Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio Plus Titanium Edition v10.5

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

Let me sum up this software "total junk"

Pinnacle will give you one free support phone call for help, then $25 for the next call.

They give you free email support, but answer everything but your problem. They try and blame it on Windows XP, and will have you reload Windows.

I owned Studio 8, and it worked fine. Went to Studio 9, and had a few problems. Upgraded to Studio 9 Plus, and after a week of trying to make it render my projects with no sucess, and crash after crash, I removed it from my machine.

They sent me an offer of their all new 10.5 plus upgrade, Hollywood FX, 3 of their Premium packs, and a hat that says Studio 10 on it. This said that the program had been rebuilt from bottom up. This program should be called "Crash after Crash", and the only thing that works is the hat.

If you feel the urge to waste $100, and hours of your time, just buy this product.

Look at the reviews on Studio 10, and the other Studio products, and most only have one star. Out of over 100 reviews over 95% had one star. I found one with 5 stars, but looking at the reviewers other reviews he is obviously an employee, or share holder in the company. He wrote a 1 star review on a Sony competative product, and 5 star reviews for other Pinnacle products that you would not own if 10.5 worked.

I had purchased this item because the university had the version 9 and it was nice. Teacher had forwarned us

"Do not buy this product... I am only letting you guys use this because this is the most easiest software for video editing"

Did I listen? No. Silly me purchased this for use in my home because I didn't want to spend hours doing this in the cold school lab. I took hours of video footage. I also used my own voice in some videos like I was suppose to...

When it was time to upload my videos into "movies" and save it for an AVI form... it worked in three of my movies... then... crashed...and crashed... and crashed... and crashed....

So my final project for this class is half done. My presentation for my class was as if I didn't put hours and hours of editing since I was only able to show the 2 out of the 10 videos I did for the class. Thanks to Pinnacle and this POS software, I am expecting an extremely bad grade.

Never buy this product. Ever. Go and get some other video program from other sources. You can download a nice one to preview it and if you like it you can pay the same price. NEVER buy this product.

I've been a user of Pinnacle version 8 (which I loved), and needed to update to a version that could burn dual layer DVDs. What a disappointment this "upgrade" has been. Crash after crash. What is most disappointing is that Pinnacle built in a feed back system so the users could "help" them develop a better product. This means to me that they knowingly released bad code, and used their customers as guinny pigs while sticking us for a $100. Guess what, I don't want to help Pinnacle build a better product. I want a product that works when I purchase it.

Lesson learned. Next time I read a bad review on a product, I'm staying away.

I have studio plus 10.5, not the titanium version, but I am writing my review here because amazon does not appear to carry the standard version.
First, if you do not have a firewire port, you are not able to import your footage from your camera, regardless of what type of connection you have. Secondly, you are unable to import footage from a DVD. The manual and online help clearly say this is possible, but it just isn't.
The last and biggest gripe is the features. Only a portion of the editing tools or effects are made available to you with this version. If you want to do certain things, like import mpeg3 video, you must purchase an activation code!!! Yes I said PURCHASE. If you want the extra features, you must PURCHASE activation codes for each one separately which will nickel and dime you to death (the only one I looked into cost $3.99) This program seems more like something you would download off of tucows to try, rather than purchase at a store.
I can't get past my frustration with having to pay to do every single thing I want to for me to recommend this product for what it does have.

I have been using Studio 8 for some time to edit videos, add titles and menus, and adjust audio and video. Other than an occasional crash, Studio 8 actually worked well, was easy to use, and had many features only found in high-end video production products.

I was excited when Pinnacle came out with 10.5 Titanium. I had read the reviews about Version 10 and problems, but I figured they were now on version 10.5 and all the problems had been worked out. Whoa, was I ever wrong. First of all, Studio 10.5 crashed when installing the bonus CD that came with it. Next, the activation key that comes with registering the bonus did not work. Tryed again, reinstall and activate or unlock a feature and still did not work. Okay, so I can't use that feature, lets fire it up and create a video. My editing system is not the newest but by no means is it a slouch either. I have a 1.8gh system with 1gb ram and an 128mb 8x-AGP NVidia graphics card. The first thing I noticed upon reboot is the additional 3 services Pinnacle added to my system startup to slow it down. When I first fired up Studio 10, it took nearly 2 minutes for the program splash to go away and program to come up. I then imported a video from DVD -- another 10 minutes for 40 minute video. Okay, so now I have a video and everything is great, lets start editing. First thing I noticed is wow, this is really, I mean really, slow. Adding a simple text caption takes about 2 minutes after waiting for 3 hour glasses (one to open the add text caption, one to set options, and one to save your text caption and update the video). Next I wanted to check out all the great features of the Titanium edition. Hey, all the features are premium. Okay, I will just click on the link to add this feature. Good Gosh, another $20 bucks for just one feature that I have in version 8. Wait somethings not right. Yep, thats right, got a lot of features that 8 does not have but they are all locked. You have to pay $10 to $20 for each package and there are tons of them. So, I decided to make just a basic video with a basic menu. I created a 12 minute video with 4 chapters and main menu. Next I clicked on Make Movie and Create DVD. Set up to burn to DVD direct and clicked go. After 20 minutes, the menu still had not been rendered. I left the house and came back 4 hours later only to find out it was still rendering movie.

Conclusion: I now have Studio 8 back on my system. I have several systems and loaded Pinnacle Studio 10.5 on a Athlon64 running Vista with 1gb Ram and Radeon 9600 and it is not much better. Both systems were updated to the 10.7 patch. I have numerous problems and not one has been answered by Pinnacle support. My main menus only render black boxes instead of thumbnails. Pinnacles answer is they are aware of this and it will be released as a future feature. Future feature, they had it working fine way back in version 7. If you have hours upon hours to do video editing, have the patience of Job, and can afford to shell out a few hundred dollars for features of which many are in 8, then this is the video editor for you. For everyone else, make sure you try the download from Pinnacle first. You cannot return this product to Pinnacle once it is opened. Their answer is this product is provided without any warranties or guarantees.

I've worked with Pinnacle Studio versions 8.0, 9.0, 9.4., 10.0, and this one. And they've all had two things in common:

1. When the program works, it's superb.

2. The other 50% of the time, it crashes frequently, and hard.

For years, Pinnacle had designed the market's top, novice-affordable video editing/authoring platforms, but for some frustrating reason, they just can't seem to keep the bugs out. Studio Plus v10.5 is no exception.

Lately, the competition in this market has mushroomed, and there are better alternatives available for the same price. At last, others have emulated the Pinnacle platform while eliminating the work/creativity-killing bugs.

My advice? Shop around. Google the competition. But save yourself the frustration and steer away from anything Pinnacle.

I was not very satisfied with this product. I could not get the software installed, so I called tech support and they informed me to uninstall the software, and then reinstall it, but to uninstall it I would have to download a uninstall utility to do this. I did this and it wiped some of my Windows software out. I had the 10.6 version I think. I sent it back and asked for my money back. Amazon informed me they would, but have not received yet.
My son came over and helped me with this program, but he could not get it to install either. He is a Computer Science graduate.

Do NOT waste your money on this piece of junk software. I used Studio 8 for years with a few minor glitches, but overall it worked. I bought 10.5 "titanium" (more like "lead") edition to get some new features. I loaded the program first, then later tried to load the "Bonus" features. This corrupted the original installation, so I had to re-install. The installation is so invasive that I had to do a System Restore to get rid of it. It took 16 tries (no exagerrating)to install with registry clean-ups in between. It should be a sign when Pinnacle provides a registry cleaning tool of their own on their website. All of this was on a clean, high-end machine.(Mind you, I am a 30 yr computer professional and no dummy)If I hadn't known where to edit the registry I'd still be lost.
This is the WORST written installation I have ever seen. Pinnacle should be ashamed to charge money for junk like this. It is a shame that what is arguably the best video-editing interface in the industry is attached to such crappy code.

Buy Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas or if you don't need the high-end features as I do, save ALL your money and use Windows Movie Maker.

Don't try to use or install this with children around. I promise you will be cursing! Too bad there isn't a NO STAR rating.

As you can see by other reviews above, the Studio series has a history of being buggy. You also hear a lot of people saying "This package is so much more intuitive and easy to use than the other 'powerful enough to be worth owning' packages -- if only it were more stable!"

I am one of those long-suffering users (5 years, going back to Version 9), and finally with Version 10.6 I have stopped complaining -- it now works as I'd hoped when I bought it. The $300 I spent on other packages trying to do better was wasted -- I kept getting frustrated with interfaces that a 500-page manual couldn't clarify. And I'm a very sophisticated computer user by most measures.

I am turning all of our old family video tapes and CD's into DVD's. I use Studio for all the editing (have not tried the DVD recording -- just use Roxio for that) and am now very pleased. If you own 10.5 then version 10.6 is a free download.

One important piece of advice that would have saved me lots of problems: put every "project" you work on in a separate subdirectory. If you have 5 soccer game videos make a /game1, /game2 etc. series of subfolders. If you edit those to a "Jimmy's great plays" proect, put it in a separate /JimmyPlays folder. When projects are in the same folder and you edit them a few times weird overwrite problems can happen in 10.5. I learned this trick before 10.6 came out, and I don't know if it matters any more but I take no chances.

Why did I stick with something where I admit that version 9.0 was "powerful but unstable" and 10.0 was "more powerful and more unstable"? Because I can actually use Studio with minimal reference to instructions, and when I use it things turn out as I expect. Now that it has become stable and reliable I am a VERY satisfied customer.

So that's how I got from being a frustrated Studio customer to giving it 4 stars on this review. I tell the whole story so you understand that the other reviews from frustrated people are relevant for the older versions, but that "10.5 updated for free to 10.6" really is the best choice out there now... as my unused expensive rivals to Studio on my shelf prove. Just keep putting every project inn its own folder!

Among stiff competition, this has to be a contender for the worst software ever, particularly in its price category. Almost nothing works, options are preset and cannot be changed. For example, if you use a separate HD you cannot select it as an option. Forget about the monikers 'plus' and 'special' with 'extras'. If the package I got indeed comes with 'extras' the bare-bones software must consist only of an opening screen that says, "got you sucker...one born every minute". The software is counter-intuitive, doesn't actually work and it is very time consuming to establish this. If you bought it, uninstall it, toss it and cut your losses and buy something else. This will drive you to drink.