Since this might very well become one of your favorite programs of all time, let’s spend a while getting to know it, make some adjustments to the settings, and take a little tour before diving in.

Offhand, I’d say this program is "one level deeper" than it appears at first glance.  For example, where it looks like, sure, it’ll load up an audio track or two, what you don’t see is that you can manipulate the track to high degree, such as lowering the volume during just a few key seconds, then raising it back up.

When it comes to the transitions, most ‘studios’ like this have the usual bunch, all of which are included here.  The ‘slide’ and ‘push’ and ‘roll’ ideas have been around for years.  What sets this puppy apart are the real jaw-droppers, like the ‘Mask’ filters and the ‘Burn’.

And the options for the transitions give you quite a bit of control.  Try all of the ‘Options’ for the ‘Masks’ sometime.  Turning the ‘Fade level’ down in some of them is really something when you’ve got one dark pic or vid going into another dark pic or vid.  It looks like waves of lightening running across the screen.

And although the ‘Share’ area just looks like the normal bunch of pre-sets, you can render video to almost any format or size you want using the ‘Custom’ area.  While it’s designed to be an easy 1-2-3 studio for the newbie, it’s ultimately geared much deeper than that.
 

The Opening Screen

The first time you fire up the program you’re presented with a selection screen.  Myself, I only use the ‘Advanced Edit’ (aka "the program") selection, so I check the ‘Do not show’ box so it goes straight to VS when it starts.  If you think you might be using some of the other main selections as much as VS, then this screen might be somewhat handy.
 

Setup

First, let’s take care of a few options.  Fire the big girl up and go to Settings Menu, ‘Preferences’:

General — We don’t want this thing auto-saving over our project files so uncheck the ‘Automatically…’ box.

Edit — Set ‘Resampling’ to ‘Best’.  Set the ‘Transition Effect’ time to 3 secs for now.  If you find you usually use a different time, come back here and reset it.

Capture — I’m actually kind of disappointed in the program’s ‘capture’ image.  If, for example, you make an image of the last frame of a clip and use that as a last image so you can freeze it there and transition away, you’ll notice it doesn’t do a very good job matching up the last (actual) video frame and the saved image.  It sometimes jumps a tiny bit and it seems blurrier.  I think I get better results using ‘BITMAP’ in the options, but if & when the time comes and you’re unhappy with the results, remember this option and try ‘JPEG’, instead.  And there might be some other option on the panel that’ll make a dif.

Now let’s load you up with some fancy transitions.  Click on the ‘Transition’ button in the middle tool bar.  When you see an effect you want to put in your ‘Favorites’ area, click on it with the right mouse button and ‘Add to My Favorites’.

Just to get started, use the drop-down menu and add these (and any others that look interesting) to your Favorites:

Clock — Twist

F/X — Burn, Fade to Black

Film — Turn Page, Wrap

Flashback — Flashback

Mask — A, B and E

Peel — Zipper

Rotate — Spin

Wipe — Flow

Remember to check each transition’s Options the first time you use it, just to see what’s available, and keep in mind that sometimes options look dramatically different depending upon the light/dark balance of the two pics/vids being transitioned.
 

The Tour

Let’s spend a few seconds on each page, just to get the layout of the land.

Capture Page — Fairly self-explanatory.  Never tried it (nothing to capture from), but if it’s like other capture routines I’ve used, keep every setting you can jacked up to maximum quality.  We want to hand VS as good a source file as possible.

Edit Page — Your standard base of operations.  There are actually two timelines down below, controlled by the buttons to the left.  The first button is how you load files and set initial times.  The second is the actual timeline for fine-tuning things.

To load files into the timeline, right-mouse inside it.  Unfortunately, one little flaw in the program is that it doesn’t load the new file just before or after the highlighted spot, it places them at the very end.  So you’ll occasionally have to drag the new file to its appropriate spot.

Running down the tool bar:

Media: the default starting panel

Transition: the transitions area

Title: for inserting text overlays

Graphic: pre-set color backgrounds

Filter: I didn’t see much use to these but you’re welcome to experiment

Audio: the audio files library

Share Page — The first option is how you make normal vids.  The rest are self-explanatory.  When you click on the ‘Create Video File’ button you’ll see a drop-down menu with a bunch of pre-sets.  If you’re going to burn a disc, like a DVD, then these are fine to use, but for computer and online vids we’ll use the ‘Custom’ feature at the bottom.

So, nothing too complicated?  The timeline, itself, is fun to use.  If you want a sound file to start playing a tad sooner or later, just grab it with the mouse and move it.  It’s also fun playing with the timing of the transitions and getting them ‘just so’.  Of all the video programs I use, I enjoy horsing around with VS the most.