Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 11 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I've used Studio since version 1.0. Now that we're on version 11.1, I can report that Studio basically hasn't changed. It's easy and fairly intuitive to use, but somewhat unstable. The latest version is huge, and on anything but simple videos you can expect occasional hangs, crashes, and unexplained phenomena. Is it better to have a more professional package like Premier that you can't figure out how to use, or a simple interface like Studio that crashes once in a while? For me, Studio is doing the job for a reasonable price.

I have logged a lot of time with previous versions 8 and 10. Early version 10 had some problems. The latest update, version 10.7 was much improved if not flawless (neither was the competitive product I tried). Nonetheless, I like this program and find it very easy to use, so I was hopeful that in addition to the benefit of some new features, Studio 11 will continue this trend of improvement. Here's what I've found so far.

As instructed, I uninstalled version 10 before loading the 3 disks set. The program installed with no problems. My current project involves std def DV-AVI files totaling over 25GB of source material on an external drive, which seems like a reasonably demanding test. At this point, I have used the program for 12+ hrs in edit mode with no problems. I have also rendered an AVI from the compilation (very fast BTW) and burned a DVD. Both tasks ran smoothly.

Check the system requirements against your system configuration carefully if working with HD and particularly AVCHD. Fancy comes at a price - you're demanding a lot from your system hardware if you're playing with HD.

I set my preferences to hide the premium content. "Premium content" consists of a wide range of additional transitions, effects, filters, etc that are available at an additional charge. A good number of transitions and filters are included in the default install, and just how many transitions do you really need, anyway? But if you see something tailor made for your particular project, go get it. Fair enough.

Users of previous versions will find the user interface very familiar. New users should find it intuitive and the clean workspace should ease the learning curve. For example, buttons, functions and a window applicable to editing a video clip appear when you need them (in the clip edit mode) but don't clutter the workspace otherwise. Pinnacle includes a storyboard viewing option which I find beneficial when rearranging the clip order. Users who include a lot of still images will find this mode a bonus. Editing in the timeline mode is simple, everything works as you'd expect; cut and paste, drag and drop, multiple selects. Finally, creating DVD menus and markers is integrated into the timeline making that final production step very easy.

The Ultimate version of this package includes 3 additional features for $30 (suggested retail) which looks like a bargain to me.

Product failed to run (error message said configuration problem)after installing without problem. Customer support almost worthless, just read from the FAQ website. Finally told me the problem must be my sound or video card drivers. Told to download latest versions (P.C already has the latest drivers) Returned product for full refund (thank you Amazon) and I purchased ULEAD 11 PLUS which works perfectly and is awesome to use.

Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus
by John C Lee

Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus is one of the three product lines of video editing and authoring software recently released by Pinnacle Systems. The Studio 11 family has solved much of the instability problems that had plagued its earlier versions. It has also built in a safeguard that enables you to continue working on the same project after rebooting from a program crash.
Studio 11 Plus is an innovative program with many impressive features. It supports a host of standards and output formats from HD Video, Blue-Ray, SVCHD to VCD, SVCD, DVD, AVI, VCR, iPod, PSP, DivX and Web publishing (including Yahoo! Videos). Video/audio productions are carried out using a simple 3-step workflow mode - Capture, Edit and Make Movie. In Capture mode, you only need to select the capture source and the capture format (AV or MPEG for your movie output), and the program fills in all the necessary settings.
The user interface for the Edit mode, where most of a project's work is performed, has a modern design adapted to viewing on today's widescreen monitors. It consists of three panels with an expandable preview Player on the top right corner; an Album panel on the top left; and the Movie Window with Storyboard, Timeline or Text views at the bottom half of the display. The Album serves as a library where all the imported media clips and built-in templates are stored. These include video clips captured from digital and analog devices, TV, still images, transitions, effects, text and menu templates; and audio clips from ripped CD music tracks, Voice-overs (narrations) and the Scorefitter Music Generator. All of these media clips can be readily accessed in the Album by clicking their corresponding tool icons and previewed on the Player. The Scorefitter is a built-in collection of 40 high-fidelity background music tracks. The duration of the tracks can be easily adjusted to match the lengths of the video or slideshow sessions. Selected media clips are then added into the appropriate Timeline tracks or the Storyboard of the Movie Window, where you can edit and create your movie from the raw materials in the Album.
There are seven tracks on the Timeline, which include only one overlay track. Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus has 6, and the Premiere Elements 3.0 has 99 overlay tracks. Although you do not need more than one overlay in most of the productions, it would be desirable to add one or two more overlay tracks, so that you can make multi-shots composite videos or slideshows.
A powerful tool available in the Edit mode allows you to split or combine video clips on both the Album and the Timeline. The tool is especially useful in making menus or in combining video clips to cut down the large number of clips usually captured with the Scene Detection option.
Making menus for disc authoring is quick and easy in Studio 11 Plus. You can either select a template from the menu Album or make your own using the Text/Menu Editor, and drag the menu clip into the Timeline video track. The menu clips contain buttons or thumbnails (static or motion) that can be easily linked to the chapters or submenus. You can manually set the chapters or let the program insert the chapter mark at the beginning of each video clip. Here the Split/Combine Clips feature comes handy, because you can use it to precisely group the video clips to form chapters
Another noteworthy feature is Background Rendering. While you are working on transitions, effects, menus or titles, rendering proceeds in the background. This not only reduces the final project rendering time, but also delivers smooth and uninterrupted previewing on the Player.
Studio 11 Plus also contains a sub-program that can record movies directly from the camcorder tape to DVD media without taking up any room on the hard drive.
Due to the high costs of HD media and recorders, Studio 11 Plus provides an option to burn native HDV or AVCHD footage on standard DVD media that can be played on the latest HD players.
The output to a movie is carried out in the Output Browser of the Make Movie mode. Four output style options - Disc, File, Tape, and Web, cover all the output standards and formats shown in the second paragraph of this review. In each of the options, you only have to specify the output style and quality, and the program fills in the necessary preset compression level, file size or disc usage commensurate with the output style and the quality you select. Hence, it means fewer dialog boxes to work with and minimum user's interactive inputs. You can also choose the custom option to make adjustments to these preset values.
The Studio 11 Plus package comes with an Installation DVD, a Bonus DVD and a 300-page printed User Guide. The User Guide is a comprehensive and lucid document that covers all the topics in great detail. The Bonus DVD is a moneymaking scheme concocted by Pinnacle Systems. It installs thousands of premium content of transitions, titles, DVD menus, video and sound effects using up almost 4GB of hard drive space. All premium contents are watermarked. You have to purchase packs of the premium contents online and be given the activate keys to remove the watermarks before you can use them.
The only drawbacks that I found with the Studio 11 Plus is its wasteful use of hard drive space and "messy" file management. The main program files including the installed premium contents used more than 6.4 GB hard drive space in my computer. The project data files are scattered over 60+ folders and sub-folders (as far as I can find) in the Documents & Settings, Shared Documents and other directories. When a project is completed and not saved, the program prompts you to delete all the large GB-size auxiliary files created during rendering. I believe many small files such as configuration, log and temp files specifically created for the projects are still left behind. For users like me, who like to keep their hard drives neat and uncluttered, it is bothersome to see so many unneeded files and folders scattered all over the hard drive.
In conclusion, I can state that the Studio 11 Plus is an excellent video editing and authoring program with many powerful features, that are easy to learn and to use. I would recommend it to beginners as well as advanced users. I think that it deserves a higher rating than its competitor software Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus. The only suggestion I have is for Pinnacle Systems to make improvements on hard drive usage and file management in future versions.

Make sure you computer has a compatible sound card and video card - and drivers. The one built into you computer motherboard may not work with Studio. If you don't - crashes are guarenteed.

If you really like Studio (there is a lot to like) make SURE the hardware and drivers are compatible with making large movies. By that I mean, make some large movies with sound, voice and transitions.

Think about installing it as one of your first applications on the new vista laptop and make sure to set restore points first. When you install new software, keep checking to see that it still runs. Studio is very touchy about this. It always, ALWAYS, has been. Pinnacle will not help you on these types of errors so don't put yourself through that misguided expectation. Your only real help will be other customers on the forums.

If it runs on your computer, you can't beat it for ease of use, price and the abilty to easily add complex functionality seen in more high end products.

I just purchased a Canon HV10 High definition camcorder from Amazon so I needed a good software program to go with it. I picked the Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 mainly because it was on sale with a rebate and it was one of the major editing software programs that are well known and not programmed by some company I never heard of. This was my very first camcorder and editing software so I can be classified as a beginner.

The software took a long time to load and the installation software notified me that my video card (ATI All In Wonder 9000 Pro) did not have the latest drivers. It then halted the program installation on my hard drive. Not a big deal since I loaded the latest drivers and it continued. When I first ran the program I suffered a couple of crashes during start-up and during my first video capture which were annoying.

However, after breaking the program in, the program is now running fine. My 2 yr old PC is a 3 GHz P4 630 (non-duo) with 2 GB Mushkin premium RAM on a Asus motherboard. I noticed if you attempt to give a command and then give a second command before the program executes the first command, the program would crash. Annoying but not a fatal flaw since I have learned to be patience with it.

On the positives: The program is easy to learn for a beginner and I did not have to read the manual that much. I am happy with the program because it allowed me to cut out sections of my video very precisely and quickly. Adding subtitles, music and special effects were also easy. I shot a video of the birth of my granddaughter and quickly edited the video in about one day just in time to show it to my family at xmas. The rendering and the DVD burn were accomplished without any problems. However, it took a long time to render and burn on a regular DVD.

On the negatives: You must be patience with this program. If you have a PC slower than mine with a cheap video card or an integrated video on the motherboard with old drivers, you may have some problems with it. I also wished the rendering was quicker. The program is somewhat bloated with extra features things that I do not need.

The bottomline: Buy it when it is on sale and you have a decent PC with a video card from a manufacturer that regularly updates its video drivers. I would not buy it at regular price since it is buggy and bloated. I am satisfied with this program and I am glad I do not need to update my PC to edit high definition videos. I do not have a blu-ray or HD DVD DVD burner so I could not determine how reliable these features are.

I have Windows Vista on a laptop, Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 11, and a USB Pinnacle 500-USB adapter. I use this device to import video from a camcorder, DVD player, and VHS player a lot. If the capture preview screen shows blue at the top and green at the bottom instead of what you should see, try removing any other USB device. I will get this error every single time that remains unresolved even with the latest patch unless the USB Pinnacle Studio 500-USB adapter is the only thing plugged in. Also, make sure it is plugged directly into a USB where it gets full power instead of a hub. Hope that information helps. Studio 11 is a great way to edit that home videos precisely the way you want. The only reason I rated this four was because this tip should be easy to find on their site. Maybe it's there, but I figured this out myself.

I charitably give Studio 11 2 stars because it does have a lot of features. However, I have spent many hours cussing out its numerous bugs. Pinnacle needs to stop adding the paltry few features from version to version and fix the bugs. Some are painful. Try rendering a big project and have it freeze up when 97% finished. Does it preserve the work it has done, let you restart and render the last 3%? No, you have to redo everything from scratch. DVD menu creating is irritatingly clumsy and full of minor bugs. Why can't DVD burning be more reliable? It trashed so many of my DVDs that I started buring to DVD+RWs and when, after 3-5 tries, one burns, I make copies with Nero (which burns successfully 100% of the time). Video importing from tape is miserably unreliable. I've used the product on different machines with different hardware, too. Try contacting customer support, and they'll give you a boilerplate answer that doesn't match your question. I wish I would have stayed with version 9. It was very buggy, but not like 11 and it mostly had the same features.

I used to own studio 7, 8 and 9. Most of the time the studio used either hang or took huge amount of time to process the video. But with studio 11, I haven't faced any hanging issue so far and performance is amazing. I can create 2 1/2 hours DVD in 2.5 hours. I definately recommend this product. Also the installation time is quicker too.

I have had Pinnacle Studio plus Titanium Edition installed on my computer for a while now. I have a stack of media piling up because this software will not perform even the most basic functions. You know... play a video. It continually freezes and stops responding requiring a Ctrl+Alt+Del to get out of it.

My system is built for video and photo editing. 3.4GHz Pentium4 2GB DDR2 RAM and NVIDIA 6600 graphics accelerator with 256MB dedicated video RAM. Even with Studio locked up, I can bring up other software that will run perfectly, so it is definitely their problem.

I have been in contact with their technical support staff (who don't seem to understand English very well) and they keep telling me to try the same old stuff. Reboot, reinstall, reboot again. They insist that you try it all before they will tell you to install some other piece of non-functioning software by these jokers. Usually after about 4 hours of help chat, they tell you that their shift is over and you will get an email. This will be the last you hear from them.

To put it mildly, Pinnacle makes Microsoft software seem pleasant and enjoyable to deal with. At least Microsoft wants your software to work until the make it obsolete in a year. Pinnacle is, by far, the worst software I have EVER tried to use.

The feature set of this software is extremely attractive, and if any of it actually worked, I would love it. My sessions typically play about 10 seconds of video then the picture freezes and it is done. In over a year, I have successfully created about 30 minutes of video output.

Your money is better spent anywhere else! Please, for the love of all that is good in life, let these folks go out of business.

I would have produced a great video review, but, alas, my $120.00 video software suite won't even play video much less edit it for upload