Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio 7 Professional

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

The software has great potential, but doesn't work on my system or that of many others.

In my case, Studio 7 allows me to import video, edit it, add transitions and music, then won't let me render it. In other words, I can't create a final product, so it's useless.

If you check out the support board on the Pinnacle website, you'll see that many others are having similar or equally severe problems. I would not purchase this product unless you knew in advance that it would work on your system.

I use this product to edit digital home videos. It has good functions to work with scenes, add sounds, music etc. and controls my Canon camera without problems.
What I do not like is the quality of the encoders. Rendering movies to mpeg2 (and burning it to SVCD later) shows artifacts and lower quality than you get with other freeware encoders. Here Pinnacle has to improve. Beside that it is a good product - installation and operation went well for me without crashes so far.
Be sure to get enough memory and diskspace though - I now run with 384 MB and 100 GB - and disable all other processes on your system not to lose frames when capturing or writing back to your camera.

I installed the included firewire card in no time. The software is incredibly easy to use. The output has been awesome. I bought it because it was PC Mag's Editor's Choice (9/01). I use the streaming function quite often to post the latest video up on my site for the family to view. I use it with Sony's DCR-PC9 Digital Video Camera and they work flawlessly. The only negative for me is that I wish it allowed burning DVD's or Video CD's - automatically anyway - It looks like I need to buy Pinnacle Express ... to do that.

I got Studio 7 when it first came out. I liked the product very much but it could not write back to my miniDV camera without numerous drop outs. Pinnacle tech support suggested changing IRQs, move cards around, update drivers, and more. All this was very time consuming and did not work so I gave up on the product. I recently tried it again and update to 7.07.1 which is free and was not available when I had all my problems. I'm now able to write back to my camera. I looked at the bugs that were fixed with this patch and one of them is "Video Data rate for Make Tape is fixed". I'm happy they fixed the problem but upset that I wasted all my time before they fixed it.

In general, I found the user interface very friendly and easy to use. I like the advance sound library that comes with it. You can select background music from a list and make the time any length and sounds like the music was composed at that length. You can also add your own music form CDs, MP3, and wave files.

The additional advance features are also somewhat easy once you understand the basics. If you get this product, I would recommend you check for updates using the update feature in the help menu. I would also recommend downloading the free 30 trial version from their web site to verify it works on your system before purchasing it.

I was really surprised to see the fairly negative reviews above, as my experience has been quite good. This program does what it is supposed to do very well. The interface is very intuitive, and therefore user friendly. My computer is not specifically designed for video, and in fact the video processor is a chip on the motherboard. It is 900Mhz with 374 MB memory.

Capture for me has been straight forward, and trouble free. The program also keeps very good records of what you are doing as you capture, edit, and process, so it you can easily reproduce your work from a print out of the timeline. This was necessary due to the one "glitch" I encountered: You can not paste new video into a project already under construction, into the middle of video already on the timeline. You can only add scenes to the end of the timeline already constructed. This is not a glitch; the program is simply not designed to do this, so be sure you build projects in a linear fashion, and do not plan to paste.

One other negative: Pinnacle's Customer Support folks are not fast, or especially thorough. I once wrote them: "It's a good thing the program works so well, as your support leaves a lot to be desired".

On top of working pretty darn reliably for me, the program includes features which I find amazing at this price point: 3D fades and titles, slow motion, adjustment of hue, color intensity, brightness and contrast, and a really neat program which will generate music in many different styles to exactly match the length of your video. And I'm picky about music (audiophile type) and yet the music is not cheasy, it is quite tollerable.

And I haven't mentioned ability to output as MGEG 1, Real Video, output to tape, etc.

Frankly, I think it is a great program for beginners, or even experienced users, and it would be especially good for use in schools.

Since so many others have had problems, maybe a trial copy to try out on your computer/video equipment is the best way to go.

Having never used any type of editing software before, Studio 7 was very easy to use. I made an incredible video of my honeymoon (made my wife cry!) using basically all the features (transitions, CD music, short-audio clips, frame speed-ups and slow-motion, black and white and sepia) without even looking at the manual. Everything is very intuitive and simple. The software did everything my imagination could come up with.

I did have one problem transferring back to tape (as many reviewers have complained about). My audio was not synched with my video on the tape. However, after shutting down all background programs (anti-virus, firewall, etc.), defragmenting my C-drive, and following the instructions in the manual to optimize computer performance, I was able to transfer perfectly back to my tape. I run a 1.0 Ghz AMD Athlon, with 128mb of memory and a 40GB hard-drive. I do not have any sort of fancy video driver other than what came standard with my Gateway computer.

Okay, this is the first REAL video editing software I've used. Till now I've only played around with the free software that came with windows XP and the free software that came with my Belkin firewire PCI card. The polished interface of the timeline view is beautiful. It's intuitive to work with, but the 284 page booklet that comes with the software is a very valuable resource. Output is to either DV tape (unlike a previous reviewer, I had no problems creating a tape), AVI files or MPEG files. To make a DVD, you'll need Pinnacle Express.

The smart capture feature is far better than any other product I reviewed, including Ulead media Studio Pro 6.5 and Adobe Premier 6.0. All video clips are placed in an edit window for selection and inclusion in your video. Impressive titles and transitions can be readily generated. Ripping audio from a CD into your production is a snap. Other programs will only insert audi tracks already saved in wav or anothe pc compatible audio format. I found the output quality to be identical to the original. Another reviewer complained of poor output to SVideo. If you want quality video you need to burn a DVD; SVideo is nowhere near the quality of DVD. Alternatively, you can copy a MPEG2 file to a CD and view it with Windows Media Player. I suppose output to tape would also produce good results.

Oh it looks good right up the point you begin to edit a long film, then the trouble begins. Fades cause sound to disappear, then you lose sound all across the film. There a loads of folks talking about this on the Pinnacle boards, but no confirmation from them that there is a fix or that the problem exists. And, guess what, once this bug strikes your rendering blows up. I am seeing the same issues with 8 on the boards. Support is a distant rumour. Great interface, poor execution of basic functionality. Sorry I wasted my time.

This software has garnered some great reviews, however...
the installation routine crashed 3 times before I was successfully able to install the software. Then, it ran a diagnostic on my system and concluded my hard drive's read rate wasn't fast enough so the software couldn't work. I believe the minimum requirement was 7000 units of whatever.

It's only recommendations: get a new hard drive or PC! My PC is only 18 months old, a P4 with plenty of adequate resources.

To make matters worse, the software is rarely returnable once opened. So, make sure you know about the required resources and if your PC is equipped before opening the box.