Rating: 
Summary: Try it before you buy it
Review: I downloaded the trial from the pinnacle website and I was extremely happy with it. You can only save files in the smallest quaility but you really get a good idea of how the program works. I thought it was easy to use and a great price at Amazon.com compared to the stores!
Rating: 
Summary: Problems: rendering stops ... hard to find a solution
Review: A very common problem with this software. The program stops at certain point and that's it. I read in the web that too many people are having similar problems. There should be a patch available by now but none. Not even instructions how to correct the problem. It is fine to create a movie, add titles, sounds, transitions, etc but when you want to create you own dvd or mpeg file not so easy. I wasted hours and why not days trying to find a solution to my problem and still nothing. I am thinking is finding a better software that does the job. Good luck if you buy this software. I recommend to download a free trial copy, if possible, first before you buy it and test it very well. Create a movie and make as complex as your normal work will be and see if it works for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Easy to Use and Install
Review: I got a Sony TVR-33 camcorder and wanted to make DVDs out of what I shot. No editing, nothing. But once I got this software, I have turned a friend's wedding into a movie complete with edits, slo-mo, titling, etc. It looks great and this software is the reason. I have the manual but have only cracked it open occasionally. Very intuitive. Very Easy. Great product.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Features But Unreliable
Review: Pinnacle Studio 8 is a good program with hints of greatness. There are a lot of nice features and its ease of use is currently unmatched. However, the program is not without its programming flaws.Studio 8 is easy to install. Basically, put in the requested disks, wait and you are done. Some systems may need to reboot afterwards but after that, you are ready to roll. Capturing, editing and rendering are all simple to do and you can have a lot of fun doing so. Making cuts and edits were surprisingly simple and the effects that you can add are truly impressive. Rendering, while easy, is very slow, even on the fastest systems. An hour of video rendered for DVD took nearly 7 hours to render. That may be kind of slow compared to higher end systems but if you have the time, it is worth it. The end product, while sometimes showing SOME red bleed, looks very nice. On a major down point, this program is quite temperamental. You pretty much have to make sure it is the ONLY program you run after a reboot. If you run other programs before going into Studio 8, chances of a crash are high. When scrolling text, I will often get these unknown TITLEDEKO errors that Pinnacle has yet to offer suggestions or fixes about. It has a sometimes-nasty habit of simply 'resetting' your PC and causes it to reboot. I capture with Pinnacles' AV/DV PCI card. It does a good job but I sometimes have audio sync issues and I have yet to find out if it is the card or the software. Pinnacle's support is fair but featues a great, mostly user supported, webboard. However, you may be scared from purchasing this software because of all of the issues people have. This is a great program with a lot of good features and special effects. You will need to make sure you turn off all of those "cute" programs like screen savers, mouse enhancements, backgrounds and other memory resident programs to make sure you do not crash. It will work for you if you follow these directions but let's hope 9.0 will be more stable.
Rating:
Summary: It's not as bad as everyone thinks it is.
Review: This program is the best DVD authoring program I have ever encountered, even with the bugs. If you can think of it, this program will probably let you do it. Special effects, menus, title screens, title overlays, sound editing, video editing, and the export options are all available.
Now, if all you want to do is capture footage from your camcorder and make a DVD, this program is great for you. It may take a while to record the footage into your pc (It takes the same amt of time to record it in to your pc as it did to record the movie originally) but the quality with which it records it is great. Immediately after you have it all recorded, you can start burning the movie or you can do a little editing. Yes, it will take a while with this program to create a DVD, but you must remember that you are CREATING the DVD not COPYING footage. KEEP IN MIND that digital video quality footage takes up roughly 4GB of memory for every 18 min of footage and MPEG(DVD) quality can take up roughly 4GB of memory for about 15 min of footage. Be prepared for this. Also, rendering may take quite a while depending on your PC hardware and what you are exporting to. Be prepared to let it do its thing for a few hours or possibly an entire day depending on quite a few factors.
Now for actual movie making people, this program is great as well, BUT ONLY IF YOUR SYSTEM HAS HIGH SPECS. Everyone complains about the hang time, but my pc is a custom made high end PC and it barely has any hang time. Anyone expecting to do a lot of editing and burning should have a high end pc in order to use this program. If you have good specs (at least a 1 gig processor and 512k ram, better if you have a 2 gig processor though) then this program will work wonders for you. Now that I've said all that, here's my list of pros and cons.
Pros:
Very versatile
Easy to use
High quality video
Plethora of export options including export to camcorder (yes, right back to your camcorder tape), AVI video, MPEG video, Streaming video (for websites), VCDs, S-VCDs, DVDs, Real Video, and Windows Media Video
Expandible effects and title screens
Customizable effects (with...upgrade) and titles
Automatic Scene detection (it automatically creates scenes depending on the option you select) Cons:
Can be slow on low end PCs
A few minor bugs (that can be worked around if you know anything about computers)
Takes quite a long time to render
can only capture between 15-18 min of footage at a time from camcorder (depending on quality)
Rating: 
Summary: Warning -dont buy this!
Review: I admit it.
I am unfamiliar with video editing on the computer.
So we bought this program, Pinnacle Studio v.8, figuring such a well advertised product must be plug in and use.
But no. They don't tell you that you must have Firewire for it to work, and they don't tell you that it is incompatible with many cameras, such as in my case the very popular Panasonic PV GS 50D. Driver conflicts... you name it. My hair is turning grey over this stuff
So I called up Pinnacle customer service, waited for over a half an hour each time and all they want to do is to sell me another product that makes it compatible. So double what you were told it costs and "Maybe" it works? Like buy a car on a special -BTW with three wheels?
I call this b.s. "It's the other manufacturers fault" was one answer. If they can't get the bugs out of the program, they shouldn't sell their product. Award winning?????? I mean ?????? Award what? At least say the car has three wheels if you sell it with three wheels.
Stay away from this horrible product. I am returning mine but boy is this frustrating.
Update: I downloaded Microsoft Mivie maker and it works like a charm. "Award winning" my a**. LOL what a joke.
Rating:
Summary: Ask Yourself "Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, P_NK?"
Review: In a nutshell, this program will (probably) work fabulously if your needs are modest. You can (probably) capture video from digital or VHS sources, and edit with ease. The editing features are impressive (if everything goes well for you). POSITIVES:
Very intuitive editing functions
Many file formats supported
Burning DVD, VCS, SVCD supported
Creates nice menus Having said this, the few positive reviews I've read here must be from people with (a) amazing luck, or (b) amazing patience and low expectations from commercial software. These reviewers are saints! In my opinion, they should be given flowers and chocolates by each Pinnacle Systems executive, and warm embraces should not be ruled out by the next Board of Directors meeting.
(See, I could have said something mean but I didn't) NEGATIVES:
(1) IT'S SLOW - The time the program spends hanging is legendary. There should be an award for the most time a program spends churning and thrashing for absolutely no apparent reason. Planning on opening an existing project that's more than 10 minutes in duration? Better plan your day around it. Seriously. Waiting for this program will induce hysterical hallucinations and / or cause you to find religion. My day proceeds like this, and no I'm not exaggerating:
* Launch Studio 8 and wait while Studio accesses the last captured video, as is its default modus operandi.
* Shave, take a show, get dressed, have breakfast, check to see if Studio 8 is still hanging.
* Has it opened the last video? Great, it must have only been that short 10 minute clip of last Thanksgiving's bore fest, horrific gravy mishap included (in slow-mo).
* However if it STILL HASN'T opened the video, read next chapter of current good book.
* Finally, it finished. Don't get all giddy like a schoolgirl; all we did was start the program. (apologies to those who are, or aspire to become, schoolgirls)
* The default project it opened upon launching is a brand new 'Untitled' project (remember, all that opening time was just for a captured video that you MIGHT want to add to some project). Tragically, I need to work on an existing project. I know what's coming next, so I wipe a tear from my cheek and select my desired project from the menu. I've found that you can tolerate this anticipatory pain by either clenching your teeth or biting down on something hard to keep you from swallowing your tongue.
*OK, now I've really made it mad. My existing project is not only long (> 30 minutes of clips) but it also includes clips from more than one captured source (e.g. clips from my niece's christening, and from the public domain documentary "Exorcisms Gone Bad"). This is an affront to the Pinnacle gods. They punish my hubris by cranking up my hard drive to "ludicrous" speed, and keeping it there for a good half hour or more of senseless reads and writes. I think it's writing megabytes and megabytes of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", but I have no conclusive evidence. Norton Utilities should make a tool specifically for this purpose. Meanwhile my computer has seized and is unavailable to do anything else, like update the clock, repaint the screen or acknowledge my frantic attempts to apologize and take it all back. This paralysis is the computer equivalent of eyes wide open, pupils fixed and dilated, jaw gaping and trickle of drool slowly creeping towards the floor without any attempt to wipe it away. Nurse! Get the defibrillator, stat! Waiting out this state of inactivity is deceptively debilitating. You want to leave since you know nothing will budge for about 30 minutes. But you still retain this irrational expectation that maybe, just maybe, everything will unlock the minute you leave. In my experience, this is about as likely as an Elvis sighting in Kabul, Afghanistan. Instead, you stare at the blank, unpainted screen for far too long as your mind begins playing tricks, as if you're in a sensory deprivation tank. There are similar criminally long delays in most editing attempts, like adding a clip to a project. Given this glacial pace, I plan on finishing my video projects in the following way:
(1) start a religion,
(2) train the converts in the mysterious yet glorious ways of Pinnacle Studio editing so they work on my projects faithfully each and every Sunday for the rest of their natural lives,
(3) instruct my righteous flock to pass on these rites to their children, their children's children, and yea onto all those they beget,
(4) while the faithful await "the Great Rendering" when the project is completed and burned to disc. Alleluia! Actually, this religion would be a great marketing angle for Pinnacle Systems, Inc., and would fit in well with their proclaimed "long term outlook". Certainly, a product that forces you to think in terms of geological eras instead of mere hours fits this long-term corporate vision. (2) (oh, yes, all the above was just #1) DOESN'T BURN WELL - sometimes it doesn't recognize my CD burner. Now I might be convinced that some devices are unrecognizable. However, mine is on the official 'approved' list, and it is often recognized, but sometimes isn't. This is analogous to occasionally forgetting how to chew your food. (3) CRASHES - not every day, but too often.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I've had many problems with S8. Although I like the overall structure and advertised functionality of the program, the many bugs make this a very frustrating program to use. I use the program for editing my captures, creating DVD menus, and convert to MPEG. The actual capture and burn to DVD are done with other programs I have. Editing is the worst. S8 loses track of where it is. Scenes are marked on the timeline by still-scene clips. Often, the still-scene off by a few frames, sometimes it's off my minutes. This makes it almost impossible to know where you are in the edited movie. Before you buy, check out the many problems on Pinnacle's user forums. These are real problems although it appears a few systems are immune to them. So the question is ... do you feel lucky? Unfortunately, I haven't found a reliable alternative in the same price range.
Rating:
Summary: In it's current form, it's unstable
Review: I have a P4, 3.06 Gig, 2 200 Gig HDs (1 devoted to just videos), with 1.5 gigs of memory. The program is slower than it's peers, and fails to render regularly. The answer by the software department is to use DVD RW media instead of R media (and not all DVDs can accept RW media), and then preformat the media in Nero or another disk burning software before using theirs. If you visit the website, the most current patch is 8.5ish, and the current beta is 8.7. Read the forums of the frustrations the users are having, they're basically identical. Version 7 was so strong, with the only downside was that you had to make titles outside the program. I can't believe bundling that function inside (which is what was done in version 8) really creates that many problems. Other than the burn problems, it does suffer from slow rendering problems as compared to others. Great Article about 2 months ago in PC World comparing the software to others, and they also noted its the slowest render time of the bunch. If you want highend looking videos, this is a good product to use if you can live with RW media rather than R. If you just want to take the home videos and put them on a DVD without all the fancy transitions, titles, fades, etc. then I'd used another program.
Rating:
Summary: Patience is the BIG Key
Review: It is unfortunate that such a great program (still with some bugs) has received some bad reviews. I purchased Version 8.0 on May 24 and immediately updated to version 8.5. I admit I was a little skepticle, but only until I started using and reading the 258 manual that comes with it. I had henceforth struggled with 4 other video editors and this one is BY FAR the best. I have an HP Pavilion 1.8 Ghz machine with 220Gb total disc(s) and only 256m of RAM. I have dedicated 60g for "video only". I slapped in another 256M of RAM without any noticable improvement in anything. I was a systems programmer for over 30 years at HP and am well aware of where this product is w.r.t. functionality and quality. Be patient - they will get it working. The only problem I am having is "hangs with the hour glass", but have found if I go get a cup of coffee or take a walk, when I come back the project is loaded. I have also put it through paces, like retrieving 3G captured file (from another application), then sub-dividing into scenes and building a smaller video out of that. Do NOT let these other bad reviews scare you!
PS: when moving your mouse pointer around, clicking there, draging there ... do it slowly; otherwise it gets confused ... I know as I have been on the other end of the software.
PS2: I have never in 32 years of both operating system and application programming seen a bug-free application of any size/worth.
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