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Ulead VideoStudio 8
Visiting the Ulead booth at NAB 2004, I noticed something about their software line that I'd never picked up on before: all the products basically look the same. Unifying the look and feel of production software applications is a big deal these days, and companies like Adobe, for example, tend to make a big deal of it when they start to get it right. In part, that's because for Adobe, Pinnacle, and others whose product lineups are a mixture of homegrown talent and established stars picked up on the free agent market, getting the motley crew to look like something resembling a family poses a significant challenge.
I don't really know if Ulead's selection of pro and consumer apps-the prosumer Studio Quartet, featuring PhotoImpact, MediaStudio Pro, Cool 3D Studio, and the Editor's Choicewinning DVD Workshop; and the entry-level products DVD MovieFactory 3 Disc Creator and VideoStudio-sprang from the same gene pool. But with the exception of PhotoImpact, they sure do look like it. Big preview window, same sort of slider and controls, same color scheme, similar arrangement of pulldowns and tool panels, (almost) identical asset collection windows, and similar top-left option panels. My own collection of Ulead applications is scattered over several PCs, so it's hard for me to confirm every detail of this aesthetic unity, but the impression of a well-matched set remains strong.
For the Studio Quartet, as with the Adobe Video Collection, the "unified look" serves a functional purpose: it's a key piece of the integrated workflow puzzle. (The other, more function-specific pieces are file interchange and cross-launching of programs and windows, something Adobe does better than Ulead.) One thing that's cool about the unity of the Ulead products, I'd argue, is that it makes it easy to move from one tool to another and feel like you're in familiar territory, and, what's more, easier to make the leap from an entry-level tool to a more sophisticated application. Apple got it half right with Final Cut Express, reducing the functionality but not the operative complexity of Final Cut Pro (kind of like teaching your child to swim by hurling her headlong into the shallow end of the pool), and Adobe may soon make the same concession/mistake with Premiere Elements....