If you're like me, you are probably curious, so sure, go ahead. Studio8 is a fine program that does a good job of editing and burning to DVD. It's much less stable than Vegas, but for people who just want to throw together some clips of the family vacation, it's a competent solution. I wouldn't expect to recommend Vegas to some dad at the next barbeque who wanted to do only that. I would say, however, that Vegas was the next step up if that dad really got a kick out of doing this stuff and wanted to get more sophisticated.

My first video project was done with Studio7, the precursor program that was very simiilar but lacked the DVD authoring capability. It was an hour-long video documentary with just cuts and dissolves, nothing fancy. Turned out great.

Appreciate the advice from everyone. I will probaly pass on the install

Pinnacle? Been there, done that. Pinnacle products are crap (on very level).

Studio 8 came with my ATI card (AIW 9600). It has some cool transitions, but that's all i'd use it for. It needs to render EVERYTHING, even if you're exporting edited DV as DV (it reencodes).

Microsoft windows XP(home or pro) include Media Director and you can upgrade to v2 for free and it does some job as pinacle including burning DVD.
Free to anyone who have XP. If you have XP- you allready have basic software to edit video and burn DVD. I would NOT waste a space on HD and clog registry just to see that the freebee it is not worth your time.
Have a fun

I've heard good things about the Liquid series, it's biggest feature is that Pinnacle didn't write it, enough said eh.

I spent a year trying to beat a Pinnacle product into working shape, the updaes were frequent enough, but they always seemed to break something when they fixed something else. By the time I got it to work, I'd outgrown it and moved on to MSP. After insurmountable issues with V7 of that, I switched to VV4+DVDA. I haven't looked back since! For me at least, VV is where it's at. DVD-A needs some work though.....

They didn't write it because Pinnacle doesn't make hardly any of it's own crap. They have the philosopy of buying other people's technology and "TRYING" to make it work. Problem is, Pinnacle always dumps a product a year or two after it markets it without hardly ANY software updates, much less bug fixes.

This goes from Prosumer line all the way up to the Professional lines of their products.

Like I said. CRAP.

It's because of Pinnacle I discovered Vegas.

You can search for my name to see other Pinnacle posts I've made.

Pinnacle is the worst software I have ever used for any purpose; and I've used a lot of software in my time.

Unless you run multiple disk partitions and have them backed up, I would strongly beware before installing anything bearing Pinnacle's name.

There are several Pinnacle survivors in recovery here. After two years away from their forums, I decided to check back the other night. Guess what I discovered -- the complaints and issues over Studio 9 are the same ones we had with Studio 1.xx except they're compounded by the new technology. Guess I won't be getting Studio 9 anytime soon, however I still use 1.06 on a Win98 machine for analog captures and prints.

I used Studio 7 / 8 for years. It's very very flaky. Spend too much time un-installing re-installing to work around it's many many bugs.

It's got great titles and I prefer Studio's equivalent to the Vegas Media Pool.

Overall it could be a very good application for the hobbyist but the only thing it does consistently is CRASH!

Functionally, here is the scoop on Studio 8: It only has one video track and one static title track (no video). I don’t think someone who is use to the unlimited tracks of Vegas would be remotely interested in living within those limitations. (i.e., you can’t even do a simple video overlay or picture-in-picture, etc.) It is aimed squarely at the beginner and it has an extremely easy interface that gets you up and running fast but limits you as you grow. I used it for about a year when I was first starting out but moved to VideoFactory and then Vegas when I started compositing multiple tracks.

What Studio 8 does have that’s great is a brilliant interface for beginners that is very easy to use. You can switch between storyboard mode and timeline, which is great for rearranging clips. It has SmartSound built in for adding royalty free music, and includes TitleDeko, which is a great little title generator that gives you excellent results with just a few clicks. In addition to the standard transitions and wipes is has AlphaMagic (kind of a lite version of Pixelan Spice Master) built in so you can make a transition out of any grayscale image. You can even add-on Hollywood FX Pro (which I did) and have stunning 3D transitions that really spice up wedding videos, sporting events, etc. So what you get is an exceptional amount of capability in an easy to use package for a great price. This is why people try so hard and long to get it to work for them. It’s a winning formula that was poorly executed.

Unfortunately everything that others said here is true. It is not very well written code and has extreme stability problems. As someone said, largely because Pinnacle keeps acquiring other companies technology (but not their people) and tries to patch it into their code base. The result is a “patch quilt” that they fix in one place only to break in another. It is obvious their development team does not have a good understanding of how the code works because each patch introduces almost as many bugs as it fixes. Some have had success with it, but most have not. I could not recommend it to anyone.

~jr

Well put jr.

There probably isn't anything more useful to add, but I'm so exasperated by my recent experiences with Pinnacle that I can't seem to properly contain myself.

My profession is designing and evaluating usability/user interfaces. Pinnacle Studio series has one of the best interfaces around. Not just in video editing but PC software in general.

The good news stops there.

While there are many users who don't have problems (Pinnacle will declare MOST, and that's good enough for them), there are a great many who cannot get a final render to work. Their forum is rife with desperate pleas for help that go virtually ignored. For sheer volume of bug-related issues, I've never seen its equal.

Studio 9 is based on Studio 8. They added some eye-candy but no technical revision.
Studio 8 has a series of patches that generate at least one new problem for each fixed.

---------
I have been recently banned from the Pinnacle forum for trying to convince the legions of worn-out sufferers to quit trying to find the "One True Workaround" and buy something that just all around works. I hope Vegas will be that for me.

I have posted a thread asking about codec issues, I hope one of you seasoned veterans will be able to help me.

Appreciate all the responses and I will take everyones advice and see if one of you want to buy this product. Ha Ha
Very cheap $2.00

I used Pinnacle for about a year and a half, and it worked pretty well for me. But it doesn't compare to Vegas (except for a few really nice transitions, but how many transitions do you need?)

There is really no comparason of Vegas to Studio 8 SE except that the two exist. Vegas compares to Liquid Edition if you must make one. From what i have heard Vegas is much easier to use than Liquid E. I jumped the Pinnacle ship just after Studio 7. I had bought the Canopus AVDC-1394 card for capture because the DC10plus card was junk. Vegas 3 LE came with the Canopus card then, I installed it and was hooked on Vegas from then on.

Just visit the Pinnacle user's forums and decide for yourself.

A couple of extra thoughts. Those of you who have an old copy of Studio7 will see that it uses the excellent "TitleDeko" titling product. In my opinion this alone makes it worthwhile to keep S7 on my PC, as it is MUCH more useful to me than the titling utility in Vegas. Studio8 (and presumably Studio9) have a different titler, with less functionality than the original TitleDeko.

Another thing which I really liked a few years ago when I was trying to do a big project with just a 30GB drive was the ability to work with a highly-compressed version of the raw video. Once the project was complete I would then tell S7 to go back to the original tapes and pull in a full-resolutuion version of all the clips. Worked great, and I was fascinated by the actions of my Sony miniDV camcorder, slewing this way and that, grabbing all the bits and pieces that were needed to make the final product. These days I can play with 20 times that disk capacity and can use the raw video from the beginning. Still, it was cool to watch.

Funny thing--I surfed on over to Tom's Hardware site for my weekly fix of technology, and the top story is on Studio9! They like it!--a lot!!!

They say it's still kind of tender, but a fine program overall.


Studio9 review

I think most of the feedback on this subject is right on target. I worked with Studio 8 for about a year. This was my first video editing program and I was actually fairly successful in creating short videos and DVDs. The program has nice graphics and it is easy to use. However, I had to employ some pretty drastic guerilla manuevers in order to keep the program working. I had to "save as" every major change I made to a video which meant that even for a short 5 minute clip I might have up to 10 or 12 versions. Also, every 15-30 minutes, I needed to reboot my entire computer because parts of the program would start to act "funny" (i.e. some features in Studio would stop working) and if I waited too long, the program would eventually freeze and I would lose work, even if I had saved it -- which is the reason for the save as copies mentioned above). Please note: this is a new computer purchased last year (Windows XP, AMD 2600+, 1 gig ram)

Basically, I just found Studio 8 to be too unreliable. I could never trust that it would work everyday. I had a couple of projects which simply would not render. I'm not sure why.

However, my biggest caution against even installing Studio 8 on your computer is that it can mess with your operating system. I discovered this when Studio stopped working altogether -- it would work for about 5 minutes and then would freeze. I checked the Pinnacle forums and found a long list of possible solutions from Pinnacle's forum manager. I went through every single item on the list, and nothing worked except for the last suggestion which was to completely reformat my main hard drive. If you've ever had to do this then you know it's not fun. I had to reformat my hard drive a total of FOUR TIMES over the year! On the fourth time, I simply did not reinstall Studio 8 and I bought Vegas.

I actually haven't had a chance to play with Vegas much yet (I created one short DVD in Architect from some files I had on my computer), but the Vegas editor looks great! I also really appreciate this great forum. The comments and suggestions are very usefull. For me, the biggest selling point for Vegas was all of the reports of its stability. I have to say, I have not experienced a single problem yet. It works. And after my past experience, that's saying a lot.

Thank you all for letting me put in my two cents.

And the number one reason for not even bothering to istall Studio 8 SE?

It's crippled, and I mean more than just by the fact that it's Studio 8. It's a trial version in which several key features are disabled, including the ability to burn a DVD.

And it's easy to see why when you visit the Studio forums -- there are severe problems producing a DVD with synchronized audio & video.

They love to trumpet their "7 million installed" user base, but the truth is probably that hundreds of thousands of those installations were removed faster than the latest PC virus. Anybody who puts up with the crap you have often have to go through to get Studio working, deserves all the grief he can eat.

(Truth-in-advertising: I stiil use Studio 9, but I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.)