Easy to use. Does everything from capture, through editing and DVD authoring to DVD burning in one package. Great transitions. Automatic settings are very good - very little need to tweak settings.

A bit unstable (but nowhere near as bad as previous Pinnacle products). Only has one video channel (minor issue for me) Can't preview on Camcorder screen. Movie preview is a bit flaky

I initially tried Studio 7 about a year ago and it was a disaster! Constantly locking up and crashing my PC - I went to the pinnacle forums and found all the problems I experienced were widely discussed and generally put down to driver problems and 'other software' by Pinnacle. I experience the black thumbnails after capture and the crashing when I tried to edit a clip or drag it to the timeline etc etc and I decided this package was a joke. I have since tried Adobe Premier Pro (way too complicated with disappointing quality of the final product - probably because I had the wrong codec or one of the myriad of settings wrong), Cyberlink Video Director 3 (stable, slow, poor quality of final video and lacking direct DVD authoring) and Ulead Video Studio 7 (stable, easy to use, short on features and again lacked DVD authoring built in). Against my better judgement I recently decided to try Pinnacle Studio 9 and I found it to be (fairly) stable, easy to use once you got used to the way it works, and best of all the complete package. I found letting it choose the output quality resulted in a great result every time. The range of transistions is great and after adding on Hollywodd Fx its fantastic. Titleing is good, audio and sound effects is great and I love the ability to author the DVD directly on the timeline. I experienced a problem that many other users have - refusing to actually burn the DVD but I downloaded the latest (March 2004) beta (9.0.8.8) from the Pinnacle website and this is now fixed. It still sometimes fails to finish the 'Make Movie' (rendering) phase but I found that as long as I used 'Delete temporary files' before doing the final 'Make Movie' it works perfectly. Overall I have found this product has the perfect combination of ease of use, quality of output and the ability to do everything from capture the video through to burning a professional DVD complete with multiple chapter menus all in one box. I don't think there is a more usable product available at the present time. By the way, my PC runs an AMD XP 1800+ processor, 1G of 266Mhz Ram, 400G split across 3 hard drives so its not quite state of the art and I find I can render a 1 1/2 hour production with 20 small and 3 or 4 complicated transitions in about 6-8 hours.

Customer Service

Bad. Forums are good but there are so many issues with Pinnacle products you get swamped in the forums. They seem to be trying hard with Studio 9 - the latest Beta is very good.

Similar Products Used:

Adobe Premier Pro Cyberlink VideoDirector 3 Ulead Video Studio 7

Easy to use interface if it worked without crashing.

Crashes, freezes, locks, rejects, scene detect thumbnails works when it wants, thumbnail do not reflect what the actual frame is.

I have used Studio 7 and now Studio 8 the past 3 years. During the import process of just existing video files on the harddrive, the scene detection would sometime just show a black thumbnail. It was a hit or miss, depending on if the program liked the file or not. The thumbnail would not be of the actual video. Dragging the thumbnail to the video track would intermittently crash the program to the desktop. Rendering would freeze the program at different spots for hours then lock. I really do like the simplicity of this program if it worked the first time. A project that should have taken an hour to create became an all night project because of all the crashes and bug. I think I will try ScreenBlast Movie Studio and stop wasting my time until Pinnacle Studio 8 corrects all the bugs in the program. I am using a high end P4 3.0 w400 FSB, Gigabyte GraniteBay MB, 1 Gig Kingston Ram, ATI AIW 9700 Pro 128 Video Card, 250 Gb 7200 Hard Drive. I repair computers for a living, so the PC is running at peak performance.

Customer Service

Please fix all the bugs in Studio 8. You have a great product.

Similar Products Used:

Ulead Video Studio, Avid Cinema.

It seemed to be easy to use until you want an output!

Rendering takes forever, poor output!

I agree - don't buy this software! I've bought new computer, upgraded to Studio 8 and downloaded the upgrades, etc. etc. etc. Every time I use it something else doesn't work on it! Renders forever - and then the movie either skips or freezes up -- different places each time it's rendered.

Customer Service

POOR! IF you can find the same problem searching through hundreds of problems on the bulletin board - that's about the best it gets.

Similar Products Used:

Haven't tried any other - but will be!