ShowBiz DVD Reviewer's Comments

Create professional appearing and sounding movies with smooth transitions, functional menus and unique sound tracks with ShowBiz.

ShowBiz is easy to use, even the first time, and you can quickly copy and burn videos. The only downside is it does not offer a good variety of publishing formats beyond DVDs. So, if you’re looking to publish video to the web or as MPEGs, you may want to consider PowerDirector or VideoStudio.

ShowBiz DVD Screenshots. Click for more
       


Editing Tools/Options:  

This program excels in transitions with over 330 choices; we especially liked the rain in the puddle. All of the transitions are clean, smooth and very professional looking and you can time them to fit your music. Additionally, ShowBiz includes 21 special effect filters and 62 menu templates, which is more than most.

The program has exceptional menu creation ability and can even form sub-menus. For example, if you would like to put several video collections onto one disk, it can form a main menu, then a submenu for each specific selection. Additionally, menus can be customized with themes, unique text, chapters, animated thumbnails, background music and images, or an introductory video clip.

We were slightly disappointed with the occasional video delays we experienced as we panned through the footage.

Video Capture/Playback:  

On the main interface, there are five options: Record from a video tape directly to DVD, Capture, Create or edit videos, Create or edit a DVD disc, Create a VCD disc and Print Disk Label. The quality of the captured video duplicated the original video. We could not see any variations such as blurry edges, distortions or pauses.

Ease of Use:  

ShowBiz DVD is uncomplicated and straightforward. The main screen is well organized and uncluttered, with three quick buttons across the top and drop down tabs for effects and transitions. It gives you a choice of either storyboard or timeline view and you can select specific portions of video for playback.

Ease of Installation:  

We didn’t have any problems with the installation process.

Help/Support:  

ArcSoft provides a user manual, accessible through the help menu. They also publish FAQs and tutorials on their website and provide an email address for technical support. This manufacturer does not have toll free phone support or live chat for instant answers.

Summary:  

ShowBiz is easy to use, offers a huge variety of transitions and builds some of the best menus for DVDs we’ve seen. However, ShowBiz is not the best product to publish your videos online; if you are primarily interested in producing movies to post on the web, check out PowerDirector, the #1 product.