Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate - PC review

Comments

• I am attracted by the new additional features of this studio 12 ultimate but i am not happy about the upgrade price. The price is almost thesame thing wih full package. I think this is not a good customer service for the existing customers. I am currently using studio 11 ultimate which i boutght about 6-8 months ago now here comes new version which is similar in features to the old ones, of which the upgrade price is amost thesame as full package price. Somebody like me will prefer to go for full package instead of upgrade,but the question is how many pinnacle product do you want to buy within a short period? how many pinnacle software do you want to have at home . If i purchase this new version that will make the total number of 4 pinnacle studio i bought within 1 and half years. Posted by ayo, uk
• ayo, your poor and a broke fellow. Get a second job, dude. Posted by Farnk Aayoosh, usa
• Farnk = a dim-witted troll with poor command his language.
  
  I agree. It would show good customer service for Pinnacle to offer recent purchasers (6m - 1yr?) a free or very inexpensive upgrade. However, that's their option. Increasingly, there are very competitive products available. Posted by John, USA
• I agree with your underlying sentiment, ayo. The moment some company produces a similarly instinctive interface, Pinnacle will lose business, in part due to their user-unfriendly upgrade practices.
  
  I bought a Pinnacle product a couple years back, liked it so much I bought additional features, and soon thereafter an (overpriced) upgrade. And with a new PC, installing the suite with upgrades/added features is like pulling teeth. Previous activation keys no longer work, and customer service is shoddy.
  
  As I said, the moment someone replicates Pinnacle's intuitive editing interface, they'll be in trouble. You can neglect your customers only so long. Posted by Phil, USA
• I have been a user of Pinnacle since version 7.0 and have purchased all of the upgrades as they became available. I upgraded to 12.0 about 6 weeks ago, and have had numerous problems since then.
  
  To start, when the program would be rendering a file, it would show an export error message and lock up. If I rebooted the computer, I could then try to render again only to get the same error message at a different spot in the process. After about 10 hours corresponding with Live Chat support, and following their recommendations, uninstalled and reinstalled the product twice. After this did not correct the problem, they provided a key code to unlock MPEG-4. Now the rendering issue occurs rarely.
  
  Another issue arose with the files created by a failed rendering process. If I went into Windows Explorer or My Computer to delete the file, once the mouse hovered over the file, I got a message that Explorer had a serious error and needed to close. After clicking OK, Explorer closed. After several attempts to delete the file and getting the same error message, I was able to delete the file by holding down the left mouse button and dragging around the file name. Using the drop-down menus, I could then delete the files.
  
  I also have an issue with losing frames while importing the video from the camera via the software. I have lost as many as 11,000+ frames from a 60 minute video.
  
  If I close the program and restart it, the loss of frames starts immediately. If I restart the computer and then restart the program, there is a 50/50 chance that it will capture the video with no frames dropped.
  
  I have been hesitant to contact Live Support based on my previous experience with the rendering issue. Since I am dependent on the software, I don't have a lot of options.
  
  At random times, the program will either close or freeze. To minimize having issues when restarting the program, I have to restart the computer. Posted by DocWool, United States
• I too have a problem with studio 12. I keep getting Export Error Render Failure message after 7 seconds into uploading my file, i have tried going back to that 7 seconds removed the transistion tween which was dissolve bars and a few seconds around it to see if that worked, then it completly made up its own render failure at 5 seconds!!!!!!!! What the hell is wrong with this program, has it been released with a serious bug that only a pacth can fix if so is there going to be a patch for 12 studios? please the rendering error is a pain and a waste of my money if i cant get this error fixed.
  Dont get me wrong but it is a fantastic program when it works so many things to do, but whats the point of all that bling when you cant even export it as a movie afterwards seems quite hopeless! Please Help! Posted by Richard40, united kingdom
• I am fed up with the upgrade policy. I had no problems with studio 9 creating digtal video I then changed to vista and was told by pinnacle that v 9 would not work with vista, so I bought v 11 this worked fine untill I change to HD video I had nothing but problems. Pinnacle advised me that my computer was not good enough to edit HD video. I have now got a new computer that is well above the spec reccomended by pinnacle. Still having lots of problems now pinnacle are saying that the graphics card is the cause and will need to upgrade to v 12. Theyare giving me a £15 disscount on the upgrade to studio ulitmate but I can buy the software off the net cheaper. Customer service?? Posted by Mick Corcoran, uk
• You need the patience of a saint to run this software. I have Ultimate 12 using a Sony HD camera on ahvdc. Now everthing goes well at the beginning and the end. No problems extracting the appropiate files and no problems cutting a blu ray disk. The problem start if you try to load more than 20 scenes. My PC is relatively new and not sluggish on anything else. However after about 20 scenes each additional scene take longer and longer to load and process. Don't try to shortcut or the program will crash. Having a final 2 hour HD edit took me an entire weekend to create.
  So it has some good points but beware that some of the older bugs still exist. Posted by Paul, UK
• Well, I've been using many video editing programs over the years, Ulead mainly for HD, but now Studio 12.1 offers something very special ... Magic Bullet looks!
  I've paid serious money for this plugin in the past to use on other more expensive `Pro` video editing programs, and here it is in full on Studio 12.1
  
  I film in HD all the time, and since the software update to 12.1 I've had no problems at all on my PC.
  I use a very good HD graphics card, lots of fast Ram and a powerful dual core CPU (AMD 6000) and everything works as smooth as silk.
  The basic package out the box is a different story, you've got to head to Pinnacle's support centre for the lastest update or you'll read many more comments like the ones above. Posted by Chris Bishop, UK
• Richard40 of UK, I have same difficulty. Also, customer service say they will charge customer for any other problems following initial reported problem. Scam! Export Error every time I try to burn DVD or save as file. I tried deleting auxiliary files, and lowering quality from "best" to automatic" with still no luck.
  Paul of UK, I agree with you that you need to be a saint to deal with this software.
  If anyone comes up with ideas please post them somewhere.
  Pinnacle Suckers unite!
  Posted by Shaolin Dude, USA
• Chris Bishop, is the Magic Bullet Looks that's included with Studio 12 Ultimate the FULL program, or a limited one? Does it have the toolbox so that you can adjust all of the settings of the presets?
  
  Need to know so I don't waste any money.
  
  Thanks,
  Kurt. Posted by Kurt Muller, Australia