Pinnacle PINNACLE SYSTEMS Studio Plus 9

• Reviewed by: HAWKHUNTER

  Strengths: None

  Weaknesses: Every thing

  Overall: you have to pay extra for everything and it still doesnt work. Studio 9 plus has no sharpening tool in it. That costs another $50.00! Do not buy. After one year and 100 support calls it still deosnt do what was promised. BEWARE! BEWARE!

• Reviewed by: danra

  Strengths: Ease of use, no glitches

  Weaknesses: Long rendering time

  Overall: I have used studio 8 and plus 9. I am a novice video editor. I found the programs easy to use with plenty of features. The major drawback is the long time it takes to render the project. Other than that I am happy with the product.

• Reviewed by: sssvenkymails

  Strengths: Capture and edit digital videos, better professional transitions, no lost frames, good features

  Weaknesses: Support is the quite bad, a bit sluggish on my hp machine despite having 1 gb RAM.

  Overall: All the features are good. Good synchronization of voice and audio not found in many other products. Bought version 8 to try and I luved it. Now I have purchased Version 9 plus and this is wonderful. My hp desktop slowed down and the performance was a bit sluggish, so i moved the software to my dell server which was pretty good. I like the s/w for ease of use. The other main drawback was that for a 5 minute clip - for some reason it took about 2 hours - which is crazy. But on the whole I am ok with the product. Pinnacle -- watch out. Your support stinks.

• Reviewed by: Twalls_27

  Strengths: NONE

  Weaknesses: A CRAPPY SOFTWARE W/ A MILLION GLITCHES AND THEY MAKE YOU SPEND HUNDREDS TO USE EFFECTS!!

  Overall: This program is probably the worst video editing software I have ever used in my life. I have used Imovie, Final Cut Pro, Ulead, and Studio 8 (which was probably just as crappy). I have an Emachines computer that runs with Windows XP. The Macintosh computers run way better when dealing with video editing but I just though I could get a cheap software to work with on my computer. I read about the software Studio 9 Plus and thought it would be pretty good. Well it's not! They give you all these effects that you can't even use! They make you pay to activate them! If I were to buy all of them I would have to spend like 1,000 dollars. NO JOKE. And it has so many bugs and errors. And when I downloaded a 200 MB patch from the pinnacle support center to fix it, things just got worse. My clips just somehow moved 8 minutes through the timeline, my music disappeared, the clips I imported wouldn't play at all unless I changed the speed of them, the sound kept messing up(sounding like a CD player skipping), and many more glitches that make you want to grab your computer and slam it into the wall. So I am going to have to end up buying a whole nother software. I would have been better off buying a brand new imac with Final Cut Pro 3. I probably would have saved a bundle and got a real editing program. Do NOT waste your money or your time! I am warning you. Steer clear of Pinnacle. They give you sloppy software and try to scam you into buying their effects that are actually already on your computer, you just can't use them because PINNACLE IS STUPID!

• Reviewed by: cheapfrag

  Strengths: can do most anything you need to capture and edit video and create DVDs

  Weaknesses: Lots of locked content that costs $ to unlock, a little sugglish

  Overall: My computer specs: 3.0 GHz P4, 512 MB DDR, 2 SATA Hard Drives, Radeon 9800 PRO graphic card, SB Audigy 2 sound card with 1394 port, DVD+R writer. I have been using a MiniDV camcorder for 6 years but until I got a PC with a DVD burner, I didn't see much point in editing my home video. My experience has been limited to using MS MovieMaker 2 free with XP and Sonic MyDVD LE which came free with my PC. I have found these 2 products very simple to use. I use MovieMaker to capture and edit my video. I make separate "edited" videos for each topic/subject matter. Then I use Sonic MyDVD to create the DVD menu, add my edited videos and to render/encode MPEG2 and burn the DVD. So its from this perspective that I started using Pinncale Studio 9 Plus. I was able to buy it for $59.99. After 2 rebates ($30 store & $20 upgrade rebates), the cost was $9.99. I installed Pinnacle Studio 9 PLUS without a problem. I then iommediately update the software with a patch available from www.pinnaclesys.com to version 9.4.3. CAPTURE: I captured an entire 60 minute DV tape without a problem. Later, when I attempt to copy a individual clip from the DV tape, I paused the tape at the start of the clip and pressed "Start Capture". When I reviewed the captured video, I noticed it did not start where I had paused it, but rather started capture after a second or so. I suspect since I had the video paused, that the software first started the camera playing, then started the capture and so the very beginning of the video clip was not captured. So next time I will make sure that I start the capture a second or so before the intended clip. EDIT: The captured video is shown on the top half of the EDIT screen. The software breaks the video into clips based upon breaks in the time stamp. You then select the video you want to use and drag it to the lower half of the screen. I like how Studio puts a checkmark on any video that you have selected to include. There's no guessing/remembering whether you already added a particular scene. You can choose from a variety of transitions between scenes - from basic wipes/fades to "cooler" sophisicated transaction like having a scene fold up like a paper airplane and zoom across the front of the next scene. Not that that would be used in a Hollywood movie but its fun for a home movie. All this is accomplished just by picking the desired transition and dropping it where you want it in the movie. EASY. You can added titles to the video by selecting from a menu. Studio comes with many canned titles. I find one that I like and then edit the size and text to suit my needs. The titles can be overlaid on top of the video or can have a solid background. I have not added music or voice-over audio yet but that is possible in Studio. I also have not tried Picture in Picture (which I want to try) or chroma keying (which I probably won't try). I have trimmed a clip to remove sections of it that were blurry or pointing at the sky, and that was easy to do. You double click the video scene and Studio brings up the editing screen. You then set a markers from the front to trim the beginning and/or set a marker from the back to trim the end. As I mentioned Studio comes with lots of transactions and canned titles, but it also installs a lot of locked content (transitions/title/DVD menus). You can use these but there will be a Pinnacle watermark across the video that uses that locked content. If you want to use it without the watermark, then you have to pay to unlock that group of content. Not sure how much that costs though. OUTPUT: After I had the video edited to my satisfaction, I selected a DVD menu to add. I was disappointed in the number of free menus available (there was a lot of locked menus) and I couldn't find one that I wanted. But I ended up using a still digital camera pic as my DVD menu backgound and then adding buttons for the chapters. I liked the result better than using a canned menu. I had some trouble setting the menu buttons with the corresponding video/chapter but eventaully got it to work. I have eight chapter buttons. Each button had a picture of the scene and I chose to animate the video within the button and have the DVD return to the main title menu after playing each chapter. I found that once I added the DVD menu and began adding and deleting chapter marks, Studio seemed to slow down and I had to wait with each adjustment. Save this part to the end. Studio rendered the video and burned it to a DVD - that step took a couple of hours. My first DVD from Studio worked without any problem. I took some getting used to but I liked using Studio and there is a lot more to it that I haven't even explored yet. I haven't come across any bugs or crashes. I would recommend Studio 9 (Studio 10 has now been released so 9 might be found pretty cheap).