Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus - Video Editing Software [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

I recently purchased Studio Version 9.3. After three unnsuccessful attempts at installing the software (I'm running XP service pack 2 on a brand new IBM computer), I was finally able to nurse a successful install. (The first three installations would hang and lock up the computer.) This took three hours of my day. After installing the program, I tried to launch it. It takes over four minutes for the program to load to the point where I can attempt to use it! Unacceptable. Thinking that the latest patch would solve this problem, I tried to download an update Pinnacle had posted to its web site. Alas, Pinnacle asks for your product serial number before you can download the update. The web site rejected my serial number repeatedly and would not let me download the latest patch. I tried calling Pinnacle's support number, but the message said the wait was over an hour. So then I e-mailed Pinnacle's support e-mail address. My e-mail was bounced back to me with a message that Pinnacle's mailboxes were too full to accept e-mail. I'd avoid this product and look for alternatives.

I bought Studio 9 (non-plus edition) back in August 2004 and had lots of trouble completing a video project. My impression was there were several bugs within the program. When the Plus edition came out in late September 2004, I immediately upgraded hoping that the bugs had been worked out. Unfortunately, it actually appeared worst! Nothing seemed to work and it kept crashing on me. I was so disappointed that I came to regret my purchase (even though I loved all its features). In early November, I learned that a patch (version 9.3.5) had been issued by Pinnacle. I quickly downloaded it and installed the patch.

Now, I can honestly say that I'm absolutely delighted with the program. Indeed, I hadn't had any more problems or crashes (even when I attempted to make the program crash). The program now works so beautifully that I actually like it better than Vegas 5 (and I have tried or purchased several video editors on the market). So, if you've had trouble before, please download the patch and upgrade it to version 9.3.5.

As for Pinnacle: I believe you shouldn't release your software until it is absolutely ready. In the long run, you'll create more satisfied customers. It took me awhile, but now I'm finally satisfied and delighted with your product. Likewise, the only reason why I'm not giving it a 5 stars is because of my initial trouble with the software.

Can't wait until version 10 comes out!

To save you money and, more importantly, time, the bottom is, DO NOT BUY THIS USELESS PRODUCT.

Pinnacle states how robust this product it. I believe the execs from Pinnacle have been recruited from Enron. What a bunch of thieving liars.

Importing and editing video is well implemented.
But its ability to burn a DVD seems nonexistent.

If you can manage to coax a 20-minute project out of this crazy software package, you will discover this:

1. The Screen menu will jump you to somewhere in the middle of your video. Oops.

2. Out of sync audio will give your video the charm of a dubbed foreign film. Ciao.

3. Hours of labor will result in unburned disks, saving you costly DVD media. ($$)

4. Burned disks are pretty much an experiment that fails. Enjoy your shiny new coasters.

5. Your hard drive is competing with Verizon, it never stops working, even after the software dialogue states it has successfully burned the disk (see number 3 above).

6. Additional features (too many to list here) are sold separately. I am doubtful those features will do little more than drain my bank account.

7. This software is not even worth bootlegging.

So if you Pinnacle Eggheads are reading this. Congratulations, you conned me and got my cold hard cash. However, I have the power of the Web on my side. There are thousands of people reading this and I believe I have discouraged numerous sales.

An irate customer that is apparently not alone with this review.

This is very unstable software. I have been trying for 3 months to get this software to function properly. Tech support regurgitates the staple "uninstall & reinstall" mantra. Pinnacle tries to deflect responsibility - problems are always someone else's fault - you have too many background processes running, or AMD chipset instead of Pentium, or problem with MS XP service pack 2... "problems" that don't seem to impede any other piece of software I've ever installed. The only reason I've expended as many days as I have is because this was a Christmas present from my wife who is devastated that it does not work. This is the Daryl Strawberry of video editors - great potential, but destroyed by flaws from within.

This product shipped with an invalid serial number. This problem is documented in on-line forums, but Pinnacle has no fixes (that work) posted on their web site. Basically, you're paying for a CD that won't install because the product activation code printed on the CD cover is wrong. Pinnacle is very slow about addressing this issue on an individual basis with customers who have paid for the worthless discs. So far I have received no response from their customer support. Some customers report waiting as long at two weeks and badgering Pinnacle multiple times before receiving a serial number that will allow them to install the product. I used Version 8 and loved it, but I'm really turned off by Pinnacle right now.

After being a faithfull pinnacle systems user over the years, I am fed up with this latest upgrade... (I have owned versions 6 through 8)
An upgrade that doesn't recognise previous installations, no matter how many times you uninstall and re-install the previous version, customer support that is virtually non-existent - After 11 days I am STILL waiting for a solution, Pinnacle's customer support(it took them almost a week to respond with their first gem) advised me to remove the previous installation completely from my PC: How the heck is an upgrade going to work if there is absolutely no previous version installed??! Of course then the upgrade announced on my PC that no previous version exists, therefore the upgrade will not proceed.... Now there's a surprise! Good thing these guys aren't working for NASA, we'd be Earthbound with no future in sight!
You can get through to Pinnacle sales, as you might expect, so easy, it makes your head swim. Any other department? forget it. Check out their website, and see how long it takes you to find an actual support phone number... I'm still looking, as far as I know, it doesn't exist!
Save yourself time, money and frustration, avoid this company like the plague. Maybe when their business starts to drop off as loyal customers depart in droves, they will start to think of who they are developing the products for in the first place.

I have been a professional audio engineer for years. I did a Music Jingle for Hershey's Ice Cream two years ago, and they asked me if I would be able to make a training video for them. I figured I could - piece of cake, right?

Well it has occurred to me that you are only as good as your software allows you to be. I first got Pinnacle 9 and studio plus and thought it was a great concept. That's all it would ever be - a concept! You can't even sharpen a blurred picture without having to fork out more money for an activation key. I felt totally shafted. After spending $100 bucks for the software, I had to spend almost another hundred for the activation keys.

It get's worse, I got so frustrated that I even went on hack sites to try and find keys to programs that should have been encluded in this program. None worked and were all outdated. So I had no other choice but to spend more. I was MAXED OUT!

Hershey's Ice Cream was very impressed with a 30second demo I did for them, and they offered me a great proposal - If we like this training video, we'll let you redo all of our existing ones! $$$$$$$$

So I spent a little more! As sick as I was over this spending I knew it would pay off - as long as the software held up.

For a one minute clip I was working on, I spent five hours waiting for rendering, dealing with crashes, and beating my brains against the wall. This should have taken minutes!!

I have a brand new pc with all the bells and whistles. I have other clients that need thier songs produced. I have no time to deal with this software!!!

Bottom line, I couldn't deliver the finished product to them, basically because, with this software, it would never get done - therefore, I could have never met any deadline. I lost the account.

Hershey's was looking for a FAST way to get a video out and I had let them down. This is the very first time my technology has failed me in such a way that it had cost me so much money.

Pinnacled failed me. Not only will I never use it, but I will find a way to tell as many people as I can.

The good -
I purchased my Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus in January, 2005. I thought it was the neatest thing since sliced bread. My first four 5 to 7 minute movies rendered beautifully. I purchased the entire ala carte offered - transitions, plug-ins, etc...quite an expense.

The bad -
Render slowly evolved into a 4-letter word as I spent hours preparing a short movie only to have it hang here, hang there, hang everywhere. Other 4-letter words came into play - unintall, install, close running programs, corrupt files, etc...all the while watching projects of my great grandson's 2nd birthday party, special events, VHS tapes copied of my children when they were babies...all trapped in the projects but never rendered.

The ugly -
It is not a good feeling when you contact a tech and his only advice is what is written in the owners' manual and you've already tried it many times. If you have the program, a pretty young model is on the opening screen. She is flashing a set of white teeth and holding a camera. As my experience has 'rendered' on, she has taken on a manical appearance. Her teeth actually look pointed. I've even heard her laugh at me...and whisper, "I have your movies and will never render them." She doesn't have to be so ugly about it.

This is my first review ever. After struggling (make that wasting too many hours)trying to make the upgrade to Plus work, I am giving up. They simply did not test this product to get it right before shipping. The Serial Number in the box it came with doesnt work, then they say they have a work around, but that doesnt work either.

Don't get me wrong, Studio is a good product, but honestly, I dont have the hours to put in to get their bugs out so it works. This is a terrible business practice. I have two standard XP computers and it won't work on either of them, I wouldnt do this upgrade if I were you.

I would strongly, strongly advise anyone considering this product to reconsider in the light of my experience with both the product and Pinnacle's "customer support".

I downloaded a trial version of this product after hearing about it from a friend. We're planning to do a lot of DVD-burning for family in distant parts of the country, and this looked like a good solution for us, as we don't own any Macs (iMovie and Final Cut are the de facto gold standard in the world of home moviemaking).

We wound up with Studio 9.3 Trial.

We'd planned to use this product on a Dell Inspiron 1150 with 2.6GHz and 512MB of RAM, and a 40GB HD. We're running Windows XP, SP2. All of this, allegedly, is well within normal for Studio 9.

I made a small (30 second) clip using the software, and it looked the way I wanted in the preview. Then I tried to burn it to DVD. And that's when things went south. It started to render. And then sat there. And sat there. And sat there. I tried several times, and finally let it run overnight. In the morning, the application was in exactly the same state, no closer to being done.

So I thought maybe I'd burn to a file instead. I tried AVI, MPEG, Windows Media: all of them hang as well. Indefinitely. So I hied myself over to the support site.

One of my rules for evaluating whether a company is serious about support is how easy or how hard they make it for you to contact them. Another is whether the support is unidirectional, or bidirectional: in other words, do your requests go into a vacuum, leaving you hoping someone will look, or are they "touched" by a human rapidly after they're submitted?

Pinnacle failed on both counts.

I discovered that there's no telephone support. Or, at least, there isn't a number to be easily found on the website. Somewhat foolishly, I decided to upgrade my product to "full" to see if that helps, for $89. Online. They are perfectly happy to do that, and "unlock" my software, which makes no measurable difference in the net performance.

I discover that there's a patch. I download the patch. I install the patch. And the patch, midway through, complains of a missing file but otherwise completes. Uh-oh.

I launch the patched program, and immediately get a fatal error saying something about an invalid insertion point. This can't be good, I think. I take a look at the support site for that error, and they say "uninstall everything and reinstall".

Oh: the patch is destructive. That is, once you patch the software, you can't revert the patch: if you uninstall the patch, you have to uninstall and reinstall the program as well, because the patch apparently makes irreversible changes. You have to reboot after each uninstall and install, as well. This makes a patch process take a while: at least a half hour each time.

On top of that, they use ftp:// links for their utilities, none of which worked for me in IE or Mozilla. When I tried to command-line ftp to the sites in question (ftp.pinnaclesys.de, which is a little weird: Germany?), I get nothing. So I can't even download the utilities they claim are available.

Somewhere in here, I submit a trouble ticket with their customer support site: I never found a phone number. As of right now, 24 hours after I submitted it, nobody at Pinnacle has touched it, looked at it, or commented on it. I posted to the customer message boards, and got nice but essentially nonhelpful feedback from other customers, but nothing from Pinnacle themselves.

So, in sum, I paid $90 for something that does some things, but not the really important thing for which I bought it. When I patched it, it broke to the point where it doesn't do anything. And there's no customer support to be seen.

This is not my definition of a good customer experience. Fortunately, I'd charged it on an American Express card, and Amex is very good about being fangy on your behalf when you're not happy with a purchase. I've already been credited my purchase price.

But if you're looking for a product to make DVDs on Windows, I sure wouldn't buy this one, if for no other reason than if it breaks (and, from a perusal of the web boards at Pinnacle, it breaks a lot), you're going to get no support.

And now, I'm off to buy a Mac Mini, I think.