Pinnacle Studio 10 - Not worth it

[Jaysee]

I offer this posting as a resource for anyone considering buying Pinnacle Studio. I am aware now that this software has a reputation for instability. My experience is entirely consistent with this reputation

I bought Studio Version 10 (full version) to do basic editing. My PC is not crammed with many and various applications. I am not a trial software junkie. In my opinion I'm a conservative user and believe my PC set up is straight forward (relative to how complex PCs can be).

Studio 10 has been a disaster.
I installed "10" and spent hours building a friend's wedding project.
I got to the stage I needed to do some video cut & paste.. but the audio/video track locking buttons were missing on my installation (believe it or not)
An uninstall / reinstall eventually made this problem disappear.
But now the preview window stayed black & would not show video.
Another uninstall / reinstall eventually made this problem disappear.
But the SmartSound doesn't work (so I can't add backing music). This fault probably existed at first install though I didn't notice at the time.

Today my project is incomplete and I await the next reply (now overdue) from Pinnacle support.

The above is a summary.
The detail steps I went through to get this far involved downloading fixes from Pinnacle (regdelete), from Microsoft ("Windows Install Cleanup") and from Smartsound (New version of Quicktracks 3.0.2.7). I've installed then uninstalled the latest Studio patch (10.1.2150). I've also had to muck around looking for, backing up then deleting folders.
I went through the detail steps guided by various contacts with Pinnacle Support.

So (in reluctantly moderate language), my experience is that Pinnacle Studio Version 10 is a cr*p unstable product made worse by cr*p expensive Pinnacle Support.

My plan is to move on to Sony Vegas 6. Maybe someone will warn me if this will be a nightmare too.

[MJPollard]

About the only thing you'll have to worry about with Vegas 6 is drowning in all the things it can do. Seriously, I've been using Vegas since 4.0 -- after fighting with, of all things, Pinnacle Studio! -- and stability has never been an issue. It Just Works(tm).

[on30trainman]

I quit Pinnacle Studio at Version 9 not so much because I had stability problems with it or earlier versions but because they were always coming out with new fixes/ new versions - keeping up with the latest wasn't easy or cheap. Did have a major problem with Version 8 in that I could only install it in Safe mode - didn't like the fact that I was loading it on a different partition than Windows. Others had the same problem also. Most posts in their forums were complaints or rants. Bought Sony Vegas Movie Studio 4 with DVDAS 2 and it worked fine and did everything I wanted. There was one update in the year I used it. Just recently updated to the Version 6 Platinum and my experience has been the same - stable and functional. The Sony MS forum has much fewer posts than the Pinnacle ones, but are mostly requests for help on how to do something - none that say this software is a piece of crap. Some features are not implemented as straight forward as Pinnacle Studio but can be accomplished. The lack of AC3 audio support is a minus - the full version of Vegas has it.
Just my opinion