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From:Pinnacle Systems
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#321 |
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 Excellent value for the money, 2008-08-28
About fifty years ago I dreamed of becoming a film maker. Things weren't like they are today with hundreds of universities and thousands of elementary and high schools offering courses in film and video. Opportunities fell into three major areas: TV commericals, feature films and non-commercial films for training, teaching, fundraising and the like. The latter was the easiest to get into.
The basic tool was the Arriflex 16mm camera. Very expensive, so you rented one. And the lights. And the Movieola for editing. Production for even simple films was an involved process. And everything was expensive.
Today, of course, a high quality video camera costs a couple of thousand dollars, but cameras perfectly aqdequate for most purposes are only a few hundred. The biggest revolution, in my opinion, has been in editing. Way back when (it is truly painful to so old, you mean almost 50 years ago), even the simplest dissolve from one shot to another had to be done in the lab - the very expensive lab.
Now you plunk down about a hundred follars or so and you get a video editing package like Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12. Pinnacle Systems, by the way, is owned by Avid Technology, the granddaddy of digital video editing.
Ultimate is a very nice package for the beginning through mid-amateur videomaker. It is limited to two video tracks which simply aren't enough for truly serious production work, but more than adequate for many, if not close to most, ordinary purposes.
The package is rich with features. It will handle most widely used video formats, with the glaring exception of Quicktime. It handles Blu-Ray and AVCHD. The program has a plethora of tools: color correction, video and sound effects, a rather cool background music generator called Scorefitter, a kind of gimmicky Montage" themes tool which can be thought of as sort of pre-packaged look for your video, Chromakey, titling software, DVD menu creation and a whole bunch more. Frankly if you want a detailed description of everything included with this package, a visit to the Pinnacle website would be well considered.
There is a lot of substance to this package, much of it supplied by well known third-party programs like boris Graffiti (titling), Magic Bullet Looks Studio, proDAD VitaSAcene, (the last two are video effects, programs)and SmartSound music and sound effects. Don't get too excited, though: most of these packages are more like samplers. Still there's enough there to satisfy a lot of needs.
One irritating feature of Ultimate is that Pinnacle wants to sell you things: training videos, more special effects packages - and the third-party suppliers want to sell you things as well. The frightening thing is that after you've used Ultimate for a while, you may want to buy them!
Output to DVD, video files of various formats and the now ubiquitous YouTube is simple and dependable.
Ultimate is a fairly easy program to use with a relatively clean interface which is guided by a drag-and-drop philosophy. Still, reading the manual is highly recommended if you want to get the most from Studio Ultimate.
All in all, this is an excellent package for the beginner use up to the point where they might be considered a moderately advanced amateur. It certainly is not competition for Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, but most people don't need anywhere near that kind of power. It is, in my opinion, more straightforward and easier to use than Adobe Premiere Elements.
I have it running on an Intel Core 2 based machine with With Windows XP Pro SP2 and only 2 GB of RAM. So far it hasn't crashed once and responsiveness has been more than adequate.
Overall, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 is a very nice package and packs a lot of power for the price. Fairly easy to use and stable. It is certainly not competition for top-tier video editing programa, but for most people who just want to make their home videos look better or learn production techniques, it will do very nicely.
Jerry
 All-around prosumer/consumer video package, 2008-08-28
First, like several other reviews I am a prosumer photographer but I only dabble with video. I've been recording HD video with my Canon TX1 for close to a year now and thought Pinnacle Studio Ultimate would be a good compliment for me.
Installation was a snap with several customization options. It was the typical install without much fuss. I have used the software on both my Windows Vista machine and a Windows XP virtual machine. After a good bit of use, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate v12 has performed well on both setups.
I have been impressed by the number of templates and themes that are available in the software for menus, text, graphics, etc. Several of the features and plug-ins (such as Magic Bullet and Graffiti) are very neat but seem to be limited in overall capabilities. Coming from an amateur video guy that may not mean much, but I felt limited in some of the options. It was either take the default or deal with it. I say that with caution, as I also felt that the software package allowed me to create very nice videos with just a few clicks. Perfect for the consumer or amateur, but likely limiting for the professional.
The software ran well on my machine (but I do have a PC stocked with plenty of hard drive space, RAM, and CPU power). The export options were varied with everything to web publishing to mobile devices. Luckily I do not have any experience with Pinnacle's customer service as it appears that many customers have had complaints.
At the end of the day I consider this to be a good purchase. Are there better packages out there? Absolutely. However, for a consumer that dabbles in video I find this to be an excellent choice for the price. I may not be able to create superior videos, but Pinnacle Studio Ultimate does offer me the ability to kick things up a notch.
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
Great program for consumers--not for pros!, 2008-08-21
Let's put our expectations in check. This is not a professional video editing program. Pinnacle Studio 12 is an amazingly easy to master, simple to use program aimed for consumer video editors. As I noted in my USA TODAY video review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYZYjRLpvk&feature=user) it's a program to learn with; eventually you will want to step up to a more advanced program like Sony Vegas or Final Cut. Thanks to a cool new feature, called "Montage," you can create a "video wall," of multiple images--a great way to open your show. I demonstrate on the USA TODAY Talking Tech web video show.
Ridiculously good value, 2008-08-13
I'm not sure what some of the previous reviewers are talking about - my experience has been nothing short of terrific. I'm also a pro photographer and semi-pro videographer, and typically use Vegas Pro and Premiere. But I was having a hard time with my AVCHD files so I decided to try this. Honestly, I'm blown away. It handles my AVCHD files with no problems (I'm on a 2.4ghz Q6600, 8gb ram, Vista x64 machine).
The fact that Magic Bullet Looks is included is insane - that program costs $400 on it's own.
I've only been at it for a few hours, but if you have an AVCHD camcorder take the other reviews with a grain of salt and try it for yourself.
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
Works reasonably well with AVCHD., 2008-08-06
I set about evaluating video editing software after getting a Canon HF100 HD camcorder (excellent, by the way). I spent a lot of time with CyberLink's PowerDirector 7 as a free 30 day download. I found it excellent in every way except its proclivity for making coasters out of expensive, dual-layer DVDs, and it did a lot of that. Everything was great until I tried to actually burn a DVD. Since that just wasn't working out, I turned to my second choice: Studio 12.
First of all, they don't offer an evaluation download, and by that fact alone I would not have even considered it if PowerDirector 7 had worked. After reading the reviews, I decided to take a chance and actually buy it without evaluating it first. Definitely a risk, and Pinnacle ought to be slapped for making people do that with software this expensive.
Anyway, I was able to bring in to my project the HiDef (.dts) clips I'd downloaded from the memory card in the camera. I didn't even try to see if Studio 12 would recognize the camera connected via USB. I found editing reasonably easy, although I missed the multi-trim feature in PowerDirectory. Once I took the time to actually read the manual (PDF file), things went pretty well, although I liked the simplicity of PowerDirector better, and more intuitive. So when it finally came time to render and produce a DVD, I was anxious to see if this actually would work under Vista. PowerDirector would crash almost every time during the burning process. An important feature in Studio 12 that PowerDirector lacks (apparently) is the ability to create a true image file that can later be used directly in the tool to burn a DVD. PowerDirector will save a series of files in a directory of your choice, but it can't burn a DVD directly from them, at least not on my computer. Studio 12 was able to create both a standard DVD of the HD content (not in HD, of course), as well as a AVCHD disc of true HD content (menus don't work in this format, but you get real HD quality). Both products support burning to true Blu-Ray, but the discs are too expensive to waste if anything goes wrong.
Without going to a lot of detail about how to do things in either of these products, here's what I would advise:
Download CyberLink's PowerDirector 7 and give it a try. I liked every thing about it better EXCEPT when it came time to burn a DVD. I thought the interface was more intuitive, easier to use, and at least as powerful as Studio 12. If you're able to burn DVDs successfully with it every time, then go with it.
If, however, you have trouble creating DVDs due to program crashes (and they were frequent), take a chance and buy Studio 12. I have issues with being nickel and dimed to death to unlock stuff, and installation took forever, but in the end, I got functional DVDs with regular and HiDef content that work on my Blu-Ray player, and I could burn new copies from the image files created without re-rendering. I should mention that I did not attempt all the things mentioned in other reviews, so I can't vouch for whether they work or not. If you don't like it, well, good luck getting your money back. There are lots of cheaper packages out there if you don't need HD capability.
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