Pinnacle Studio 16 Ultimate

Pinnacle Studio, long a video-editing enthusiast favorite, with 13 million customers, has been bounced around over the past couple of years in terms of ownership. After existing as a standalone company for 19 years, it was bought in 2005 by Avid, a force in professional audio and video production software, bought it and put out Avid Studio, a video editor that was supposed to lie between the pro and enthusiast tiers. When Avid decided it wanted out of the consumer market, Corel snapped up Pinnacle last year, restoring the name Pinnacle Studio to this more powerful product that's the topic of our evaluation here.

Corel is keeping Pinnacle a separate entity for now, with its own branding and website. It even seems to compete with Corel's own excellent VideoStudio line of video editing software. Let's see how the relaunched Pinnacle Studio can stand up against the likes of Adobe Premiere Elements and CyberLink PowerDirector.

Editions and Setup
The new application is available at three levels: the $59.95 Pinnacle Studio 16, which does offer 3D and HD editing and 1500 effects, but limits you to just 3 audio+video tracks and doesn't allow keyframe timing or green screen chroma keying; the $99.95 Pinnacle Studio 16 Plus, which removes those limitations and adds 300 more effects and Blu-ray disc authoring; and the $129.95 Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, which ups the effect total to 2,000 (including pro-quality Red Giant effects) and throws in an actual green screen.

The Pinnacle software runs on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista (SP2)?no XP or Mac?but there is a $12.99 Pinnacle Studio for iPad app that can round-trip your video projects. That app will be the subject of a separate review. To really take advantage of the PC program, you'll need a computer with at least 2GB RAM and at least an Intel Core Duo 1.8 GHz, Core i3 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz CPU. You'll also want a decent graphics card that supports DirectX 9 with Pixel Shader 3.0 support. I tested on a 3.4GHz AMD Phenom II X4-based PC with 4GB of RAM.

Interface
For anyone who used Avid Studio, Pinnacle Studio will look strikingly familiar, right down to the reel icon at top left. Despite this superficial similarity, though, the company has implements over 300 workflow improvements and built the whole thing on top of a much faster code base that includes more hardware acceleration. The same main app modes remain, too?Import, Library, Movie, Disc, and Export. You even see the same Welcome dialog on first run offering a guided tour and initial settings such as which folders to watch for new media. It's a well-designed interface with a dark gray tone that's easy on the eyes.

It's also logically laid out; similar to most NLE apps, your source content?clips, images, sound files?are in a top-left panel. To the right of that is your video preview window, and across the bottom are your timeline tracks. All the panels are resizable, but they can't be undocked, the way Sony Movie Studio allows. The Preview window can be popped out to full screen or split into a side-by-side layout. Navigating the timeline is easy enough, but I'd like to see more (or any) use of the mouse wheel to move back and forth and to shrink and expand its timeframe.

All media organization is done inside the main app?there's no need for a separate app like Premiere Element's Organizer. The Library mode shows media and effects in groups separated by dark gray dividers, and it lets you search its contents and filter the view by star ratings or tags. You can group items into Collection, which lets you work like a pro, keeping all the clips effects, and other assets for a project together.

Import and Organize
Pinnacle Studio can handle most any video file type you throw at it, including MPEG-1/-2/-4, WMV, QuickTime, and MKV. A new trick is that it can import from the Cloud, in this case from the popular Box web service. You can also import from an attached camcorder, including AVCHD, DV, HDV, or Digital8 models. Capturing from analog sources is possible if you have Pinnacle or Dazzle video hardware. The software recognizes and imports 3D video clips and still photos, too. But one thing not yet supported by Pinnacle Studio is the new Ultra HD 4K format, which PowerDirector can handle.

Webcam import is also an option, with an excellent stop-motion importer tool, similar to that in Corel's VideoStudio application. The stop motion tool Scene detection during import can divide your clips by sudden changes or by time increments.

After an import, you're taken to a new tab showing just the clips from this last import?a helpful touch. Pinnacle doesn't offer Premiere Elements' ability to analyze the imported footage for faces, brightness issues or shakiness. But you can apply tags and ratings, just as with most photo software, to help organize and retrieve relevant media later.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/7BzChu8RLB8/0,2817,2382573,00.asp

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