Rating: 
Summary: Look elsware
Review: I am horrible dissapointed with the progression of the studio line. I was a huge fan of the studio product in the past, but now i will look elswhere. I have a brand new top of the line computer and this program still can lock up or crah after rendering for 12 plus hours, this is untolerable and unnacceptable. Hopefully studio nine will be tenfold better or definatly look for another company.
Rating:
Summary: Unstable, buggy and frustrating.
Review: I bought version 7 and was thrilled by what the program would do and frustrated by it being so unstable and blowing itself out of memory all the time or freezing up. I foolishly thought that version 8 would be a more mature product with some stability. It is not. I also thought that running version 7 on the ME operating system was my problem, but version 8 on XP is just as bad. I thought dowloading the upgrades and patches for version 8(which on my slow land line takes hours) would help. It did not. There is no way I will every spend the money to upgrade to version 9, which I'm sure will be the offered solution to the problems. I haven't seen any improvement whatsoever from 7 to 8, so I can't see why I would expect any with version 9.I have a 4.6Ghz processer, 512Mb ram, a 111Gb hard disk and am running it under Windows XP Professional. I close any and all programs that are in memory when I run this program. Nothing I do seems to matter. It will dissapear from memory as often as every couple of minutes, especially when editing. This is just the stablity of the program. I also found a lot of things I think would be common tasks, very difficult to find in the manual or the help screens. Things like combining two clips, I would think would be a simple drag and drop or some obvious menu choice, but I had to read the manual for some time to figure it out. I found it difficult to get back in and edit a menu. I now know how to do it quite simply, but it was not at all intuative and I spend literally hours figuring it out. I am a professional computer programmer. If I am frustrated, I can't imagine how frustrated other people who are less computer literate would be.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for awhile
Review: i have made 6 photo slide show dvds that included music and transitions. Friends love them as gifts. However, once i burn them - that's it. The shows are then gone - either blacked out or just wont open. I just spent 4 hours working on the my lastet snow trip. I went to burn and it said that my movies werent referenced?? Then i restarted my computer only to find that my show will now not open. im in search of a new software!
Rating: 
Summary: Best Editing Software For the PC (under $100)
Review: I'll admit that this program is unstable, and many of the complaints listed on this site are true, when running on a Win98 system. However, after upgrading my PC (P3 866Mhz, 512 Mb RAM) to WinXP Pro, and a fresh install of Studio 8 (along with the recent 8.10 upgrade), many of the problems have all but disappeared. Regardless of the software package, video editing puts a major task on your processor, even on a P4 3.0 Ghz. It is best to turn off all programs and background tasks (including anti-virus) when editing and rendering video. This is mentioned in the instruction manual, and on Pinnacle's website. For those looking for 16x9 support, Studio 9 is supposed to include this feature, and I cannot wait.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Frustrating Software Product Ever Made
Review: This is, without question, the worst lemon of a product I have ever had the misfortune to use. Many users will not even be able to start the software right out of the box without first downloading patches from Pinnacle's web site. Other buggy behavior is already described by previous reviewers, so I'll only mention a couple of its most heinous crimes: First, don't be fooled by their "800-number" tech support. The recording on the 800 number simply directs you to a standard long distance number where you will stay on hold for up to 45 minutes. And you WILL be calling tech support if you buy this product. Second, if you do make it to a techie, they may tell you to uninstall other conflicting software, then uninstall their software, and then reinstall. BEWARE! What they do NOT tell you is that uninstalling Studio 8 will also delete all you existing .STU files - the projects you have already created - and you will lose all your work you've already done. Third, the entire disk creation process is busted. It occurs in 3 stages. The rendering comes first, and randomly hangs. The compiling comes next, and randomly hangs. And the burning comes last. Oh, did I mention that the burning randomly hangs? Look, the fact is, you'll be much happier (and productive) painting you movie onto celluloid by hand than trying to use this product. You'll also finish faster!
Rating: 
Summary: easy as $&%@ but dumb as #@$%
Review: ok ok i could go on for days but ill make it snappy so you read it all this is soooo easy to use. if your worried about not figuring it out dont the buttons do what they say and its really good even on a slower comp howerver rendering SUCKS!!! i have been unable to make a movie beacuse of it jsut freezing and i have a nice computer 1.8 ghz, 512 ram and all but im not sure why also the customer support is really pretty good...i sent a letter and the next day i got an email helping fix my problem...to bad i gave up on it for Adobe Premiere 6.5 NICE but for a cheap beginers program this is packed with features and options and if it doesnt freeze on your comp like it does on mine it gets a 5 plus you can make menus record to dvd, vcd, svcd, internet files, and vhs...plus lots of others like dv. avi's and lots more!!! good program bad dependibility good customer support and most importantly goodluck
Rating: 
Summary: Best consumer level video editing software BY FAR
Review: I looooooove Studio 8! I have spent countless hours using and researching video editing software and Pinnacle 8 is a far superior software than everything in the <$99 range. Studio 8 has the easiest and most intuitive interface on the market AND FAR SURPASSES its competition in freebies that comes with it like music generation, visual effects, tons of transitions, outstanding title creation tool, and let's not forget it's one of the few softwares that offers amazing DVD and VCD menus that are cutomizable --and you can output to VHS and any camera! The only reason to not buy Studio 8-- is because Studio 9 is even more fantastic and has even more freebies and effects like surround sound tools.
Rating:
Summary: It's a crap shoot.
Review: I'm a user who loves this program, but I've jumped through many hoops and spent a lot of money to get where it will work. You may be fortunate and it will work flawlessly for you, right out-of-the-box. I don't know what the odds are, but I wouldn't count on it. The reviewers who have written horror stories are not making them up. I've experienced nearly every problem cited here. I am very experienced in hardware and software installation & use, and Studio 8 gave me fits for nearly 3 months. If you have problems, God help you, because there's little chance that their Tech Support will. If you post to their tech support forum, an experienced user may respond, but the actual Pinnacle techs seem to take a hit-and-miss approach, ignoring the vast majority of the pleas for help posted. Visit and see for yourself. I wrote for help a couple of times in precise detail and courteous language early on in my experience. I received not a single comment from a Pinnacle tech in response. If you do receive a response, you'll be told that it's something wrong with your system, not Studio 8. You'll be advised to: 1) get the latest update 2) perform a seemingly endless series of uninstall/clean the registry/reinstall/update operations 3) shut down any other software that may be running as a background task 4) uninstall other CD/DVD burning software, such as Roxio or Nero 5) format your hard drive and reinstall your operating system 6) use a different application to perform an operation that won't work in Studio -- in direct contradiction to step 4, above 7) work with AVI files, if possible, despite the advertising that hypes the ability to support several different formats 8) try to create a video project from very short files that are supplied with the program, and bear little relation to the type or size that you'll likely to be using in your projects 9) use workarounds which add time and extra resource demands upon your system, and severely detract from the user-friendliness & flexibility suggested by advertising and your first glance at the interface They will deny, deny, deny that there are problems. They will tell you that the vast majority of their users do not have problems. When faced with this argument, remember this fact: This morning, I read a post written on January 20th, 2004, by the moderator of one of the Studio 8 user forums, in which he stated that there are only 9 -- count 'em, 9 -- negative Studio 8 reviews here on Amazon.com. This speaks for itself. And also be aware that, despite the fact that Studio 9 will be released next month, they are still issuing beta bug-fix releases for Studio 8. Does this sound like a robust program?
Rating:
Summary: Studio Review
Review: Wow, a lot of negative. I have had great luck with it. I am using a Canon Elura 50 with mine and have created a bunch of stuff. The main reason I'm endorsing this product, though, is that it is the only software package I have found that supports pass-though video capture from a VCR through a camcorder to the PC. Showbiz and MovieMaker don't and this was a huge selling point to me.
Rating:
Summary: pain, suffering, and tears!
Review: I was told by a friend this was one of the best video editing software packages around.....little did i know what i was in for. The process of putting together the video was ok, it was pretty easy to learn (and i'm no computer guru either) the frustrations came when i was trying to output these videos to some form of media. Occasionally it would let me record my videos back to my camcorder but the rendering process would take forever and most of the time it would lock up half way through. Burning to DVD's...........ya right, i've tried eveything. I've had computer nerds even look at it and even they walk away with a few more gray hairs. So here i am, left with some great videos but no way to record them so i can actually see them. i put alot of time into these videos. So be leary if you are about to buy this software, this cost me many tears!!!
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