Strata DV Pro 5: Stalwart Video Editor Works the Web with Ease
With so many digital-video-editing applications available these days it’s no surprise that the market has stratified — products now range from no-brainers to ultra-high-tech with several specialized niches in between. Strata DV Pro 5.0 (Macintosh only) fills one of these niches, offering an easy-to-use editing program that’s designed to bridge the gap between occasional video editing and Web delivery.
Just the Facts, Ma’am
Strata DV Pro builds on the base of its predecessor, Strata Videoshop 4.0 with a streamlined, easy-to-understand interface that offers the user several ways to customize. You can choose between storyboard view and timeline view and you can assign any menu command to the keyboard (see figure 1). The minimum system requirements are minimal indeed (see specs at left)– so much so that the application does not yet run under Mac OS X nor does it support the full implementation of QuickTime 6.0. Like most standalone non-linear editing applications, performance will improve with a faster CPU, more RAM, and a dedicated media drive with a spindle speed of at least 7200 rpms for capture and playback of full-sized, full-motion video. Out of the box, Strata DV Pro offers realtime, QuickTime-native, cuts-only editing — if you use any effects or graphics, they will have to be rendered. Most Mac users can capture video using a built-in FireWire port and a compatible DV camcorder or video deck. If you need to work with non-DV video, you can purchase a video capture board to add to your system, which will typically give you some realtime effects processing as well.
Figure 1: Strata DV Pro 5.0 offers a single-monitor interface that can be viewed in timeline mode (shown here) or in storyboard mode.
Bells and Whistles
One difference between Strata DV Pro and its lower-end cousins, Strata DVplus ($149) and Strata DVbase (available as a free download) is a generous supply of transition effects and filters (see figure 2). Strata has developed its own proprietary set of filters that users new to the world of video editing might be impressed with, but more experienced editors will find a bit lacking. Image enhancement tools such as color balancing and contrast adjustment filters do not offer the sort of sophisticated control that professional editors require.
But for the casual user, the effects that come with Strata DV Pro provide a good opportunity to play around.
Figure 2: Strata DV Pro comes with a large number of proprietary filter effects.
Web Ready
The biggest enhancement to Strata DV Pro 5.0 is the ability to export video in just about any Web video format you desire. RealMedia, Flash, and QuickTime exports are all at the ready and you’ll get some enhanced compression technology with Sorenson Squeeze, which includes the Sorenson Spark video codec for Flash (.SWF) files and the Sorenson Video 3 codec for QuickTime (.MOV) files, a combo valued at about $375 (see figure 3). Like Strata DV Pro, Sorenson Squeeze opts for ease-of-use over user control — you can choose from several presets based on end-user bandwidth, as shown below, and can also select multiple bandwidths, which results in multiple exported files.
Figure 3: Sorenson Squeeze lets you output Flash-compatible video files using the Spark codec.
Quid Pro Quo
Strata DV Pro doesn’t offer many of the things that users familiar with higher-end products like Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid Xpress DV, and Adobe Premiere have come to take for granted. There is only one level of Undo and there is no auto-save and no auto-backup. The single-monitor interface is somewhat old-fashioned, most editing functions are based on a click-and-drag mentality rather than the speedier keyboard-based three-point editing, and you can’t import or export EDLs. This indicates that Strata DV Pro probably isn’t the right choice for editing your indie feature or special-effects-laden short — for these types of projects you’ll need a lot more power in terms of features, control, and performance.
Figure 4: The video capture interface in Strata DV Pro gets the job done but doesn’t offer professional image control.
Conclusion
Strata DV Pro is a self-contained package that will work just fine for middle-of-the road users: 3D artists who need to output their work to videotape, industrial and government users looking for an easy path from camcorder to the web, and educators looking to teach digital video basics will find that Strata DV Pro has all the tools needed to get a simple job done. The inclusion of Sorenson Squeeze makes Strata DV Pro particularly attractive for those who need to create video for the web. But without support for EDLs, multiple Undos, automated backups and archives, better image enhancement tools, and other high-end features, DV Pro doesn’t quite qualify for professional status.
Read more by Sonja Schenk.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on October 29, 2002
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