Product Description

Pinnacle Studio Plus version 11 helps you harness the power of thelatest technologies -HD Windows Vista Web Publishing and more -without compromising ease of use. Enjoy a full range of automatedand advanced features to meet all your video editing ne

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1403 in Software
• Brand: Pinnacle Systems
• Released on: 2007-06-08
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Dimensions: 1.50 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Pinnacle Studio Plus is the most advanced and powerful home video editing solution available today. Studio Plus combines the legendary ease of use of Studio's intuitive three-step movie creation process with the power and quality of the Pinnacle Liquid Engine to quickly and reliably capture all of your media from popular consumer electronic devices including the newest top quality HDV cameras and even video phones. Studio Plus provides users with the ultimate control with the addition of 100's of breathtaking user-defined keyframeable real-time effects, like HD Pan & Zoom, picture and picture and Chroma Key. Effortlessly, add music and titles and you are quickly creating blockbuster home movies for sharing on DVD, the Web and beyond.

Customer Reviews

Intuitive, powerful but not perfect
AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 5000+ processor, 2 GB memory, dual 200 GB hard drives, Nvidia 7950 GX2 dual graphics cards with 1GB memory on each.
Windows XP pro with current upgrades.

I have used Pinnacle Studio software since 1996, editing from Hi-8, digital 8, mini DV and now HDV camcorders. The software has exceeded the facilities I need for domestic editing, is not over-complex to use considering its potential, and has generally been stable. I had some problems with early releases of 9 and 10 before patches were issued; 11 has worked for me without glitches or slowing down on long projects, with the exception that the small monitor display, whilst editing HD, is sometimes jerky. The finished product can be seen full screen with no jerkiness, and the final output rendered to camcorder tape or MPEG 2 file is fine. The maximum length of project I have made has been 40 minutes.

I have one complaint - Pinnacle's assertion that HD DVDs could be burnt on ordinary DVD media has been untrue for me. I paid online for the extra facility to Studio 10 plus, having seen that Pinnacle's list of compatible HD DVD players specifically includes Toshiba's HD-E1. I have burnt supposed HD DVDs on DVD-R and DVD-RW media, both from my Sony DCR-HC3 camcorder and from HD slideshows, with and without menus. None of my attempts have played on the Toshiba HD-E1, which simply displays an error message that the disc is not in any playable format. Interestingly, although in two PCs I have tried, XP does not recognise the discs in a normal DVD rewriter, WinDVD 8 will play them and its info button shows that they are playing at 1920X1080. (This is also apparent by the quality of the playback).

I tried Pinnacle's technical help, but was very disappointed in their feedback which merely pointed me towards irrelevant FAQs.

I would be delighted if any Pinnacle representative could tell me where I am going wrong. If this issue were resolved I would have to award the software 5 stars.


UPDATE JUNE 23rd 2007

Pinnacle have contacted me and explained that HD DVD players sold in the UK are designed for US standards only. For US users then, a firm recommendation for Studio 11; for UK users, still recommended but don't bother with HD DVDs yet.

studio 11
have recently bought studio 11 as have had 9 and 10 previously and not really much improvement, what i didnt like is the lack of video effects and after splashing out £65 on them they were very amaturish in finish and were no way as sharp as the pro type effects, i know these pro systems can cost thousands but really not happy with it as it takes massive resources and a long time to get results, as for real time playback whilst editing it is very jerky and am unable to really see what you have created until you have written the finished file or dvd.
To be honest you really really have to have a top notch pc to do anything in high defenition, i have a p4 3.2 ghz, 1gig of ram and plenty of gigs of hdd with xp pro and is very slow and annoying to get good results within hours.They really do mean home video of the simplest type.
Not that i would not reccommend this software but after splashing out nearly £3500 on a sony high def camcorder this is not the be all and end all.Get ready for this to cost you an arm and a leg if you want any thing extra than editing software as even wipes, fades and fonts cost you EXTRA.
A real money spinner for them and a big let down for the video editing beginer.

Only good when patched
I have been using Pinnacle's Studio line since Studio 6. In that time I have also used Final Cut, Sony Vegas and of course Windows Movie Maker and a few other less well known packages.

Pinnacle have had a very chequered history with their products. The story has always been roughly the same: out comes Studio something (6,7,8,9,10 or 11), people buy it and discover that its crap - frequent crashes, many bugs. Then they issue a patch - it gets better, then another patch - better still. Finally (round about the seventh or eigth patch) the product is stable, pretty well bug free and the rich functionality, extremely intuitive interface and good rendering quality can finally be appreciated. Everyone is overjoyed with the product until they bring out the next version and the quality goes back to rubbish again and we all have to wait till it is patched back up to an acceptable level. In short, they issue products before they are ready and treat their customers like unpaid beta testers.

Having said that though the important thing is that once you have the latest patched version of the product you have a damned good NLE which compares excellently with the competition and is a darned sight cheaper.

So the best buying policy is: check on Pinnacle's website what the patch level is for Studio 11 and while you are at it check out their support forum to see if customers have reached the overjoyed stage yet or are still finding bugs. If things look OK then buy this product, if not then find a cheap copy of Studio 10 and patch it (10.8 was I think the last). Being a high patched version it will be stable and bug/crash free and being non-current will be available really cheaply (about 12GBP?)

Studio 10.8 is particularly good - it handles HD, 16:9 PAL screen format and chromakey and lumakey compositing as well as multiple audio tracks, precise L. T and J editing, a wide range of transitions and special effects, DVD indexing and burning. It is also very easy to use and renders in the background. All in all its an excellent tool and you should be able to get it at much less than its original retail price. I dont think it works with Vista though.