MediaStudio Pro 7.2 Service Pack

[Dr Mordrid]

'tis a BIG one: 23.2 megs

Enhancements:

Supports Ulead VideoStudio 8 project files. SmartSound in VideoStudio 8 project will be converted to silence audio clips.

New filters: Pan & Zoom and Duotone

New transition: Album

Support Recording Date/Time and display the arrangement. Production Library now supports extracting timecode from videos and audio/images from camcorders or digital cameras. Some camcorders and digital cameras may not record the media with recording date/time when using some specific settings. In this situation, the Production Library will not be able to show Recording Date/Time.

Supports VST audio plug-ins (Steinberg Cubase system).

Supports Auto Deinterlace. When creating a project using progressive scan and Auto Deinterlace is selected, all video fields will be automatically deinterlaced when creating the video file

MPEG-2 2-Pass Encoding option added. 2-Pass Encoding can be only be selected when you create a file; it is not an option for a project template.

Bugs fixed:

Problem with Video Capture crashing when the video has more than 100 scenes was fixed

Changed Field Order A to Lower Field First and Field Order B to Upper Field First.

Problem of the video flickering at the end of a transition effect.

Video Capture sometimes stop when there are scene changes [For Ulead HD Plug-in only].

ADS Instant DVD II compatibility issue.

Print to Tape bug.

Problem with the background color always being black in a slide show was fixed.

In CG Infinity the problem of the object color changing when Moving Path is applied.

Problem with DV files with corrupted frames when created on a system with Hyper-Threading enabled.

Occasional synchronizing problems in Preview window.

DVD-NTSC template configures the video's frame type wrongly therefore causing video with Lower Field first to fail to Smart Render.

Audio synchronization problem when a PAL MPEG-1 video is converted to a NTSC DVD video.

Problem with the Field Order option being grayed out in some situations.

Image relink problem for Media Library

Auto-Deinterlace is now applied on the video during Create Video File, not during editing

Scan for Scenes bug

Problem with Video Capture only pre-scanning and capturing the first segment of video and ignoring the rest of the DV tape when the DV tape has duplicated timecodes

Known Issues:

Customized template settings (both in New project and Create Video File dialog boxes) of users will be archived and moved to another folder because the default template was updated. If you want to recover customized templates, follow the procedure below:

a. In < MediaStudio Pro 7 installation path > \Backup , open Data.log in Notepad

b. Check the the path that is written in Data.log

c. In the Backup folder, copy both prjtmpMPEG.dat and savetemp.dat to the path specified in Data.log. This will overwrite the new files that were installed with SP2 with the customized templates

When importing a VideoStudio 8 project with SmartSound audio clips, SmartSound audio clips will be imported as a silent audio track. Other audio clips can be imported without problems.

VST audio plug-in has to be put in a specific path to make it work. They must be placed in this path:< MediaStudio Pro root > \Ulead Systems\Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7.0\aft_plug\VST

Note: there are more changes than listed, so watch this space for more info and images.

Dr. Mordrid

[jeff b]

Download time about 4 minutes on site 1 @ about 80 kb/s. Too late at night to install and fiddle with now, but will this weekend.

Jeff b

[Brian Ellis]

I'd like to mention that the beta testing of this pack has been the most comprehensive and Ulead response to beta testers' comments has been the most co-operative, compared with any other beta testing programmes I've been involved in, since starting with the Ulead team nearly 2 years ago. In fact, there were more beta iterations, over a longer period, than there were with MSP7.0 itself. This leads me to think that this service pack is arguably the best-tested piece of software from the Ulead stable.

That having been said, individual beta testers have reported "quirks", mostly of a cosmetic nature, that others have not been able to reproduce. This is almost inevitable when you consider the variety of hardware this was tested on.

Of course, the interface remains the same (it is only a Service Pack, not a new version!). It is now no secret that v. 8.0 is being developed, but no time schedule is likely to be announced in the near future. I don't have a clue what it will incorporate, so don't, please, ask. I hope the MSP 7 SP2 will help tide everyone over until the day comes when that can be announced.

[Dr Mordrid]

Just for you guys who have been looking to buy Imaginate or some other pan & zoom type program: FORGET IT.

The new MSP7 Pan & Zoom video filter should handle most anything you want to do in this regard. It not only does the obvious but also gives you the choice of linear or spline paths. The quality is also quite good.

Dr. Mordrid

[Hulk]

And there is a BIG keyframe timeline for the Pan and Zoom filter!!!

- Mark

[Hulk]

I forgot to add that the 2-pass encoding quality it excellent. I have not used TMPGEnc since 2-pass encoding has been available in MSP7.

- Mark

[Dr Mordrid]

And the MSP7 2-pass encoder is ~2x as fast as TMPGEnc's. Nice.

Dr. Mordrid

[Debbie]

It appears that after installing the new patch for UMS 7 all the personal project templates will be removed.

Where can I find the file that holds these templates ?
Will it be possible to replace the one created by the patch or if I have to re install ?
I remember doing it in version 6.x

Debbie

[Dr Mordrid]

Didn't read the whole first post in this thread, did you?

The solution is under "Known Issues" above.

Dr. Mordrid

[JonH]

Installed the upgrade and, being a novice, I have a couple of questions. First, at the advice of Brian, I've been using CBR to make DVD compliant MPEG2s to increase compatibility with as many DVD players as possible. Should I start using VBR to take advantage of the double pass encoding? Also, is there a downside to setting the new speed/quality variable to 100% in the compression settings (other than speed)?

Thanks.
Jon

[Hulk]

In my opinion the benefits of 2-pass VBR generally outweigh any compatibility problems, especially if the video has a lot of motion, smoke, fire, water.. difficult to encode scenes. Unless you have the room on your DVD to encode CBR at high (~7000Mbps) bitrates.

I believe increasing the slider increases the motion search, no harm done except that encode time will increase without any gains in quality. The encoder will be looking to encode vector representable motion that ain't there!

- Mark

[Debbie]

OK, OK ! Doc. I was in a hurry to try the new patch. Sorry to have neglected your effort.

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by Hulk
In my opinion the benefits of 2-pass VBR generally outweigh any compatibility problems, especially if the video has a lot of motion, smoke, fire, water.. difficult to encode scenes. Unless you have the room on your DVD to encode CBR at high (~7000Mbps) bitrates.

I believe increasing the slider increases the motion search, no harm done except that encode time will increase without any gains in quality. The encoder will be looking to encode vector representable motion that ain't there!

- Mark

VBR is just as compatable as CBR in DVD decks...the issue is does the encoder do it right. MC does.

2-pass VBR not only ups the ante on motion searches it also inproves the results when using low bitrates. This is why studios use not just 2-pass but often 20 passes or more. This is one of the tricks they use to fit 2-3 hours of video on one disc with some features and still maintain high quality.

As for the slider: it doesn't adjust motion search...it adjusts the Q, or Quantization level. Quantization basically determines how many bits of data are "thrown out" in compressing the video. The higher the sliders setting the less is thrown out and the higher the image quality....usually; you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Dr. Mordrid

[roadog]

I'm having trouble with the new service patch.

1. I have nothing when I open Albums, although explorer
says I have files in there. ??

2. Can't work with any image files in pan & zoom without crashing.

Thanks,
Hank Madden

[Hulk]

Doc,

I was not sure about completely ignoring CBR compatibility problems because I believe there were some early players that had some read out problems with VBR discs. Perhaps the minimum readout rate on those discs was incorrectly coded and as you say, MC does it right.

Thanks for the info on the slider. I didn't know that it was actually varying the amount of quantization to the DCT transformation to reduce the bits needed to represent them. I just assumed it was motion search.

- Mark