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DQ News: Create Hollywood-Level Videos With Avid Studio: A Review

In late 2010, there were more than 3.7 billion searches on YouTube, which is widely regarded as the second largest search engine on the planet (and is owned by the largest). This should put video high on your small business marketing list, and this review of Avid Studio can help you create a professional video.

With today’s top quality and affordable video cameras, or even a Flip cam or the one on your iPhone, you can capture decent video footage and turn it into a marketing piece for your company. Last year I wrote about Avid’s Pinnacle Studio product line and how easy it is to use. I was already a Pinnacle Studio user and the company gave me a demo and sent me a review copy for this post.

This review is for a business owner who is especially creative or has a team of people who want to create more sophisticated videos.  Avid Studio is a Hollywood-level production tool, but with a fairly intuitive dashboard built for high-end home use. Can you get by with a lower-level package? Absolutely. But if you have wanted to do more in your small business video work and create a movie-quality experience, then you’ll want to take a close look at Avid Studio.

If you are already producing videos and need help optimizing them, you’ll want to read ReelSEO by Mark Robertson, which has excellent, helpful content on video search engine optimization.

What I really like:

• One of my favorite features is the ability to manage all kinds of media—videos, photos and audio files—in the powerful, integrated library. Let me explain: Typically, if you need to edit a photo or short video or audio clip, you have to go into another editing program. But Avid Studio built one into this version so you can work from the same software throughout. That’s a big time-saver.
• This means you can correct and edit your assets in the library or on the timeline with built-in media editing tools—no additional applications required.
• If you’ve done any video editing, it is often difficult to do picture-in-picture (those videos where you see a little box of someone talking but the main screen is showing you a slide or something else).  It’s simple in Avid, and you can also add multi-layer effects from the timeline editor directly (which is where you do most of your editing).
• Avid comes with some serious extra content and tools, like the Red Giant plug-in package, if you want to really jazz up your videos with special effects.
• Last, Avid knew that previous Pinnacle Studio users might want some help, so they created a comprehensive collection of how-to videos from Class on Demand that comes with your purchase.

What I’d like to see:

• An easier way to get to the timeline itself. I think there’s a way to customize the dashboard tabs and get straight there, but it was not the default. That’s what I’m used to in Pinnacle and I think that would be the same for other previous users.
• I’m nitpicking here, but I’d like to see a visual, button-style list of different formats to save the video. For example, you can save as Blu-Ray, iPhone or iPod, and other popular formats from the File, Save As settings. They have a large “Web” button that lets you quickly pick YouTube (MPEG-4 format), but if you don’t know the upload format it takes a bit of thinking.

If you’ve tapped all the features in Pinnacle Studio or other common editing tools, then you’ll want to upgrade to or purchase Avid Studio. It has tools that the Hollywood professionals use and allows a lot of powerful editing in a fast package. Overall, I’m a new fan and gladly learning the ropes with Avid Studio for my marketing needs.

Learn more about Avid Studio.

From Small Business Trends

Create Hollywood-Level Videos With Avid Studio: A Review

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