[Daverey2]

Hi All

I bought the Pinnacle Studio 9 SE software at the weekend of ebay, and installed it and had a quick play around.

I know this might sound like a daft question - bt I assume the "SE" bit (and the fact I only paid around £3 for it!!) means that it is not the full software and is lacking in some features?

I'm new to all this and don't want anything too spectacular for creating DVDs, so does anyone know if this software will do?

Basically all I want to do is capture camcorder footage (which it can do), make a menu screen with links to each section, maybe apply a few fancy transitions between scenes and then add a photo slideshow at the end, possibly with some music. Nothing too fancy.

As I said, I'm new to this and a bit of a technophobe - is this SE software enough, or is it likely to be so limited I need to upgrade?

Ta very much.

Dave

I think you'll find that SE is the free version given away with many new PC's, so it's not really worth a penny. Have you tried www.pinnaclesys.com?

[laser]

Hi

The functionality in Studio 9 is good but having used Studio since version 6, the performance of studio 9 is dire even on my P4 3GHz GB RAM machine. Studio 9 is still quite buggy.

My advice is to use Studio 8 and patch to version 8.12. It's faster and more stable.

Also lok at software from Ulead. Equally as good and runs better on older machines.

Daverey2 - I guess there's something wrong with Laser's PC: I too am using a 3.0GHz P4, 1GB RAM, 200GB+160GB HDDs, and Pinnacle 9 is very slick. Certainly a lot faster than Ulead VideoStudio 8 was- after every edit, I'd press play and then have to wait 2 seconds before playback started - it drove me nuts! At least Pinnacle responds instantly, and is honest enough to show if it's busy rendering a transition.

Judging by the considerable history of Pinnacle Studio 8, it seems best not to go near it, talk about, or even think about it for fear it will crash a PC. The consensus from poor crash-hardened version 8 users is that version 9 is at last reliable (almost!).

[laser]

Hi

Thst's very interesting comment you make, Origin. I'm wondering if upgrading to Studio 9 from Studio 8 is the cause of the problem rather than installing straight to version 9 on a clean system.

The PC itself was formatted and Studio 8 installed soon after. Studio was then upgraded. I would be interested to hear if you upgraded or performed a new install of Studio 9. Interestingly the MPEG2 encoding is very fast it's just the general editing and dragging of transitions onto the timeline which takes a couple of seconds for the software to respond. Every now and again the whole program just crashes when performing L and J edits on the timeline.

[Daverey2]

Thanks for the info guys.

I installed the SE version of Studio 9 and so far it seems to run pretty smoothly. I noticed last night that it could take several seconds when dragging the transitions onto the timeline, but then I do have around 150 different mini clips to compile.

Incidentally - will having that may different scenes cause major problems when I come to make the DVD? It previews absolutely fine and doesnt take up too much room - there's less than an hour overall.


Dave

[laser]

The only problem you may have is the number of chapters is limited to 99 on most DVD players. I'm not sure if this limitation is imposed by Studio 9 when you create a DVD.

If you therefore decide to create a DVD with each still marked as a chapter you might encounter a problem. I've never tried it with so many clips but at the very worst you'll have to reduce the number of chapers if the DVD doesn't work properly in your machine.

Laser - I installed from fresh the full retail version of Pinnacle Studio 9 on a machine that had never had Pinnacle Studio 8. A few weeks later, I installed the full version of Studio 9 Plus, having first removed all trace of the original version 9 install.

As with everything Pinnacle, that caused problems: none of the Hollywood FX worked, although it has to be said I've never found any need for them! So I installed the 9.3.5 patch, but still no HFX. Eventually, in desperation, I did a "maintenance install" (i.e. ran the install program again without uninstalling first), then installed the 9.3.5 patch once again. Miraculously, it now all works properly.

Interestingly, I've never had any delay when adding the Alpha Magic transitions. I just drag them down to the timeline, press play and there they are, rendered in the preview window. Only the more complex treatments like noise reduction take a few seconds of processing time.

When I tried the Ulead VideoStudio 8 demo, every single little edit made the program pause for 2-3 seconds, which I found incredibly frustrating.

[laser]

Thanks Origin. I'll attempt a format and an install of Studio 9 rather than an upgrade, afterall there is no need to upgrade from 8 to 9 on a clean system.