Customer Reviews
Still easy, desperately needs stability and improved performance...
This is my third Pinnacle product; my last was Pinnacle Studio Deluxe rev8 w/AVDV capture card. In upgrading to my now 10.5 {.7 patched,} Studio Plus T.E. I was pleased to see the hardware worked immediately. {I've worked the most with analog input, 8mm tape.}^M
Not for the faint of heart
As of the date of this review (Dec. 13, 2006) there were only two consumer video editting programs that support the conversion of HDV format video to HD DVD format video, at least the kind you can burn to a dvd-r or dvd+r blank. The two makers are Ulead and Pinnacle. All the other high falutin' editors, e.g., Final Cut, Avid Liquid, Avid Express Pro, Premiere Pro 2, etc., don't support this feature. Everyone seems to be riding different trains, it appears. Anyway, since this path now exists in Pinnacle Studio v 10.7 and an HD DVD Authoring pack ($50) extra, this is the only reason I purchased this product. I think it works fantastically for the price, and although I have seen a number of bugs pop up (like rtfx crashing for certain video effects), or the inability to burn iso sometimes (I have to use Nero 7), what do you expect out of Pinnacle? These guys did not graduate from the top of their engineering class. Given the complexity of software, even Microsoft and Apple's wunderkinds are also known for a few boners. I'll give Pinnacle credit for excellent encoding quality, a very easy user interface, and nice finished results. You only have to drop in a dvd-r into your Toshiba HD-A1 to see how fabulous HDV can look, when converted to HD-DVD format. You don't even need an expensive HD-DVD blank. Thank you Pinnacle for producing software for the masses, right here, right now, so we can all edit and view our HDV tapes. And not spend over $1000 for (other) bloated editors. You also get an mpeg-4 encoder, for web output. Cheap is good. If you need a green blanket, that too, comes for free. It's for green screen/video superposition effects (which I have yet to try).
CRASH!
I've worked with various Pinnacle Studio versions since last decade, and they've all had two things in common: ^M
