Home > Consumer Reviews > Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0

I'm not often inspired to write a review, but this program is exactly what I wanted. I demoed other programs like Showbiz, Pinnacle, VideoWave, and VideoStudio, and each had some impressive features. However, each left me unsatisfied in one way or another, from stability to ease of use to lack of configurability in many of the effects.

The one thing I like best about Screenblast is that you get three general purpose video tracks and three general purpose audio tracks. They come preconfigured with names like "Text", "Overlay", "Music", etc., but you can use them for any media (and even rename them). Overlay and chromakeying effects are a breeze.

The next coolest thing is the Pan/Crop feature, which allows any video or static image to have a starting and ending screen position, zoom, and rotation. This flexibility allows for unlimited creativity in moving picture-in-picture and panning motion for static images. Really cool stuff!

Finally, Screenblast's effect support and library is fantastic. You can apply any number of effects to any clip in any order, and each effect is highly customizable, again optionally with starting and ending settings to achieve timed effects. I can only say "Wow!"

On top of all this, it has not yet crashed (at all!) and the performance is good even on my 900mhz P3 Win2k machine.

The only cons are the fact that some people might prefer a simpler storyboard mode (although most of the features only really make sense in the more generic timeline approach), and you need to play with it for a bit before you can be fully comfortable with all its features. Flexibility often comes at a cost to simplicity, but the final result is almost always a better one.

Five stars. What a great video editor!

So I bought a MiniDV Camcorder with FireWire (IEEE 1394) out and I wanted the best video editing software, but I also wanted something intuitive and fairly easy to use I also wanted something stable that wouldn't lock-up or crash my computer all the time. In my quest for the perfect video editing, burning package I tried Unlead VideoStudio, Sonic MyDVD/Mr. ShowBiz, Pinnacle Studio 8 and then finally ScreenBlast MovieStudio. All the other programs mentioned I found extreemly unstable (save Sonic MyDVD) and while some of them were super easy to use (e.g. Pinnacle Studio 8) that easy of use came at the price of flexability.

For video editing (primary what I was looking for) ScreenBlast Movie studio stood out above the rest with drag and drop video editing, it was the only program I found that took a multi-track approach to video and audio editing, this provides a great iterface for some of its FX (some of which are common only to high-end packages, such as Choma-Keying/bluescreening), the core engine of ScreenBlast MovieStudio is the same of Sony's higher end Vegas 4 product (Vegas 4 is the video editing counterpart to Adobe Photoshop and ProTools in my book, it has no equal for what it does), perhaps a better name for ScreenBlast MovieStudio would have been Vegas 4 Lite, but Sony wanted to make this product target a very specific market.

DVD burning is only average (this is the reason I'm only giving this 4 stars), Screenblast renders the MPEG-2 then hands it over to another program to burn the DVD (Sonic MyDVD actually), so you're limited to the average consumer grade menu editing structure, this is the weak point of this software, but you can always use a seperate program to burn your DVDs and author your menus (I perfer TMPEG DVD Author). This design seems awkward, but it's required because ScreenBlast Movie Studio (like Vegas 4) were designed to be a general multi-track audio/video editing software package, MPEG-2 (DVD preped video) is one of many codecs supported, the reach of this program goes out much further (you can even use it as a multi-track recording studio and ignore the video editing all togeather) the higher end Vegas 4 doesn't even come with DVD authorware unless you buy Vegas 4+DVD, you have to keep in mind these two products are both developed by Sonic Fondary and started off as the same application.

So if you want the most simple all-in one solution and you don't want to spend any time learning you might look elsewhere, if you want real power in the video/audio editing department (beyond cheesy effects) and you don't mind investing a few hours, look no further.

The Screenblast Movie Studio is very easy to use and I had it doing video clips and transitions 10 minutes after opening the box. Installation was very smooth and the tutorial is quick and good enough to get you started. The manual that comes with the software is pretty good, but the HELP menu in the program itself is pretty much the way to go. Everything is drag-and-drop and making changes could not be any easier. I have used Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle 8, and a few other OEM bundled packages and Sony Screenblaster is so much easier to use and in most circumstances, has better looking transitions and effects.

You import video/pictures from any source and move it from the media pool to where you want it on the timeline. You can select transitions and view how each one works prior to incorporating it into your project. Doing that is drag-and-drop, just like everything else. Most of the production is just trial and error...select a transition or effect, drag it where you want it and hit play to see how it actually looks in the view screen. If you don't like it, click on it and delete and try something else. You will rarely need to use the help menu, everything is all laid out in from of you in a very organized and simple manner. I am totally in love with this product. The BAD side is the 3rd party DVD authoring from SonicFoundry. It crashes a lot and locks up everytime I select to burn a DVD straight from the camcorder. I have Nero 6 installed and it is not much better...most of the newer DVD authoring software is full of bugs. (I use Roxio and Nero and neither one works all that good either.)
Sony really has their act together on this product and I have already deleted the Pinnacle 8 program and will use this full time.
The Sony software is 5 stars. Because of the SonicFoundry DVD authoring software they choose to use, which has wasted a few of my blank DVDs, they loose a star for that. This is a great buy.

I've been using this for several weeks after bad experiences with ArcSoft Showbiz and Ulead VideoStudio. I find the interface to be simple and straightforward. I was up and editing very quickly. There are a few quirks but they are easy to live with. It uses only a timeline interface; I think adding a story-board mode would improve it, but I'm doing fine without it.

This editor has a rich feature set. For instance, you can apply video filters to individual clips, groups of clips, or you can just put it on the entire output. (Great for me, I can create one filter that compensates for the low saturation of my camera.) You can also create your own templates for filters, text, etc. It has a very intuitive way of changing the gamma on fades, too. SMS also has better audio capabilities than the other tools I've tried. And you can specify your own external audio editors, film capture tools, etc.

On large projects it can be slow to load, but it's pretty fast once it's going. (Ulead VideoStudio is maddeningly slow all the time.)

This tool uses MyDVD as the DVD authoring tool. It has some limitations but I've worked out a few tricks that keep me happy.

You can only capture as AVI, and when you "create a DVD" it generates AVI. So I use the honestech tool to batch-convert to mpegs (which causes some problems)and I generate mpg files and THEN go to MyDVD. Minor irritations.

Overall I recommend this highly. I downgraded it on Ease of Use because they have a moronic online registration that rarely works. You have to register both the product and the mpeg plug-in, so be ready to call Customer Service twice.

Documentation and tutorials are excellent. Well-integrated and thorough.

Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0 is by far the easiest movie and picture editing program. Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0 has a wide range of editing tool to help you make a great presentation, and if you get stumped just click on Show Me How and an interactive help screen comes on. I do recommend you read through the very easy to read and helpful manual.
I had used Windows Movie Maker, I felt it was too limited, and the biggest disaster of all was Pinnacle Studio 8, it is the lemon of video editing programs, it looks pretty, but don't let the glitter blind you. I tried Pinnacle on two different high powered computer one was an IBM 3ghz with 512meg Ram and the other was a Tiger Direct Systemax 3ghz with 1g of Ram and the program still would cause the computer to lock up and mess up my presentation.
With Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0 I did the same presentation without any problem.
The one thing I wish Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0 would be able to do is to accept the Windows AVI files. I'm able to get around that by converting them to MPEG-2 or avi file extension as opposed to AVI.
I still love Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0 for its flawless running ability and ease of use.
I give Screenblast Movie Studio 3.0 Five Stars.