Pinnacle's Studio Products

[clockman]

I keep seeing Pinnacle get blasted for having a bad product for editing. I use, and have used Pinnacles program since there coming out with Studio 400, which will have to admit was a little buggy and hard to use. However, as they got more and more into the home editing product it has continually improved. I purchased their new Studio 7, had success with it, then went on to Studio 8, and now I just upgraded to Studio 9. Each of these programs have preformed flawless. I can use the programs just as they advertise. For those sitting on the fence of what to purchase, do what you think is best for your pocket $$ wise.
Stop and think, Pinnacle has sold thousands of their Studio editing software. The marjority of complaints are from unhappy users. You see very little from the ones that have no problems. They have nothing to complain about.
Why do the unhappy ones have problems? I think its two reasons, one the configuration of there computer, and the other, they don't read the Help feature in the program nor the How To book that came with the program. Now.........I'm ready for all the bashing ....... but would like to hear from more users that uses Studio and has no problems. Mine runs and edits flawless.

[alstatr]

Clockman,

Your asessment might be correct but I believe Pinnacle doesn't test their products very well. I used Pinnacle 7 & 8. About every week it would want me to upgrade to a newer version that was supposed to fix problems. If a product needs to be upgraded every week or so, that generally means they have not tested or they released it too early.

Having said that....

When I used Pinnacle 7 I loved it. But as I got into more complex projects P7 began to have more and more problems. I was editing a 15 min video from 4 or 5 DV tapes and it would crash all the time. I finally toughed through the crashes and ditched Pinnacle 7 and went out and bought Vegas 3 then upgraded to Vegas 4 + DVD.

I know it was not my computer that was the problem with Pinnacle 7. I have a 2.4 P4, 1GB, 80GB + 120GB, ATI AIW 9700, DVD RW, CD RW, DVD-Rom. It was close to top of the line when I bought Pinnacle 7. I could understand Pinnacle 7 working poorly on an underpowered machine but on a top of line machine? I lean more toward that its Pinnacle's fault.

But I do agree that Pinnacle is a great first video editor. I learned so much about video editing and Pinnacle made making small vidoes fun and easy. But as they got alittle longer and don't get me started on the DVD/VCD burning addition into Studio 8, Pinnacle seemed to work less and less how it was advertized.

Just my 2 cents...

[ajc53]

I think it is too hard for all-in-one software packages to be 100% compatible with the multitude of hardware devices, drivers, and operating system combinations.

And I don't think they do a very good job in testing and/or disclosing the combinations they work and don't work.

[BobK]

> marjority of complaints are from unhappy users. You see very little from the ones that have no problems. They have nothing to complain about.


Of course that's also true about other software. The difference is that Pinnacle has a lot more unhappy users.

There are many people who use Studio with no problems. But that doesn't change the fact that, based on the number of unhappy users vs the number of unhappy uses of other software, they tend to release a lot of software with too little testing and too many problems.

[tag]

.....Pinnacle has a lot more unhappy users.....

I think they just have a lot more users.........period. So, the only fair comparison would be the percentage of unhappy Studio users versus the percentage of unhappy users of competing s/w at the same price point.

I mean, you're certainly going to find that there are a LOT more unhappy Windows XP users than there are unhappy Studio (pick your version) users. It's a matter of the sheer number of users.

I am in NO WAY defending Pinnacle. I do use Studio and like the s/w but it can definitely get a bit flaky at times. I strongly suspect, however, that I'd be seeing roughly the same behavior with other, similarly-priced s/w (e.g. Screenblast, VideoFactory).

[MJPollard]

For those who use Studio without any problems, kudos to you. For everyone else, Studio is a grade-A nightmare. "Remove all extraneous software and just run Studio alone," "completely remove Pinnacle and re-install with the version X.Y.Z upgrade," and other such responses, are typical of Pinnacle technical support. Sorry, folks, but you shouldn't have to emascalate your system in order to run a piece of software.

(As a comparison, why is it that Sony's products -- Vegas, DVD Architect, Sound Forge, etc. -- do a far better job and have so many more features, yet don't require you to hack your Windows installation to death in order to use them properly? They Just Work(tm), which is the highest compliment you can give to a product.)

I'll admit that I still use Studio, but only for the simplest of tasks that don't tax my system or Studio's capabilities (such as creating credit scrawls that I then paste into Vegas projects). As soon as I get the hang of doing text screens in Vegas, however, I won't be able to remove Studio from my hard drive fast enough.

[tag]

Yet again, comparing a circa $75 consumer-level, all-in-one, video editing package to s/w costing $700-$800. A bit unreasonable, IMHO, considering you can buy a separate system on which to run Studio for the price difference between the two packages.

[MJPollard]

Yet again, comparing a circa $75 consumer-level, all-in-one, video editing package to s/w costing $700-$800. A bit unreasonable, IMHO, considering you can buy a separate system on which to run Studio for the price difference between the two packages.

I respectfully disagree. There is nothing unreasonable about comparing the quality and reliability of two pieces of software that, ultimately, are geared for a common task: editing video. The fact that one costs $70 and the other costs $700 is no excuse for the $70 program to be a bug- and problem-ridden piece of shit (IMO, and I speak from personal experience).

Does one have more features than the other? Sure it does; Vegas isn't aimed at the casual user. But does Studio's low price justify its poor track record and Pinnacle's lackluster support and quality control? I don't believe it does (and from what I've read to date, Studio isn't the only Pinnacle product to suffer these problems).

If you insist on a more equal comparison, feature-wise, perhaps a closer one would be to Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio (aka Sonic Foundry VideoFactory)? It's only $100, aimed at the same casual-user market as Studio, and is built on the Vegas core code. I rarely, if ever, hear about any problems with SMS, at least not to the alarming degree as I do with Studio...

[tag]

In your previous post you stated,

"why is it that Sony's products -- Vegas, DVD Architect, Sound Forge, etc. -- do a far better job and have so many more features, yet don't require you to hack your Windows installation to death in order to use them properly?"


Now, in your last post, you've limited your argument to "quality and reliability" and I can live with that. All s/w, whatever the cost, should be (at a minimum) of decent quality and reliable.

My primary problem with the earlier post was the query as to why products costing $700 "...do a far better job and have so many more features..." than one that costs $75. I mean, that should be self-evident, shouldn't it?

Regardless, for what I do (strictly limited to home video type stuff), Studio 9 fits my needs and has performed reasonably well, particularly given its price. Now, down the road, I'll probably buy the new version of TMPGEnc (XPress) and DVD Author (w/AC-3 plug-in) for the additional control those programs provide plus AC-3 support. But that will set me back a grand total of maybe $150.........I have no plans to shell out 700 bucks on s/w to edit home videos.

[tag]

Also, since you mentioned Screenblast, I'll add that I ran the trial version and found nothing problematic. I found it to be nowhere near as intuitive as Studio 9, however. Since I am one of those Studio users who haven't had the "grade-A nightmare" experience, I didn't see any reason to switch to Screenblast.

[DVDDave]

i have recently purchased Pinnacle Studio AV/DV PCI card that came with Studio 9. all i can say is that it performs flawless out of the box. even MY DVD works great with this card. maybe it all works so good is because i have a beefed up PC--see profile.

is VEGAS any better????

[Wayne Cusack]

What a timely thread . . .

I have just burned a disc using Pinnacle Studio 8 and the sound quality is poor, with noticeable but very brief, intermittent breaks. I logged on here to search for comments about that software.

I'm a newbie at burning DVDs. I have 2 programs available: Pinnacle Studio 8 (a throw-in with my ATI All-In-Wonder card) and the latest Roxio suite. I have very little experience with either of them - I have burned no more than 1/2 a dozen discs so far, and they all show some quality problems as I learn the ropes. I have tended to use the Pinnacle software for editing because I find it better than the Roxio suite for clipping off parts of frames. However, I find the quality sufficiently irritating that I am willing to try something else, so I have a couple of questions:

1. Are the quality problems I am experiencing typical of the complaints about Pinnacle?

2. Do any of you have suggestions for good software for editing and burning at the lower end of the price range - I don't mind buying something new, but I don't want to spend $700.00

[Redd]

Sorry, folks, but you shouldn't have to emascalate (emasculate) Sorry, I couldn’t resist correcting the spelling your system in order to run a piece of software.

True statement. But I've also been told to not only uninstall/reinstall But reformat my HD. This was not by Pinnacle, but by Ulead. MSP 6.5 is one of the NLE's that I use.

I also use Vegas 4 W/ DVDA1 and have upgraded to Vegas 5 and DVDA2 which is probably the Best NLE going...IMHO

I also used Studio 8 and also have Studio 9. I fall in the worked right out of the box category. Sure I use and love Vegas, and it is by far my favorite. But there’s something more about Studio. It's a fun program. I don't use it because I have to, but because it's fun...and works for me.
But editing is fun, that's why I do it...not to mention a little extra Denaro on the side.

[kisrum]

Studio 8 came with my ATI and I've kept it updated to 8.12. I authored one pretty nice vacation video, got cocky, and then began to figure out what so many are complaining about.

I haven't earned the right to write a treatise on this, but it seems reasonable to expect that software which is so commonly packaged with consumer grade video cards should not cause so many headaches in the sub-population which is most vulnerable and ill-prepared to deal with its effects, that is, wide-eyed newbies like myself.

I made peace with the glitches, like the menu screen that shuts down the program if you pass the cursor over a particular button (just don't go past there, save your file every third mouse click, etc. Or, the AV synch problem (don't edit anything over, say, 54 minutes, do your transitions, last, very carefully, do NOT alter the length of your transitions, etc)

But when I see it insist on taking a nice little 3.8 gb 352 x 480 resolution mpg2 file, no menu, no transitions, ready to make into a DVD, and then encoding it into a 12 gb behemoth, and then refusing to even save it to the hard drive so I can DVDShrink it, all in the interests of not confusing me, the beginner, then I just give up. Maybe some of this has been fixed in 9.0 but I don't intend to find out.

[rcguy]

I started with Studio 8 went on to Liquid Edition 5.5 and now I have Studio 9. Use all programs with no major problems. I have to be honest, I'm struggling with Liquid Edition's learning curve and have since joined a user group. I may have "Peter Principled Out" on Liquid Edition but will not give up.