Pinnacle Studio HD Ultimate v15 (PC)

I have used SONY Vegas, ADOBE Premier Elements and Pinnacle as form version 8 onwards and found version 15 to be the best of the lot. Admittedly, it does not have as many features as the others but I would think it has enough for the majority of family video makers to produce a presentable video that will become an interesting and almost professional looking video presentation.

One of the problems with all of the programs I have used in the past is program hang up and while this program is no exception, it does not hang up anywhere near frequently as the others did and is relatively stable. At the times it does hang-up, it has self-recovered to the point of the last edit and I managed to continue working with it until completion. Just try and not to enter too many commands while the program is processing the last set of instructions!

Another worthwhile feature I really do like is the program can be worked in a way that those of us who used to work with editing film can understand. Take razor blade, make your splice then cement together and all of this does not involve manoeuvring between menus and, as is the case of Vegas, into yet another program (SONY Architect).

Overall, if you do have a good spec PC, do not wish to be over enthusiastic with optical tricks/gimickery and need a relatively stable program and with not much training in navigation through menu bars, etc, I suggest that, based on my experience hitherto, you should give PINNACLE version 15 a try.

Please note that all of my commnets are given in the relative sense.

Good luck!

I recently purchased a new digital HD camcorder to record the family. I tried various video software packages but Pinnacle was head and shoulders above the rest. It was good to be able to test drive it for a month before committing. I have an iPAD which is great for showing videos to family and friends. Microsoft Movie Maker wouldn't let me anywhere near! Pinnacle seems to support all the formats. However I did find that my 3 year old computer was struggling a little. So, I first had to upgrade it with more disk (I put on a 1Tb disk which is great to store video and pictures). I then upgraded RAM from 2Gb to 6Gb. Because I was using Windows 7 32 bit it could only address 3Gb so then I upgraded to 64 bit (fortunately my computer was 64 bit compatible). Fired up with enthusiasm I also replaced the graphics card. This took some research but thanks to the web I tracked down a 1Gb graphics card that would fit my computer (or so I thought!). The problem with cards is the power supply required and the physical space required. It fits but only after some bending and pushing! In truth I haven't yet seen any great increase in throughput resulting from the graphics card. I think the key feature was the memory. The next step is to learn how to use Pinnacle. It is a sophisticated piece of software. Fortunately they have an on-line video training guide which I find very useful. Perhaps I am getting close to actually editing my holiday video and showing it off on my iPAD! It would be nice to have a "quick video wizard" to quickly arrange a short Movie. So, it will all work but it takes an investment in time as well as money.

I had a month's holiday in New Zealand earlier this year. I bought an HD camcorder, a high spec PC, above and beyond the spec that Pinnacle say you need to run Studio and a new HD TV to enjoy my handy work on. But I find that it's very slow and constantly stops responding. I've not yet managed to create the finished product. I've put about an hour's worth of video together and now I have to go back and add titles etc but the "scrubber" keeps defaulting to a single pont in the video and won't let me edit anything before it! Agh!!! I may end up giving up and waiting until some decent software becomes available. I check how much processor and RAM it's using and there's still plenty in reserve, it's just bad software.