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Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 02/24/06

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Pinnacle Studio Plus 10.5: Feature-Laden, Easy to Use

Entry-level editing software brings a lot of editing for your $60

By Charlie White

Pinnacle Studio is the best-selling nonlinear editing package in the world. There are good reasons why the software made it to this level of popularity, two of them being its ease of use and extensive feature set. This product has been around for a long time, tracing its legacy back to the days of Fast Multimedia, the German company that helped pioneer desktop video editing for consumers. For a low price of $60, you get a lot of editing for your money with Pinnacle Studio Plus 10.5. We tested the software on a variety of editing tasks, and got to know it quite well.

As far as the branding of Pinnacle Studio Plus is concerned, it's evident that most of the development of the software happened before the buyout by editing industry giant Avid. Throughout the software interface, it's still branded Pinnacle all the way, however, in some places there's a small slogan tacked on the bottom that mentions that Pinnacle is a division of Avid. So, for the purposes of this review, we?ll just keep calling it Pinnacle.

Not long after I received a review copy of Pinnacle Studio Plus, a representative of the company contacted me, saying that the software had an update available, bringing it to version 10.5. I thought it odd that the application was already in a .5 release not long after it had been introduced as version 10.0. However, after loading version 10.0 on two different PCs, I noticed that it had a distinctly beta feel to it. On one computer it was just downright unstable, crashing at nearly every turn with little provocation.  Even after loading version 10.5, there were still severe stability problems on that PC, so I decided to try a different one.

I then loaded the software onto a second test computer here at our Midwest Test Facility. Unfortunately, when I did that, there were worse problems. When I tried to launch Pinnacle Studio Plus 10.0, it completely locked up the entire workstation, requiring a cold boot in order to continue. Even though this was something that happened fairly frequently a decade ago, it's a rare occurrence to see something like this happening today. The only way I could recover from this problem was to find the update to version 10.5 on Avid/Pinnacle's web site and load it onto the machine. After installing the update, finally I was able to launch the software and work with it. The nagging question I kept asking at this point was, how could a company ship a piece of software that had such severe stability problems?  

After I finally got Studio Plus installed and updated, it was much more stable. So let's put all of that gnashing of teeth behind us and take a look at this software package. Perhaps there was a coincidence where the software balked at both of the computers onto which I installed it. Nevertheless, now it was time to see Pinnacle Studio Plus 10.5 in all its glory. When you opt for the Plus version of Pinnacle Studio you get the benefit of keyframeable real-time effects with preview, and also what Pinnacle calls Professional TV Style Effects. This gives an extra measure of fun to a software package that's already pleasurable and easy to use. Also included in the Plus version is the ability to edit high definition footage in the HDV format.

When you first open Pinnacle Studio Plus, you're presented with an attractive interface with three main areas, Capture, Edit (pictured below), and Make Movie. With the capture section, you can either manually capture your clips or you can ask Studio to recognize scenes and capture each clip automatically. Both of these routines worked very well?it was a simple matter of plugging a DV camcorder into the PC, and it was instantly recognized by Studio Plus. In the edit section, you're able to situate your clips one after the other in either a storyboard layout, a more traditional timeline setup, or a list layout.

I settled on the timeline setup, where you navigate around your hard disk on the top part of the screen and drop clips into the timeline at the bottom in a familiar fashion. It was easy to drag clips around on the timeline, and the software even allows you to lock a video track while you move around the audio track, and vice versa. Studio Plus also allows you to place video on the A and B tracks with overlay in between, and has a tremendous number of preset graphics that can be used. This'll make matters much easier for home video enthusiasts.

I only had a few slight issues with the timeline editing of Studio Plus. When dragging the edge of a clip, there is a too-small handle where you grab to do the dragging. I mean, it must be just one or two pixels wide. The area where the cursor appears, indicating that dragging is possible, is unfortunately a few pixels bigger than the actual area where the drag is actually activated, so many times it looks like you're going to be able to drag a clip, but you're not. That's not a good characteristic, especially in an application where many beginners will cut their teeth. It's just too difficult to select and then drag clips, probably the most routine and basic operation in an editing software package.