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Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great Improvements and Intuitive controls that work well."
Pros: Easy to operate in, great user interface, Full support for all native HD formats, Lots of creative option with countless more available.
Cons: Resource hog, Program sometimes gives you that "...she's gonna crash!" sensation with long delays, Rudimentary video capture controls
Summary: This program is great for anyone serious about doing their own video editing or capturing and exporting video to and from just about anything with an RCA jack. This version (11) has the same familiar make up as the others but the interface works a lot better and things seem to respond faster without that "thinking 'bout it" delay as before. One great new feature is the scaleable workspace which lets you vary via slider the screen-to-controls ratio. That way you can fit more film reel or timeline on the monitor to do your editing while the viewing window shrinks. If you want more window to see more detail and less workspace all you need to do is slide the button the other way. D-clicking the window still gets you full screen.
This version also has full support for NATIVE HD formats. No upconvert crap, or loss of quality do to reformatting. At launch HD DVD and AVCHD were supported out fo the box, but there is a patch (v11.1) which gives you other formats including Blu-Ray. An addendum page in the manual gives the patch download details.
It is highly recommended that you use a dedicated and large HDD to store your sound, music, and video files and run the software form a different drive. This program is a vampire and you may soon find out how good your PC really is. Captured SD video at 500 lines in AVC, 85 minutes long sucks up..., wait for it..., 19GB! As far as capturing form sources go, Pinnacle can take a few lessons from Cyberlink because the capture tools are basic at best with rudimentary "stop" & "play" VCR-style buttons and there is no sound audible while in capture mode. Fumble. Cyberlink gives you audio controls and a shuttle jog dial as well as a time code seek window.
The past versions were plagued with crashes and unsettling freezes but I cannot say that I have exprienced enough of those issues to raise protest. This version at times hesitates but it has not yet crashed however, I have gotten nervous and pulled back my chair to look down at the CPU activity light!
To make this program run at its best and to be able to use all the features by design it will help to have a system a couple of notches above minimum reqs. A good video card and lots of RAM will serve you well. Having that should net you a pleasant and trouble-free editing experience. I partitioned 50 of 160GBs on one drive to load my OS and software programs and then installed another drive to use for storage and captures. The software runs more stable and smoother when it doesn't have to fight fragmented space and other programs accessing data.
All said, it is a great program and well worth to money.
My System:
XP M.C.E.
2.8Ghz @ 1055Mhz front side
3.0GB SDRAM DDR2 DIMM @533Mhz
Nvidia GeForce 8500GT 512MB
HD Audio 7.1 192khz
Dual DVD-RW/+R/-R/DL drives
Sony Blu-Ray Drive
20in. 16:9 HD MonitorUpdated
I stated the wrong file type when I spoke of video file size. I meant to say that AVIs take up a lot of HDD space and not AVC.
"...Captured SD video at 500 lines in AVC, 85 minutes long sucks up..., wait for it..., 19GB!"
Where to buy
Pinnacle Studio Plus - ( v. 11 ) - complete package:
$81.49
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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$81.49 | Yes |
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