Pinnacle Studio Plus version 10 (Full Product, PC)

• Reviewed by: NID

  Strengths: easy to use,produces a great quality DVD when your done with editing,fast rendering

  Weaknesses: customer support,would like a better Title editing page

  Overall: ok....I have been reading several of your reviews of this video editor "Studio Plus ver 10" and I cant believe all the problems that you are having???I have been using this for only a few months, but use it constantly for editing sons football games etc.... I usually make full 1 to 1 1/2 hr DVD videos that tend to be highly edited with lots of music background tracks,transitions pictures and sound effects and I have been very very happy with Studio Plus.!I find the rendering time to be GREAT!!!!!!!!!In comparison to Vegas, Ulead, Roxio and others, this is probably the fastest rendering program I have ever used. Many of the programs I mentioned above have taken over 20-30 hrs to render a simple 1 hr video....COMPLETELY unacceptable to me. Studio has never taken over 4-6 hrs to render any movie I have made.....EVER!I dont have a Super rig either....I do have a seperate compter that I use for making movies ONLY! no internet connection, no AIM no nothing except Studio 10 and my videos. It is merely a 2.4Ghz CPU, 1 GB RAM and a midranged ATI video capture card with an additional 256MB of video RAM with a 150MB hard drive to store all the movies! (I find this to be pretty critical to have LOTS of room on your hard drive!) Your going to use approx 10Gb for ever 10-15 mins of vid. Then you need room on your HD to do your editing. I do alot of defragging to help keep the HD running fast also.I dont know if you guys are trying to use a firewire to capture your video or not, bt if you are....that maybe the prob, try using a decent video capture card, I prefer ATI....they work great for me.I dont know guys......this works GREAT for me and I love it! And....until I can afford a nice Avid program to try out, I will happily keep using Studio Plus 10

• Reviewed by: Gunny123

  Strengths: Best product on market for the money

  Weaknesses: Not for the novice user or easly frustrated.

  Overall: I have used pinnacle products for about a year now, (am using studio 10.5.2.2 now) and am convinced it is the best product on the market for the money. I would not suggest the program for the novice or a person who frustrates easily, the program can be temperamental, but with a little patience, the rewards are an un-paralleled video that rivals professional digital editing. The processor speed is less important (3 gigahertz is enough) than a good 256 Meg FX video card and 2 gigabytes of DDR Ram. Use a separate drive to render, store and burn your DVD?s (an external 250 USB drive that spins at 7500 RPM and is formatted in NTFS works great). Invest in a digital flat screen that has digital output; this results in a pure digital transfer without the need to transfer analog to digital. Close all of your background programs when you use pinnacle, use Adware, or a similar program to remove ad-robots that will slow down the fastest computers and use the Sony products, Sony seem to work better than other media. This is an amazing program, which allows you to transpose incredibly complex special effects editing for a nominal cost. I don?t think its fair for pinnacle to get the bad rap because of novice users or the easily frustrated.

• Reviewed by: jfinney1

  Strengths: Is fairly easy to use. Some things are not intuitive, but for the most part you can be editing very quickly.

  Weaknesses: Need for space and power. Integrated sound generator--no need to buy royalty free music or risk getting caught using copyrighted material.Technical support is a waste of time.

  Overall: I have used Studio from several versions back when it was small, short and simple. It has now become a much bigger, more complicated, power hungry monster. I produce videos both for my church and school and I love using it. I actually find it is easier to use than Adobe Premiere Elements (but that might be because I have used it so long). I have found that it works best on a dedicated computer--one that has separate hardrives for the program, loading video, and rendered product. It does not like to have too many other programs on the computer nor does it like antivirus software nor the internet. I'm talking a machine that runs Studio and not much more. If you can afford to build a powerful ( 4 ghz processor, 2gb ram, 250+gb hardrives (at least 3) dedicated computer, you will love the program and what it can produce for a low cost editing program. That's a lot of computer power, but isn't that what it takes for the "big boys" editors that cost thousands of dollars?

• Reviewed by: Volts

  Strengths: you can almost do anything with this

  Weaknesses: system crashes when you click to much, but nothing to bad.

  Overall: I have worked with studio 9 and with this studio 10 you can really do so much more!! This may be one of the best programs to make photo slideshows that will impress everyone. you have amazing transistions, you can zoom into a photo while in the slideshow.. you can even put video clips inbetween them, the options is endless.I'm very happy with this product.

• Reviewed by: bschmick

  Strengths: Intuitive interface. But who can really tell when it crashes more often than ...You fill in the blank.

  Weaknesses: Way to buggy. Must be studying from the Microsoft school of software development.

  Overall: "I was ...adding time to my initial titles." So began my message sent to Pinnacle after the last crash. This software is a piece of crap. I have been a user since before version 6 or 7 and have enjoyed each upgraded version since then. Having used Version 9 with my elementary students to edit their project videos,enjoying the easy and intuitive interface, I had no qualms about recommending Studio to other schools in my district as part of a grant project purchase. Version 10 was the only available when time came to purchase the software. I went out and purchased my own copy knowing I would be called on to teach other teachers how to use the product. I?m embarrassed that I recommended a product this bad. When working with students, you waste time waiting for the program to load, then cross your fingers and hope you can save your work before it crashes. We have switched over to Adobe Elements to complete our grant project. Shame on Pinnacle for putting out a product that is so unstable.