PaintShop Pro, it will do just fine. For what they do, they're pretty much flawless. The interface isn't fancy or complex; if you're OK with that, you're home free.
It has a video capture program for VHS tapes and can import videos from many movie cameras. Its video-editing program is simplicity defined _ just drag and drop video snippets into boxes on the home screen. There's a program to burn DVDs of videos and make copies of those disks. Videos can be spread among those DVDs. Its video program will take scenes from two cameras and, in one technique, will merge the two scenes for a professional effect. Projects, such a video of my daughter's 3rd birthday, are easily uploaded to Facebook, much to family and friends' delight.
I'm digitizing my home movies that are on analog VHS tapes, and Creator can import film directly from a VCR using Roxio's Easy VHS to DVD hardware. Pinnacle Dazzle also lets you import analog movies. Each cost about $60.
There also are a handful of sound utilities, including one that will capture live sounds and convert the files to formats suitable for editing.
How much do all these programs cost? If you have only $100 to spend on your multimedia software library, and you don't have the need _ or the patience _ for more powerful software, Roxio Creator NXT Pro 6 should do the job for you. But if you need more powerful programs, I recommend PaintShop Pro for photo editing and Pinnacle Studio for movie editing.
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