Canadian software house Corel seems to be stuck playing second-fiddle to its competitors to the south. In office apps, it shadows Microsoft. In illustration and photo editing, Adobe's number one. Though VideoStudio Pro X4 doesn't quite match our Editors' Choice, CyberLink PowerDirector 9 ($99.95, 4.5 stars) in the speed of some operations or number of tracks allowed, Corel can stand tall and proud: VideoStudio is a well-designed, easy-to-use, fast, and capable consumer digital video editor. A couple of its new tools are even class-leading, such as its stop-motion importer.
Interface
When you first run the program, you'll see the Corel Guide, which offers, help, video tutorials, and downloads. The overall interface approach is modal, in the sense that three main modes govern all your actions—Capture, Edit, and Share. These are accessible from prominent buttons always visible at the top of screen.

VideoStudio X4's pleasing dark gray interface uses the familiar three-pane view with content and effects in the upper left, video preview in the upper right, and timeline along the whole bottom portion of the screen—but there's a difference: Unlike other video editing apps such as Avid Studio ($169.99, 3.5 stars), VideoStudio Pro X4 lets you move these panels around wherever you want, and even pull them out to separate windows of their own. So if you really want to spread out, you can even run each window on its own monitor! One interesting thing about the interface is that it's only full-screen-there's no resizing except to minimize it, which actually makes sense when you think about it. You really need the full screen for everything going on in a video editor, though it can make multitasking tough.
The editor limits you to six overlay video tracks in addition to your main video track, along with two title tracks, a voice track, and three music tracks. Sure, that's not much, compared with CyberLink and Adobe's 100 tracks and Avid's lack of any limitation, but I can't really see a consumer video production needing more. The timeline can be zoomed in and out using the mouse wheel, which works well. It also displays frame time codes, for fine-grain control. You can also switch the timeline to a Storyboard view, which lets you drag transitions between clips but otherwise offers little benefit. Some apps like Avid and Sony have dispensed with storyboards entirely.
Importing and Organizing Video Clips
The Capture mode, which you enter by clicking the large Capture button at the top, lets you record from a connected camera, scan a DV source, import from Digital Media, or mobile device. The behavior with simply trying to get a video on disk into VideoShow was not a simple as with Avid Studio. The File | Insert Media File into Library menu choice adds folders to the source panel.
Probably the coolest import option is Stop Motion, which opens a window from which you can capture clever animations from your webcam. Corel's implementation of this is class-leading: It can even snap the images at set intervals, and an "onion skin" view shows you an outline of your last capture. This goes beyond what Avid offers, and most other consumer video editors, including PowerDirector, don't offer a similar feature. The feature let me easily create an amusing video of a moving superhero toy.
Getting media into VideoStudio is simple, but, once it's there, the app offers no tagging or search capability like you get with Avid Studio or Premiere Elements, let alone the latter's face detection. This can make finding a clip troublesome at times, as can the inteface's lack of a search box, whether you're looking at clips or effects. You can, however, sort source content by name, type, or date.
Instant Movie Making
Corel's Instant Project feature is different from the "magic movie maker" features in most consumer video editors. It's more of a template tool with some prefab effects for you to manually build out with your own content. You can insert an Instant Project template either before or after whatever's in your timeline, but it's up to you to populate the template with content manually. From the timeline, you can split all tracks at once if you need to insert media or move a section.
Sound, Instant and Otherwise
Another "instant" option is the Auto Music feature. This lets you select from Corel's included canned music, choosing things like mood and variation so that the sound track fits with your movie. It also fits the length of the track to your clips. You can alternatively use your own music files or buy more sound files from Corel directly from within the program. A nifty sound mixer lets you choose any track and adjust its volume relative to the others, and you can graphically drag a line in the timeline representing the audio up and down to raise and lower its volume. The voiceover tool makes narrating any section of your movie simple, adding another sound track.
Basic Video Editing
As with all modern video editors, in VideoStudio you simply drag and drop a clip from your source tray to add it to your timeline. If you double click on a clip in the source tray, it opens in the Single Clip Trim window. This provides a handy way to set the start and finish markers of the section of the clip that you want to display, including precision to the individual frame level.
For real editing power, I chose the Multi-trim Video tool. This let me set multiple in and out points, so I didn't have to create a lot of separate clips if I just wanted to remove some dead space in the middle of a clip. It also let me detect Ads in TV content. PowerDirector matches this multi-trim capability, but most others, like Avid Studio, lack it. Both Corel trim tools offer easy, clear navigation, including a jog wheel, and zoomable selection scrubber.
 
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