Rating: 
Summary: Run, Run fast...
Review: The title says it all...I tried for over a year to get past the significant bugs that Pinnacle Studio has. I made a personal list of "workarounds" for myself, gathered through Pinnacle's own User Web boards to get past the software bugs that I experienced. I was a "Studio-holic" and hoped that someday it would work flawlessly. After several patches, hoping the moon was in the right position, and tossing salt over my shoulder, I finally gave up. While Studio is very intuitive, and "IF" it did all it claims to do, "WITHOUT PROBLEMS", it would take the market by storm and be the NLE leader! It has the "potential" to be the very best, but the excessive software bugs far outnumber the positives. It is NOT worth the trouble. I recently moved to Sony's ScreenBlast Movie Studio 3, and it works just fine. The problems I had in Studio DO NOT exist in ScreenBlast. Pinnacle Support will tell you to stop all background processes, re-install, etc, but after you do that the problems still exist, IF you could even get their Support group to really help you. ScreenBlast is slightly more challenging to learn but definitely worth the effort. I'll admit, ScreenBlast's DVD Authoring leaves much to be desired, and you will need to look at alternatives. But, it is still WORTH GETTING SCREENBLAST! It is easy to see for yourself. Check out the Studio message boards and you will find mostly Users complaining about problems and asking for help. Then check out the ScreenBlast message boards and you will find mostly Users looking for creative ideas. A very different tone. Pinnacle will say that the Support Boards are for people having problems, but you must decide for yourself. Review Studio's message boards, then review ScreenBlast's message boards. The decision is yours. My time after moving to ScreenBlast is now spent in creative editing, not in Studio's "workarounds". Happy editing!
Rating:
Summary: It just doesn't work
Review: After many, many hours I have given up on Studio. It just does not work.
* Does not recognize/capture from their new acquisition -- Dazzle -- even after downloading all patches, etc.
* Hangs when trying to render to DVD/MPEG2 -- again after reinstall, patches, Direct X upgrade, etc. I work in IT professional so trust me when I say this is VERY buggy software. Try something else.
Rating:
Summary: SUBSTANDARD SOFTWARE
Review: Program runs fine the first few times and then the problems begin. My files wouldn't render completely, discs would not burn, and program just locked up frequently. I am running this with PLENTY of speed and memory, so I tried re-installing the program several times with a further decline in performance. Another problem was the update from the website. When I downloaded this, my menus and title features were scattered all over my videos. After failed burning and wasting several DVD and CD's, I am no longer using this software. Save yourself the headache from the beginning.
Rating:
Summary: BITTERLY DISAPPOINTING....
Review: And now that you've heard the good news - the bad news is IT SUX.
Rating:
Summary: They could not of tested this product
Review: This product has many annoying bugs. The most annoying is it has a tendency to resposition the window so that the menu bar is off screen. When this happens there is no convenient way to get the window into a position where you can use the application. It also has a tendancy to freeze. I have a very high end machine with a Gig of RAM. It can not be running out of resources. There is no excuse for a product being release with this many defects.
Rating:
Summary: Sad, sad, sad. . .
Review: Wish I could rate them less! I loaded the software, wasted several days, had several exchanges with tech support - and had to send the software back. Tech Support marked my case "solved". If losing a customer is solving a problem, I hope they solve enough to go out of business!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Wasted money NO SUPPORT
Review: The program will not recognize my DVD burner, instructions as useless and support is non-existent. I am not a computer neophyte; my only conclusion is that people who find this product works for them have just landed in the correct statistical bucket. Advice; don't waste your time.
Rating: 
Summary: works great for me!
Review: Unlike many of the reviews you will read here Studio 8 works perfectly for me. I am even still using the original version included on the CDs I have had no reason to update. At work we also have this software and the only reason we updated was because we got a new PC with the new 8x Plextor DVD burner and it wasn't supported in the older version. its hard to believe so many people are having problems with it since it works perfect for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow, crashes too much.
Review: I've run this program on PC's running AMD Athlon 1 GHz processor, Celeron 2.6 GHz, Pentium III 1 GHz, and Pentium M 1.4 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. The program is slow on any system, crashes frequently even after a fresh Windows installation. On my computer with widescreen display, the window goes partially offscreen. The only way to fix the problem was to lower my screen resolution. While storyboard view is a feature I liked, it is not critical and on other programs I am getting to like the timeline view. Transitions are limited unless you buy additional package from Pinnacle. Some magazine reviews claim that video rendering is excellent. That is true, but not always. There are many places with dropped frames and the video comes out wrong. The preview quality capture does not always work, often after creating and rendering the project, the video sections that are actually rendered are different from what was selected in the preview mode. I give it 2 stars (instead of 1) because when it works, the feature set and ease of use is not too bad.
Rating:
Summary: This should be Freeware!
Review: This software has a few nice features and does some of these nicely. However, the rest of it performs like a DOG (and I am using a very high-end computer loaded with lots of memory and super-fast). But if you're lucky you will even get a crashing error message when you go to Exit. However, DON'T dare try to UNinstall it! It will trash your Windows operating system (I am using Windows 2000 with latest service packs) and take system files along with it!! I had this problem on 2 different computers and ended up having to totally reinstall Windows! It was a nightmare. If I did not own Pinnacle Studio 8, I wouldn't take it if it were given to me FREE. Beware!
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