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| Pinnacle Studio Version 10 review |
| The latest in the long line of Studio consumer video editing products is claimed to be more stable - with new features and support for more formats, including HDV. But does it work? |
 The release of the latest in a long line of Pinnacle's Studio video capture, editing and authoring products came hot on the heels of the announcement of the company's acquisition by Avid Technology, the market leader in film, television and audio industry-standard digital editing tools. Many existing users of Studio versions 8 and 9 anticipated a significant improvement in applications that were, for many, unstable and problematic even if they did find favour with beginners as the most popular consumer-orientated digital video capture and editing tool. According to Pinnacle, its Studio product line enjoys almost 75% of the market for entry-level video editing software worldwide. So, with some improvements to stability and added support for the newer HDV consumer high-definition formats, among others, does the new Studio 10 range deliver on the promises made of it by Pinnacle?
What's in this Review?
This is the most extensive and thorough review ever undertaken by SimplyDV. You'll find a section devoted to each of the following topics:
Pinnacle Studio 10.1: What's in the package?
Studio 10 comes with three package options: Studio, Studio Plus and Studio Mediasuite. Studio 10 offers support for newer formats, such as SD solid-state and Hard Disk Drive camcorders that produce MPEG2 .MOB format files. Studio can also import and export DiVX files, among others. Real-time video effects with preview (depending on the computer's hardware) is now possible, as is background saving of work in progress. The basic Studio 10 package also provides Instant Transfer to DVD in a direct pass-through operation, with Pinnacle Media Manager giving users the opportunity to manage all their media files in one simple standalone interface.
Studio Plus and Studio Mediasuite offer HDV (High Definition Video) support; connect any current HDV camcorder via FireWire and import, edit and share HDV 1080i format files with these two packages. It's also possible to capture and edit in traditional 4:3 or widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio pictures and full 5.1 Digital Surround Sound. It's possible to capture and edit in all the popular video file formats, in addition to performing keyframeable real-time effects with Preview. Lots of professional-style video (including overlay) effects are possible, as is the very useful facility of being able to perform pans and zooms on moving and still image sequences in either standard definition or HDV. Different fuile formats, such as AVI and MPEG2, can be mixed and matched on the timeline, too. As with the basic Studio option, all utilities for burning and sharing are included, such as Instant DVD Recording (which comrpresses a DVD-compatible MPEG2 file on the fly as the material is playing in from the source and then burns to disk simultaneously - just like a standalone DVD recorder does).
Additional hardware options
For users requiring the hardware necessary to connect either a FireWire-based input (eg: DV, HDV, Digital8 or A-D converter box) to their computer as a means of capturing footage, Studio 500 PCI version 10 bundles a PCI analogue and FireWire digital input-output card for use with the software. For users requiring USB 2.0 rather than FireWire, Studio 500 USB version 10 provides a USB i/o breakout box with the software. Studio 700 PCI version 10 and Studio 700 USB version 10 respectively add increased analogue i/o capabilities.
For more detailed information on the package options, see Pinnacle's website.
About this review
Our review is of Pinnacle Studio Plus 10, which has been undertaken after three days of near-constant use on a range of capture, editing and output tasks. It should be pointed out at the outset that only SD (standard definition) video editing has been undertaken, and mostly (though not exclusively) in 4:3 aspect ratio. All operations have been undertaken in PAL. At no time have we attempted to capture or edit material in HDV, though this will be undertaken in the near future. Please note also that we've installed the software onto a typical consumer Windows XP hardware configuration whose RAM, Processor, Hard Disk storage, Sound Card and Graphics/Video card configuration are fairly typical of that owned by readers of this review. To review the package on a high-powered, tweaked-up system would be folly. In all, we've tried to perform a set of "real world" tasks of the sort for which Pinnacle Studio 10 is aimed.
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