Avid Technology announced the latest version of its wildly popular consumer video editing software package, Pinnacle Studio 11, set to ship next month. Now the software is offered in Basic, Plus, and Ultimate versions.
If you don’t need to edit HD, the Basic version for $49 will probably do everything you need. Bump up to the $99 Plus version and you can edit HD videos and also burn HD DVDs. Another 30 bucks gives you Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, unlocking chromakey and film-look effects, panning and zooming tools and a few audio tweaking toys.
Sounds good, but the previous version of this software sucked. Find out more:
This used to be the most popular video editing software in the world for good reason—it’s traditionally been easy to use and well-priced. Let’s hope Avid has fixed the disastrous problems with its crash-prone and balky-to-install versions 10.0 and 10.5 of Pinnacle Studio, which almost sunk the entire franchise.
Beyond that, we wish the company would just release one version of Studio with all the features intact, rather than crippling it two different ways and confusing the issue with all these various versions. Even so, Pinnacle Studio is a great value if you don’t feel like spending five times more for Apple Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro.
Product Page [Avid Technology]
Barry Sharp
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 3:26 PMI purchased a Panasonic HDC-SD9 video camera from Harvey Norman and it was supplied as a special deal complete with Pinnacle Studio Plus all packed in the 1 box and as a complete package. The problem is that Pinnacle Studio Plus will only operate using the I394 Fire wire port and the Panasonic HDC-SD9 camera does not have a I394 firewire capability, therefore the software is completely useless with this camera. Harvey Norman will not do anything about the problem as they claim there is nothing wrong with the camera. Panasonic Australia will not do anything as they claim it is a problem for Pinnacle to work out, and they cannot be contacted.
My advice is, stay away from any of these companies as none of them will support you.