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ArcSoft ShowBiz DVD Review
- Full Version: $99.99
- Upgrades From: $49.99
- Simple and basic, but effective video editing application
- Simple wizard for automatically editing movies in a few clicks
- Add clever looking scene transitions between clips
- Wide range of visual effects to choose from
- Choose between storyboard and timeline to get the level of detail you need
- Simple user interface that's easy to learn
- Supports many different audio and video formats
- Create photo slideshows with impressive visual effects
- Tools for altering the brightness and colour saturation of your footage
- Automatic transfer of captured video straight to disc
- Easily add text to your videos with "fancy" text effects
- Great performance even on older computers
- Easy to capture video from virtually any device
- Author DVDs with interactive menus of your own creation or from a built in template
- Easy correction of mistakes in burning (with compatible media)
- Online tutorial and email support for registered users
- Support for multiple languages
- Free trial available
- Compatible with Windows only
Arcsoft ShowBiz DVD is a simple, basic, but effective video editing application that would best suit people who don't want to spend a lot of time editing movies, but want a decent looking final cut. While we do think there are better applications out there, ShowBiz DVD makes it into the top ten due to its ease of use and good functionality, even on older systems.
When first opening up the application you may be, as we were, dismayed at how grey the user interface appears to be. It would be fair to say that Arcsoft could have spent a bit of extra time prettying the user interface up a bit, but what it lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in solid functionality and simplicity of use. Everything is laid out clearly and we had no trouble finding the different tools we needed. For editing you either work with the higher level storyboard which lets you drag and drop clips to create your movie, or for more detailed editing you can zoom in to the timeline. Both have their uses, but it is still possible to create a decent looking movie without ever having to work with the timeline.
There are lots of visual effects included with Arcsoft ShowBiz DVD that you can add to your production simply by dragging and dropping. While some of them look good, there are a few which we felt looked quite amateurish when compared with the effects we have seen in some other applications. There are some particularly good text effects though and it is very easy to overlay text, with or without effects, onto your video. There is also a wizard which will automatically edit your video for you or create photo slideshows with nice visual effects. These work pretty well, but again we have seen better from other applications.
Arcsoft ShowBiz DVD supports most types of commonly used video, audio and image formats. It is easy to capture video from any type of device and there is a wizard which will transfer raw footage to disc editing it for you along the way. However, the process did seem to take a little longer than some applications we have looked at. Once your masterpiece is finished you can easily output it to a variety of different file formats so that it is suitable for different purposes. It is also possible to create DVDs with custom title screens and menus - a number of templates are included for this. One small gripe we had was that, when clicking the button to create a label, we were directed to a website asking us to pay money for another application that would let us do it. In our opinion that's a bit cheeky when you have forked out the cash for an application like this.
While Arcsoft ShowBiz DVD does have its faults, it is still a useful application for beginners due to its simplicity and no nonsense user interface. It's also a good one to try if you have an older PC and aren't getting the performance you hoped for with other applications. If you have a good spec PC and know what you are doing with a video editing application, we would recommend having a look at some of the other applications in our top ten. However, if you are new to video editing and have a slightly older PC, then it is worth giving the trial version of ShowBiz DVD a go.
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