New video editing software heavyweights: our top 4 picks.

Where are you in the video editing curve? Are you just starting out creating video movies and projects, deleting bad video and moving around scenes and adding titles? Or, are you an old hand, with lots of experience, cutting individual scenes to the beat of a music track, creating moving graphics of various sizes and directions, and building sophisticated multi-layer pastiches of effects and transitions?

Regardless of your level of expertise, the common denominator to all is, that you are using a nonlinear video editing program that enables you to capture video from various sources, build and add titles, music tracks and sound effects, and then move your video scenes around to create a finished production, without worrying about losing image quality. And when you are all done, you can then export the video in a variety of formats and digital files types, including the Internet and burning to a DVD. Many of these programs also include the ability to author your DVDs--enabling you to create opening screens, menus and hot links that will work when your family and friends play back your finished DVDs.

Let's take a look at several of the more common products on the market, and try to figure out what might work best for you. What they all have in common is that they are all good, all are recommended, and all will do the job for you. We'll start reverse alphabetically, and work up the food chain from there.

ULEAD VIDEOSTUDIO 10 PLUS

It seems like Ulead VideoStudio has been around forever. One of the original nonlinear video editing programs, it is has continued to grow both in functions and capabilities, as well as ease of use. With the ability to work with a variety of operating systems, including Windows 2000, Windows Media Center Edition, XP64 and both Windows Home and Pro, VideoStudio 10 Plus enables anyone to quickly come up to speed and create great- looking video productions. It includes the ability to choose between storyboard and timeline editing, six overlay tracks for creating cool looking picture-in-picture and montage effects, editing of audio using waveforms, chromakey, and a …