Good for editing, but generates output files of unacceptable quality
Written: Sep 29 '03
Product Rating:
Pros: Easy & Intuitive
Excellent help & tutorial system
Cons: Incompatible with other app's DV files
Fails to output smooth final files
No refunds
The Bottom Line: VF2.0 is like having the car of your dreams that's missing a transmission system. It looks nice, it's comfortable but it can't get the job done!
scs0's Full Review: Sonic Foundry VideoFactory 2.0 Full Version for PC...
I was looking for a new video editor that was more powerful than the ones I was already using (Microsoft Movie Maker, Arcsoft Showbiz, etc), but wasn't an unintuitive sluggish mess like Adobe Premiere. I downloaded the demo version of VideoFactory 2.0 and the app seemed excellent. Unfortunately the demo did not support the feature to produce your final video file so I had no idea that VideoFactory:
1) Is incompatible with DV files created by other apps
2) Incapable of reliably creating final movie files without a substantial loss of quality.
My first main problem was the app's incompatiblity issues. I inserted a file created with another app (Showbiz I believe) and VideoFactory failed to handle the asset properly. I wanted to cut out a chunk of my source and create a trimmed file in DV format. VideoFactory2.0 inserted all sorts of video rippling and framed the content with black borders around all 4 sides. I eventually discovered that these problems do not occur if you edit a DV file catured with VideoFactory2.0 itself. Because of this, I decided to ignore this bug because I would simply use VideoFactory 2.0 for video capture from this point forward. Is it possible that the other DV file was invalid? Maybe...but other video editors had no problem handling them. I used to mix between my other editing apps a lot.
The next problem was much more serious and is honestly reason not to buy the product. Apparently VideoFactory2.0 fails to properly create final files without a serious loss of video quality. For example, say you have successfully captured an hour long TV show without any dropped frames and playback of that file is perfectly smooth. Then use VideoFactory to edit out the commercial sections so that you're final project is nothing more than the true content. Chances are, when you attempt to create a final DV files from this asset VideoFactory will screw up at one of those edit points and will start dropping frames like crazy. Unlike video capture which is a real-time process, creating an output movie is not and as long as you have enough disc space the creation of an output movie should never, ever, ever drop a single frame! My uses of VF were on a system with a harddrive more than large enough for the output file (for example, 50gb free for a 10gb final file). I've also tried outputting to a external harddrive with no luck.
This *BUG* was not something I was looking out for and ended up creating a final DVD project from one of those choppy videos and didn't notice how bad the video was until I watched it.
I've been in contact with SonicFoundry's email tech support for over a month, and I still don't have a working version of the app. SonicFoundry does not provide refunds for products, nor are they too concerned with releasing patches.
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