Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 (PC)

have recently bought studio 11 as have had 9 and 10 previously and not really much improvement, what i didnt like is the lack of video effects and after splashing out £65 on them they were very amaturish in finish and were no way as sharp as the pro type effects, i know these pro systems can cost thousands but really not happy with it as it takes massive resources and a long time to get results, as for real time playback whilst editing it is very jerky and am unable to really see what you have created until you have written the finished file or dvd.

To be honest you really really have to have a top notch pc to do anything in high defenition, i have a p4 3.2 ghz, 1gig of ram and plenty of gigs of hdd with xp pro and is very slow and annoying to get good results within hours.They really do mean home video of the simplest type.

Not that i would not reccommend this software but after splashing out nearly £3500 on a sony high def camcorder this is not the be all and end all.Get ready for this to cost you an arm and a leg if you want any thing extra than editing software as even wipes, fades and fonts cost you EXTRA.

A real money spinner for them and a big let down for the video editing beginer.

I have been using Pinnacle's Studio line since Studio 6. In that time I have also used Final Cut, Sony Vegas and of course Windows Movie Maker and a few other less well known packages.

Pinnacle have had a very chequered history with their products. The story has always been roughly the same: out comes Studio something (6,7,8,9,10 or 11), people buy it and discover that its crap - frequent crashes, many bugs. Then they issue a patch - it gets better, then another patch - better still. Finally (round about the seventh or eigth patch) the product is stable, pretty well bug free and the rich functionality, extremely intuitive interface and good rendering quality can finally be appreciated. Everyone is overjoyed with the product until they bring out the next version and the quality goes back to rubbish again and we all have to wait till it is patched back up to an acceptable level. In short, they issue products before they are ready and treat their customers like unpaid beta testers.

Having said that though the important thing is that once you have the latest patched version of the product you have a damned good NLE which compares excellently with the competition and is a darned sight cheaper.

So the best buying policy is: check on Pinnacle's website what the patch level is for Studio 11 and while you are at it check out their support forum to see if customers have reached the overjoyed stage yet or are still finding bugs. If things look OK then buy this product, if not then find a cheap copy of Studio 10 and patch it (10.8 was I think the last). Being a high patched version it will be stable and bug/crash free and being non-current will be available really cheaply (about 12GBP?)

Studio 10.8 is particularly good - it handles HD, 16:9 PAL screen format and chromakey and lumakey compositing as well as multiple audio tracks, precise L. T and J editing, a wide range of transitions and special effects, DVD indexing and burning. It is also very easy to use and renders in the background. All in all its an excellent tool and you should be able to get it at much less than its original retail price. I dont think it works with Vista though.

I previously had Studio Plus 9.4 which was running okay'ish on my old computer, but not at all well when I brought a new one.
My computer is running XP home. Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. 2GB Corsair XMS2 Ram. 2 Sata HDD's. So I decided to treat myself to the new Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus. I dearly wish I hadn't! I have never been able to use it. I couldn't even import previously Studio edited DVD's into it, let alone edit and burn a disc.
It has caused both my DVD ROM and DVD RW drives not to be recognised in MY Computer, despite them being shown in the device manager.
In sheer frustration I uninstalled the software and both my drives then reinstalled both the drives. Now both my drives are working on a go slow. For several days now I've been trying to solve this problem. Pinnacle have still yet to e mail me back.
If anyone out there is even thinking of buying this software please DON'T.
This software has caused me so much stress and I am still without working DVD drives.
I did try to submit this without a star rating. IT DOES NOT EVEN DESERVE ONE STAR! I just hope it has not permanently damaged my new PC!!!!