Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio 8.0 Video Editing with CD/DVD Authoring

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(35)
1 star:		(129)

 

 

In a nutshell, this program will (probably) work fabulously if your needs are modest. You can (probably) capture video from digital or VHS sources, and edit with ease. The editing features are impressive (if everything goes well for you).

POSITIVES:
Very intuitive editing functions
Many file formats supported
Burning DVD, VCS, SVCD supported
Creates nice menus

Having said this, the few positive reviews I've read here must be from people with (a) amazing luck, or (b) amazing patience and low expectations from commercial software. These reviewers are saints! In my opinion, they should be given flowers and chocolates by each Pinnacle Systems executive, and warm embraces should not be ruled out by the next Board of Directors meeting.
(See, I could have said something mean but I didn't)

NEGATIVES:
(1) IT'S SLOW - The time the program spends hanging is legendary. There should be an award for the most time a program spends churning and thrashing for absolutely no apparent reason. Planning on opening an existing project that's more than 10 minutes in duration? Better plan your day around it. Seriously. Waiting for this program will induce hysterical hallucinations and / or cause you to find religion.

My day proceeds like this, and no I'm not exaggerating:
* Launch Studio 8 and wait while Studio accesses the last captured video, as is its default modus operandi.
* Shave, take a show, get dressed, have breakfast, check to see if Studio 8 is still hanging.
* Has it opened the last video? Great, it must have only been that short 10 minute clip of last Thanksgiving's bore fest, horrific gravy mishap included (in slow-mo).
* However if it STILL HASN'T opened the video, read next chapter of current good book.
* Finally, it finished. Don't get all giddy like a schoolgirl; all we did was start the program. (apologies to those who are, or aspire to become, schoolgirls)
* The default project it opened upon launching is a brand new 'Untitled' project (remember, all that opening time was just for a captured video that you MIGHT want to add to some project). Tragically, I need to work on an existing project. I know what's coming next, so I wipe a tear from my cheek and select my desired project from the menu. I've found that you can tolerate this anticipatory pain by either clenching your teeth or biting down on something hard to keep you from swallowing your tongue.
*OK, now I've really made it mad. My existing project is not only long (> 30 minutes of clips) but it also includes clips from more than one captured source (e.g. clips from my niece's christening, and from the public domain documentary "Exorcisms Gone Bad"). This is an affront to the Pinnacle gods. They punish my hubris by cranking up my hard drive to "ludicrous" speed, and keeping it there for a good half hour or more of senseless reads and writes. I think it's writing megabytes and megabytes of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", but I have no conclusive evidence. Norton Utilities should make a tool specifically for this purpose. Meanwhile my computer has seized and is unavailable to do anything else, like update the clock, repaint the screen or acknowledge my frantic attempts to apologize and take it all back. This paralysis is the computer equivalent of eyes wide open, pupils fixed and dilated, jaw gaping and trickle of drool slowly creeping towards the floor without any attempt to wipe it away. Nurse! Get the defibrillator, stat!

Waiting out this state of inactivity is deceptively debilitating. You want to leave since you know nothing will budge for about 30 minutes. But you still retain this irrational expectation that maybe, just maybe, everything will unlock the minute you leave. In my experience, this is about as likely as an Elvis sighting in Kabul, Afghanistan. Instead, you stare at the blank, unpainted screen for far too long as your mind begins playing tricks, as if you're in a sensory deprivation tank.

There are similar criminally long delays in most editing attempts, like adding a clip to a project.

Given this glacial pace, I plan on finishing my video projects in the following way:
(1) start a religion,
(2) train the converts in the mysterious yet glorious ways of Pinnacle Studio editing so they work on my projects faithfully each and every Sunday for the rest of their natural lives,
(3) instruct my righteous flock to pass on these rites to their children, their children's children, and yea onto all those they beget,
(4) while the faithful await "the Great Rendering" when the project is completed and burned to disc. Alleluia!

Actually, this religion would be a great marketing angle for Pinnacle Systems, Inc., and would fit in well with their proclaimed "long term outlook". Certainly, a product that forces you to think in terms of geological eras instead of mere hours fits this long-term corporate vision.

(2) (oh, yes, all the above was just #1) DOESNT BURN WELL - sometimes it doesnt recognize my CD burner. Now I might be convinced that some devices are unrecognizable. However, mine is on the official 'approved' list, and it is often recognized, but sometimes isn't. This is analogous to occasionally forgetting how to chew your food.

(3) CRASHES - not every day, but too often.

Ok - so my computer has plenty of HDD space (100 GB), 256 MB of RAM, a 1.7GHz P4 CPU, a newer VIA chipset and runs win2K with the latest service pack and so on. Radeon Graphics for video and Turtle Beach Sound. I can't remember when an installed software crashed on it - that is - till I installed Studio 8. You'd think the latest bug fix (updating it to 8.5) would have fixed the problems? Read on....
Now the problems - where do I begin?
1) Installing the MP10+ analog capture card was a nightmare - till I swapped PCI slots - a day wasted.
2)When rendering, the software sometimes simply quits. Thats it. No message - Nothing. And rendering is not a breeze - so you can imagine the frustration.
3) For my second project, the software rendered partway and then stops (does not matter which codec I am using). And this is a long continuing struggle. Since rendering is such a time consuming process, any experimentation takes a while. Deleting a couple of scenes in the beginning for example allows rendering to cross the point where it normally gets hung up - and then it continues on to the very end.
4) If I try to do Divx encoding of the videos, then the software does not work if I try to encode the audio in mp3. It has to be kept in PCM format. While it gives you the mp3 option, there seems to be no way of specifying bit rates for example.
5) I am not sure that audio and video sync properly - because I can hear audio for a second or two after the video has ended.
6) Many of the buttons don't have baloon help associated with them.
7) The interface is not standard windows interface - This means you will have to relearn buttons and icons. This is a very stupid thing to do - makes the learning curve steeper. Many times, the buttons are all over the place, instead of being bunched up in one place.

The software sort of works, its relatively inexpensive, and includes a bunch of neat special effects transitions for free, I give it two stars. Else, I would have given it one.

Pinnacle Studio 8 is a good program with hints of greatness. There are a lot of nice features and its ease of use is currently unmatched. However, the program is not without its programming flaws.

Studio 8 is easy to install. Basically, put in the requested disks, wait and you are done. Some systems may need to reboot afterwards but after that, you are ready to roll.

Capturing, editing and rendering are all simple to do and you can have a lot of fun doing so. Making cuts and edits were surprisingly simple and the effects that you can add are truly impressive. Rendering, while easy, is very slow, even on the fastest systems. An hour of video rendered for DVD took nearly 7 hours to render. That may be kind of slow compared to higher end systems but if you have the time, it is worth it. The end product, while sometimes showing SOME red bleed, looks very nice.

On a major down point, this program is quite temperamental. You pretty much have to make sure it is the ONLY program you run after a reboot. If you run other programs before going into Studio 8, chances of a crash are high. When scrolling text, I will often get these unknown TITLEDEKO errors that Pinnacle has yet to offer suggestions or fixes about. It has a sometimes-nasty habit of simply 'resetting' your PC and causes it to reboot.

I capture with Pinnacles' AV/DV PCI card. It does a good job but I sometimes have audio sync issues and I have yet to find out if it is the card or the software.

Pinnacle's support is fair but featues a great, mostly user supported, webboard. However, you may be scared from purchasing this software because of all of the issues people have.

This is a great program with a lot of good features and special effects. You will need to make sure you turn off all of those "cute" programs like screen savers, mouse enhancements, backgrounds and other memory resident programs to make sure you do not crash. It will work for you if you follow these directions but let's hope 9.0 will be more stable.

I bought this based on a positive experience with Pinnacle Studio DV. All I really wanted the software for was video capture and MPEG editing. It doesn't do either, although it is supposed to. Besides locking up, not displaying video, etc. when it DID supposedly edit an MPG file the sound no longer matched up with the video!

Believe ALL the bad reviews of this product. It is a complete waste of time and money. I will never purchase from Pinnacle again.

Sincerely,

Ken Miller

Tucson,AZ

BTW, my system is a Dell P4 running Windows 2000 with 756 MB memory, 2 120G drives, 32MB Nvidia Geforce2 MX

Don't buy it! I bought and installed this product on a brand-new Pentium-IV 2.8 GHz computer from a well-known computer maker. From day-1 the software was unstable. There were frequent crashes. Nevertheless I continued on with it, attempting to create a DVD for a Christmas present. I did not get it done by Christmas. After I had created the movie and was ready to render it to a DVD, the real instability started. When I contacted Pinnacle for support, nearly their first request of me was to reinstall the Windows XP operating system, on the off-chance that it had not been properly put onto my computer by the manufacturer! That was enough for me. I have many other applications on that computer, all of which run just fine. I'm now looking for a replacement product with which I can finish my movie.

I bought PS 8 primarely because it had received PC Magazine's "Editors Choice" award. The author of the article describing PS 8 is Jan Ozer, the same person who wrote the Visual Quick Start Guide for PS 8.

Reviewers at amazon.com have rated Pinnacle Studio 8 to be 2 out of 5 stars, the web board at pinnaclesys is full of frustrated users who seems to have problems from anywhere not being able to launch the programm to crashes after hours of work, destroing their projects.

This makes me wonder how impartial this author was when he wrote the review (and possible awarded it the "Editor's Choice" award.)

Why? As a book author it's important that you sell as many books as possible. If the book flops, it's over for the author. So Jan Ozer had very well a reason to write a glowing review, knowing it may well increase sales of his book.

This situation is especially concerning, because PC Magazine is the leading publication for computer users and many readers rely on the magazine's judgement when it comes to purchasing hardware or software.

...

I started with Studio DV (v 1.0?), after much tweaking was able to import DV, but not export DV to camcorder. Found out on the excellent Pinnacle support webboard (mostly disgruntled users) that my motherboard wasn't supported.. So after an upgrade I finally was able to get a project output to camcorder. Then I decided I wasn't going to hassle with it until DVD R technology was available.
Got a DVD+R/RW, and decided to purchase Studio 8 despite reading the webboard ... Was able to import and edit right away--very easy interface. Then the trouble, wasn't able to render. Decided to upgrade to Windows XP (from 98SE) and NTFS file system. Reinstalled (with 8.5.2 upgrade patch) and project rendered fine first try. Then burned to disc image--great! Then burned to DVD+R--great! Then tried to watch it--first menu popped up--I was in tears of joy! Then tried to move through the menu---"DISK UNPLAYABLE"... UGH.
There are scads of hints and tips and suggestions from other users on the support webboard to fix this and other issues (now I can't render), but the software is unstable and not ready for general consumer use. I may just use it for editing and output MPEG2/AVI, then find another program for DVD authoring. Bottom line is I've been trying to create a project for 4 months and all I have to show is a coaster and [money spent on] computer upgrades. I'm convinced Pinnacle is a front for the PC industry to drive upgrades...

I upgraded this software to 8.03.18 before working with it. Mpeg import and video capture work great, little or no frames dropped. Timeline creation is a snap, trimming video is virtual, your actual raw video is undisturbed. Menu creation not too diffucult. Documentation is lacking where linking menus is concerned, but user forums provide detailed instructions. Importing stills, secondary audio (including MP3) were no trouble.

Burning a dvd requires patience with this software, granted. But the results are nothing less than spectacular. After spending just eight hours creating a project (mostly spent on menu creation), I left Studio 8 to re-render my video overnight. I would say it took 5-8 minutes to re-render each minute. But in the end I burned a full 2.25 hour disc with main menu, 3 sub-menus with 5 chapters each, mp3 background music for each menu. Everything was accessible when using my home player, video quality was superb, audio sync was never an issue. I know there seem to be some compatability issues on some systems, but if you think your computer can do it, this IS the one to buy! Previously I was using MovieFactory. Studio 8 is fifty times better, no joke.

Hardware Specs: ABit KX7V333, Athlon 2000XP, ATI AiW 7500 Radeon, Catalyst 2.3 drivers, 40 Gb Capture drive, 100 Gb editing (7200 rpm each), 512 PC2700, XP Pro full version w/ SP1, Sony DRU-120A dvd burner.

I had never used video editing software before, and read a lot of reviews, both user and "expert" before settling for Pinnacle Studio Version 8.
Curiously, the 10 digit serial number was printed backwards and it took a while to figure that out. Also it was on the CD sleeve, not on the back of the book where the on screen instructions told me to locate it.
After installing (a breeze) I watched the tutorial video and then made a couple of test movies. One on fresh video footage from my Samsung mini DV camcorder, the other was a compilation of AVI video clips my folks back in Old England have e-mailed to me and I have been saving them on my hard drive.
Both movies were easy to compile and fun to do. I easily added transition effects between scenes and titles, trimmed some scenes and then rendered the whole thing. I found rendering was slow, as many other reviewers have pointed out, but that was my only complaint.
I made one test movie on a CD using MPEG2 which played fine on my DVD player. The other was a compilation of 20 and 30 second AVI movie clips, which was also very easy to put together and played perfectly on my (older) DVD player. Movies can also be made in streaming fashion to display on a web site or in formats suitable for e-mailing. The many formats available is definitley one of its strong points.
This software was pretty easy to use, with nice features allowing a complete amateur like me to impress the hell out of my friends at first try!
I accomplished all of this without any prior experience with video editing software so I give my full approval.

I agree with everyone of the reviews on Amazon. I have a brand new pc; 2.8 GHz, 1 g of RAM, 200+ g hard drive, so on... I mean you have read it all below, I do not have a Tandy 1000SL from 1988. I am computer savvy, that is until I got this software. Do not get me wrong, I love Studio 8...on paper. In my computer it has created frustration, headaches, 3 computer format procedures, and 3 long projects (taken about a month of work) LOST. As one of the reviewers mentioned, if you do get the program to work, it is great. I can do some really neat things with my home video editing. The tools are easy to learn, except for the special FX (transitions) editor, what is that about? Could not tell you because no documentation comes with it. Back to the great video editing, it will stay in your computer. At first I could not render to any format including (theoretically the simplest) back into the DV camera... Then finally I was able to render only to MPEG format, only to have it wiped from my computer during a format, because I could not burn to a DVD, CD, or anything else I tried. So as the saying goes, when you fail try, and try again.... I did, it rendered, but does not play on any DVD. So, after a year with this software, I have rendered to DVD only once (like the x-mas story, my gift is only about a year old as well, I feel you), only to have the DVD not detected by all but one DVD player in my entire family. To give you an idea, that is everyone I know with a DVD player from Rochester, NY to Ponce, PR. Only one DVD player can read this stupid DVD movie, and of course it is the DVD player at my house which is older than bread. I am only comforted in the fact that I did not pay any $ for this nightmare. As far as solutions are concerned....what solutions. Not even the technicians (if they can be called that), can explain what they did to fix the machine.... It (the computer) fixed itself (I got the first self-fixing computer on the market) so beat that. Would I recommend anyone to buy this product. Depends, if you have grandiose ideas, like I did when I got this; to share with your family (spread thin across the eastern border and Puerto Rico) every waking moment of your first child's life...then NO. But, if your idea is to store your movies on your computer, and show them from your computer this product is great (You will not be affected by any tech problems if you choose not render your movie).

PS- Yes it will crash, many, many more times than Studio 7. Sometimes just if the program is running while you are away for the computer. The only fix is to make sure that the program saves your projects automatically and often, that way when the inevitable and unfixable crash occurs you will not loose anything. Oh, by the way the really cool DVD menus...forget about them, will not render, only crash.