The 4.0 has also support for MPEG-2 and DV and it seems to crash more often.
Ulead VideoStudio is not for professionals for sure - but with the price $99 it is not mean to be. It has very nice 3D transitions. However the whole editor is baby like. It is easy to add video, transitions and sound, but then if you want to change parameters you are dealing with numbers. You can add simple titles, voice and music.
If your source clips format matches the output format the video is created really fast even in MPEG. However once you mix different formats it takes its time. (That's of course normal)
The MPEG library is fairly fast and produces also VideoCD compatible MPEG formats.
When you rendering your final video you can't minimize the program. That is a bit of a problem if you consider than final rendering of very long and difficult scenes to MPEG could take many hours.

The new Ulead VideoStudio 6 seems to be much updated. The interface changed which was the major problem and the stability seems to be better.

The MGI offers almost the same functionality for the same price as Ulead VideoStudio, however in different package. The interface is better than Ulead and the whole software is more stable. It doesn't have the nice 3D transitions of Ulead, but then it has more gadgets like picture in picture and chroma key support (!) And that's nice. However it is not that easy to use it but you can get used to it. The speed to render the video is the same as Ulead's - they use the same MPEG libraries I guess. However MGI can be minimized during rendering the final scene where Ulead can't.
If you are deciding between Ulead Video Studio and MGI Video Wave the Video Wave is clearly a better choice.

See the Screen Capture

The new version 5 has just few updates, none are that significiant. An interesting clone is CineMagic which use automatic clip creation from music.
The biggest difference is that MGI doesn't exist anymore - it was bought by www.roxio.com

Ulead MediaStudio PRO 6 VE

Easiness
Stability
Functionality
Speed
Formats
Sum
	Multitrack for video and audio, many advanced commands
	Slow in rendering preview

VE means Video Editor and it is a part of MediaStudio Pro package. They don't sell it separately, but you can get it bundled with some hardware (Pyro Video). Media Studio VE is more professional editor similar to Adobe Premiere. It supports all the formats like Ulead VideoEditor but here you can work with many audio and video channels and you can make crossfades. Also it has many filters for example sharpen, blur etc...
If you want to make professional video editing - this could be wise choice. However if you change something you need to render preview and this makes the editing slow.

Remember this kind of software concept is a standard in video editing and it is from time when Pentium 133 was a luxury. You will find similar functions like in Speed Razor, Adobe Premiere etc.. However many companies now starting developing Real-time solutions. Honestly the P600 with all directX libraries can really handle much more today. It was surprising to find that even on P600 the preview of Media Studio was rendering in half speed.

See the Screen Capture

Magix is know with their non expensive software for audio editing - Music Maker and Music Studio. Now the new Audio and Video Office is a great new addition. What is really cool about this program is that everything is managed in real time. You can layer your videos one over another, then you can use many great effects - from color change through keying and warping, and it still manages to do it in real time! You can chose how the video streams will mix together. Then you can do all that for audio - mixing, looping etc...

You can do all kind of work with it, however it really shines for making music clips. You have the freedom and effects which let's you produce a really awesome clip in half time compared to other software. Remember - no rendering!

Tip: They are using obviously the same engine for MusicMaker and A&V Office. The Music Maker Generation 5 deluxe has many of the video effects like A&V. If you are planing to make your own music and then add video - MM Gen 5 is a great choice.

Problems: The only problem with this software was that if you load the AVI with sound and let the software extract the sound as a separate audio track - it not always work. The AVI files created with Matrox Marvel always crashed A&V Office if "Extract audio from Video" was selected. If we don't want to use the original audio from the video, then it works perfect.
The Magix support suggested not to use MJPEG files - pretty bad solution I would say. The strangest part is that they even advertise Matrox Marvel G400 - TV on the A & V Office - and it doesn't work correctly with it. I am currently in discussion with them...
Apart from this problem the software was extremely stable even I was really messing around with layers and real-time effects - it didn't crash. That's why 4 points for stability (could be five if it go pass the Marvel audio extraction)

See the Screen Capture of A&V Office
See the Screen Capture of Music Maker 5

Vegas Video and
VideoFactory

Easiness
Stability
Functionality
Speed
Formats
Sum
	Fast real-time editing. Has audio-video multitrack.
	Hard to say.. price?

A great addition from SoundForge. Generally we could say that they took the same idea as Magix Audio & Video Office. (now who was first guys...) It has even some GUI ideas previously found only in Magix. It is based on audio multitracking software Vegas (Something like Magix Music Maker, but for pro's).

SoundForge is known for its quality (yeah, the audio extraction from Marvel AVI's worked even in the Vegas beta without any problem). There are 2 versions the full Vegas Video 2.0 ($500) and a light version VideoFactory for $69 download.
The diference is that Factory has only 2 video and 3 audio tracks and far less effects.

For the $69 the video factory is quite nice deal.

The new version 2.0b has the full Ligos MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 support !

See the Screen Capture