First time on this site and I wish I had found it before I bought Pinnacle Studio 10. My problem is that earlier versions of Pinnacle cannot be fully de-installed and cause conflicts during subsequent installations or upgrades. And you really need to check the small print to discover that Studio SE, Studio, and Studio Plus have different capabilities.
In summary: Studio 10 SE is a bit better than Windows Moviemaker, but not much.
Studio 10 is a bit better than Studio SE, but not much.
Studio Plus seems a great product with all the bells and whistles, when it works!
If you really must buy it, I'd advise going for Studio Plus at the start. On no account should anyone try to upgrade the others because Pinnacle software just isn't up to it. Similarly, it's impossible to de-install earlier versions of Studio without much hassle. Above all, anyone doing so MUST back up all their data first as there is great risk of losing it as happened to me.
I have been very pleased with Pinnacle Studio 8 software purchased in 2004 and liked the idea of the extra features in Studio 10, so in November I downloaded the Studio 10 trial from the Pinnacle website. This worked well so after my one-month free trial I re-installed my Studio 8 software as instructed by Pinnacle. This proved impossible as I received various error messages. After two days of work and much live chat with Pinnacle’s helpful support staff I was able to reload Studio 8 after using various tools from Pinnacle, including a Regdelete programme which removes earlier Pinnacle entries from the computer registry. Unfortunately my original discs were Studio 8.4 which I had updated online to 8.8, and 8.4 will not open projects made using later version 8.8. When I tried to update my Studio 8.4, Pinnacle advised me that support was no longer available so I had no option but to.purchase Studio 10 to complete my existing projects.
I purchased Studio 10.6 and encountered similar installation problems, which I tried to sort using previous procedures. This took several days, during which I discovered three full screens on the Pinnacle website which deal with Studio 10 installation issues, still more which deal with update issues: for example, Pinnacle recommends installing the 10.7 patch but warns that the download won’t work with Internet Explorer 7, so offers a further download called Pixietool which seemed to produce further problems. The Studio 10 manual contains 12 pages devoted to crashes and hangs (pp228-240).
Next day my computer refused to start. I learned that the registry had been corrupted by previous attempted installs and de-installs of Studio 8 and 10. I had to pay for recovery of data and re-format of my hard disc. The technicians told me that they had a number of similar cases and advised me to avoid Pinnacle software because it caused many problems.
After the re-format I again tried to install Studio 10 but the installation hung with the message ‘There is a problem with the software licence’. This is one of the errors I received previously. Being unwilling to use Regdelete or Pinnacle’s other fixes again, I took the programme back to the retailer who tested the discs, encountered the licence problem message and gave me a refund.
Studio is really great in what it can do, but in 20 years of digital publishing I have never known a computer programme so filled with bugs. My advice is to be prepared for problems with a new installation, and not even to consider upgrading an existing Studio installation. Go for Adobe Premiere instead, it may not do quite as much but it’s stable.

My thoughts on Pinnacle Studio?

Biggest piece of bloatware I have ever used in my life, Star Trek computers would struggle with it.

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It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P

My father uses it for some time now and he also had his share of problems, it took a pc technician to get it right, the latest release seems to work fine but sometimes he gets very strange problems which often dissapear as quickly as they came. I read about studio 10 problems in Dutch forums and in other sections such as premiere, fcp and so on people were having questions about editing and in the studio 10 section it was mainly how to solve the many bugs. Some people though did manage to work with Studio 10 without a problem but many just bought other software. Studio belongs to the avid family but is actually a bad heritage, the "real" avid products are known for it's stability as they are, together with fcp, considered as standard by many production studios. Pinnacle Studio should actually be rebuild completely from ground up because as long as they trow one patch over another on a allready bad functioning piece of software, I'm afraid they will make things worse everytime.

What I think they have a real cheek with is when they expect you to pay extra for the privellage of being able to use a wipe, all of the transitions in Pinnacle totally suck, rotating 3D cameras? Why... I've never seen a movie in my life that has such nonsense in it. (Ok.. so maybe Moonwalker did).

__________________
It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P

Apparnetly they're relasing a HDDVD plugin for Studio 10 that will allow the burning of HD-DVD file structures to standard DVD-Rs, very nice! Shame that Studio 10 is crap.

__________________
It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P

Hi there. I've been a Studio user for 4 years now and have had mostly nothing but headaches! If you can get it to work - the results are great. But there's alot of pain involved!
However, I must say that Studio 10 plus (with the latest patch) seems to be behaving better.
I still get the crashes - but not as often. I also updated my pc. I'm running with 2GB of RAM and an upgraded video card. I was using a 128mb video card which I read was part of past problems. I'm now running on a 256mb video card.

I'm curerntly testing ProShow Gold - (slideshow program that till incorporated video clips). It seems much more stable - but lacks the bells and whistles in the transition dept.

Just my 2 cents worth.
K

I got to share.

Back in November I installed Windows Vista32 RC1. Not bad especially for a first release beta.

A coupe of weeks ago I bought and installed Windows Vista Ultimate x32. I’m using a Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 400GB SATA-II on a Highpoint PCIe RAID controller with an ATI X1900xtx. Vista is absolutely wonderful!! I have Adobe Photoshop 7 installed, Nero 7 ultra, TMPEGe 4 and Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 – all work well. However, what surprised the shite out of me is Windows MovieMaker v6 and Windows Make DVD that comers bundled with Vista Ultimate. The video editing software and mastering app is really very good. I made three home movie DVD’s with it last weekend and in my opinion it was superior to Studio 10, god knows it runs faster and smoother. Beautiful transitions and effects, timeline editing, lots of exporting options, awesome DVD menu that are customizable. My one and only problem was due to importing MP3 audio which caused some strangeness. Although it allows MP3 and MPEG importing, converting to WAV and AVI solved all problem which was only documented on forms such as these.

Viva La Vista!!


I’ll never buy another Studio application again. They have lost me forever.

Interesting to know! Didn't think about what MS had done about built in video editing functionality.

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video editing guides | video upload | wedding guides | website hosting

I've used all editions since 8. 10 was a bear for the first year but now it's as stable as any edition....as long as you computer is set up for 10. It flat won't work to your satisfaction without at least a dual core 3gig or more processor and 1 gig (minimum) memory and a fast motherboard. I use that along with liquid (another bugger for the first 6 months) with 10 being my quick and fun editor. Keep up to date on the patches, and get a new computer. If you really dive into NLE's of all brands, you'll find out this is the minimum for success. It really takes power to edit. Also, find and download 'end it all'. It's a simple freeware program that's on the back shelf (due to a lawsuit) but still found online. It'll shut down every running program except the bare necessities. Good luck and happy editing.

I have a new version of Studio Plus 10.7.
The first couple of times I used it, it worked fine. Now all of a sudden it doesn't want to see my 700-USB devise that I know you know all about, so I won't bother.
Anyway, after downloading 4, 1 hour DV tapes, it doesn't see the darn thing.
What could be the problem? I went from really good and capturing to nothing.
Do you have a solution.
Thanks,
Rickg606