Pinnacle S9 in Feb04

[jwedge]

Got email today with new features and upgrade price:

Studio 9 Upgrade - $69.99 $59.99 40% off SRP

What's New in Studio 9?
One-Click Movie Making. Create a movie in seconds with SmartMovie™. Simply choose both a video and a music track, pick a preset movie style and let Studio 9 instantly create an amazing movie that matches the beat of the background music.

Video Plug-in Support. Includes video filters that add cool special effects to your footage. Plug-in effects include fade in/fade out (attack, sustain, decay keyframing). More filters to be made available through the Pinnacle Premium Pack (see upgrade bundle below) and 3rd party developers.

Video Enhancement and Restoration. Includes image stabilization, automatic color correction and analog cleaner.

VST Audio Plug-in support. Includes noise reduction, graphic equalizer, Grungelizer, Karaoke Vocal Remover, Reverb and Leveler

Audio Effects. Includes audio noise removal, stereo panning, surround sound panning.

Home Cinema Quality Movie Making. Capture and edit 16x9 widescreen video and create stunning surround sound soundtracks.
60 new Alpha Magic transitions...and much much more!

THE $1M QUESTION MOST PEOPLE WILL HAVE IS IF S9 IS REALLY READY, i.e. BUG FREE. S8 ONLY WORKED FOR ME AFTER 3RD PATCH CAME OUT.

[BobK]

Studio 8 never really worked for me- and I tried everything from version 8.4 to 8.10.4. Does okay for video CDs, but DVDs are about a 1 in 10 chance of making the disk without a hang up (usually a hang up occuring after it's wasted 4-5 hours encoding).

I might buy Studio 9- if I can get a trial version first. Or, if it gets good reviews then I might buy an upgrade. If it works as well as Studio 8 then I can always dispute the charge and get a refund from my credit card company- had to do that with Instant Copy 8 after sending 6 emails asking for help and never hearing back from Pinnacle.

[bobinga]

I use version 7 and find it very stable.
I love the ease in editing

[beneuto]

Hope I can upgrade from 7 to 9. Been thinking about getting 8 but was put off by the numerous bad comments and never got the trial CD I asked for.

Personally 7 works fine except for an annoying habit of cutting off the last 5 seconds after rendering. Hope 9 has some more schmick transitions standard like some of the other tools around.

[curryman]

still using studio 7.11, tried 7.13 patch and studio 8 and both gave me alot of hangups.
i'll stick with 7.11 works a treat everytime on my setup and use tsunami for encoding and authoring - the resulting discs work on everything I tried.
UNLESS! and I stress unless version 9 gets good reviews then maybe i could be persuaded to part with my wife's clothes allowance :P

[MJPollard]

After the huge disappointment that was Studio 8, I switched gears to Sony's (formerly Sonic Foundry's) Vegas 4.0 and haven't looked back. Pinnacle may end up making a ton of money on Studio 9, but my money won't be part of it. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; yadda yadda yadda.

[hudsonf]

I'm not really happy with version 7 or 8. I might try version 9 if I see good comments about it. Vegas 4.0 looks like a good program but my wife would be very upset if I spent that kind of money on a single program.

[MJPollard]

I'm not really happy with version 7 or 8. I might try version 9 if I see good comments about it. Vegas 4.0 looks like a good program but my wife would be very upset if I spent that kind of money on a single program.

True, it costs an arm and a leg. I probably wouldn't have sprung for it myself if I hadn't received SoFo's "you're a great customer, here's a fantastic introductory deal" offer for the Vegas+DVD combo. IMHO, it's one of the best investments I've ever made, and I've not even scratched the surface of what Vegas can do. I'm certainly not shedding any tears over dumping Pinancle...

[hudsonf]

If I start saving now maybe I could buy it for myself when my birthday comes around.

[dun4cheap]

Well I still waiting for them to get back to me regarding AC3. If it has AC3 for DVD I will do the upgrade. The details say surround sound but I believe its Pro Logic LPCM which is useless in my book. As for Vegas Video, you can buy Sony Movie Box which is a lite version of vegas for $99. But studio has all the eye candy for the price, I know its buggy but it has a lot of capabilities for the $$$