MySoftwareOutlet: Software: Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12

Advanced Search

View Cart Checkout

Location: Home » Software » Graphics » Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12

August 29, 2008

Related Categories

•

Graphics

Exclusive Feature

New--Pro video tools
Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 includes professional caliber tools for complete control of your productions.

Boris Graffiti--title & graphic animation
The most innovative titling tools in the industry are now at your fingertips. Easily craft sophisticated title animations including type on text, text on a path, jitter and randomization. Create 3D text with bump maps and reflections. An expansive Style Palette and the Boris Library Browser provide fast access to hundreds of preset effects and styles.

Magic Bullet Looks--Pro film styles
Whatever the location, the look of your footage sets the mood. Now you can define the style of your video or film, regardless of on-set conditions, with powerful imaging tools. Choose from more than a hundred Look presets, all neatly organized into 10 categories, to help set the mood for everything from a wedding to a film festival winner.

proDAD VitaScene--lighting, glows & more
Now you can achieve sophisticated effects and transitions that contribute greatly to the style and mood of your project: light rays, color matching, artistic film styles, and much more. Now it's easy to add those subtle details that give you professional looking results.

BONUS:
Green Sheet (approx. 5.95 ft x 5.58 ft) included in retail box version of Studio Ultimate version 12. Essential for creating high quality Chroma Key effects.

Complete HD Workflow

Your Story--Now in Dazzling HD
Pinnacle Studio Plus works natively with HDV and AVCHD footage. Native HD support means you'll get the same pristine quality from your original source all the way to final output--without transcoding and in real-time. You can even combine projects that mix standard and high definition video and photos for a final result in full HD resolution

Built-in HD Disc Burning
Burn your Hollywood-style movies on DVD and HD DVD format discs on standard DVD media. Natively author Blu-ray format discs with full motion menus. Or make AVCHD format discs on standard DVDs to play on Blu-ray players.

New--Pinnacle Montage:
Watch your memories come alive

Enjoy multi-track power without the complexity
Thanks to fantastic pre-built templates designed by professional producers and artists, Pinnacle Montage automatically generates all the necessary titles, effects and animations.
Create multi-layer effects
Access to Picture-in-Picture, Chroma Key or A/B editing with two video tracks at the tip of your fingers.
Mix your media together
Use all your media--photos, video, and music--to create a Hollywood-style movie.
11 themes with +80 templates including Video Wall, Album, Seasons and more

Additional Features

It's all in the Timeline.
With its sleek, scalable interface, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 represents a stunning leap forward in workflow refinement and ease of use. Directly import your digital videos, photos and audio from a wide range of devices including DV, HDV and AVCHD camcorders, and digital still cameras. Automatic scene detection and clip creation gets your project off to a great start. You'll be editing your movie, fast!

Optimized for performance
Unleash the power of your computer. This means a faster, smoother experience while you work and in your final output.

Real-time multi-track editing
Create advanced effects like Chroma Key, graphics overlay and Picture-in-Picture (PIP).

Key frame-able 2D/3D motion graphics
Pick from hundreds of effects and transitions, and preview them in full quality, even in HD. If you ever need even more creative variety, add to your effects library with just a few simple clicks.

Scorefitter music generator
Automatically generate a rich soundtrack to match the length of your movie; now with 40+ source tracks that feature more choice, higher fidelity and increased accuracy.

New--Web publishing simplified
What fun is capturing your memories if you don't share them? In just One-Click share your movies with the world on popular web sites like YouTube and Yahoo! Video

New--Refined audio editing
New digital controls and monitors to add a dimension in sound to your movie.

Clean up and rejuvenate
Improve audio tracks, clean up video, enhance color, remove noise, and fix poor lighting to restore old, damaged footage--automatically.

New--Even more ways to share
Output movies to Sony PSP, Apple iPod, DivX certified players and even 3GP mobile phones. Export to Flash video too.

Built-in HD Disc Burning
Burn DVD, HD DVD and AVCHD format discs on standard DVD media. Natively author Blu-ray format discs with full motion menus.

Scalable user interface
Keeps tools at your fingertips. Adjustable windows are perfect for widescreen monitors.

Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Solid Home Video Editing Package August 29, 2008
The "Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12" package is a solid video editing and publication package. Having used previous versions of the Pinnacle Studio software, there really wasn't much of a learning curve for me to come up speed on the great old features or pick up the newer additions. I should point out that I selected this software for my children to use since my higher-end software (Vegas Pro 8) is a little more complicated. Here are my observations:

Pros:
* Easy to use timelines allow for intuitive "drag and drop" insertion of video footage, transitions, and sounds
* Easy to use footage editing tools make short work of trimming footage
* SmartMovie and Montage templates are easy to use and really liven up home videos (Montage is great for opening scenes)
* ScoreFitter is a very powerful and easy to use tool for generating and adding mood setting background music to the video footage - VERY useful tool
* Powerful Effect Plug-ins (including "Dream Glow", which is activated by registering the software)
* Lot's of effects and transitions (be sure to read the printed manual and package inserts for using these)
* One of the best DVD Menu creation tools of any non-pro software available
* Easy to use Picture-in-Picture (PIP) and Chroma Key (Green Screen) tool - The included Green Screen material is good quality and worth about 1/3 of the package price

Cons:
* Only two video tracks available on the Timeline (Why I deducted one "STAR" from my rating) - This limits the ability to do PIP and titles, or multiple PIPs, at the same time - The work around to this is to do the first PIP, render the video, then import the new video and add the next PIP/Title overlay (repeat as needed)
* The advanced plug-ins are not as intuitive as the rest of the program (read the manual and included package inserts)

Comments:
* Other reviewers have reported stability issues, I have not had any issues on "Vista Ultimate" with 4 Gigs RAM
* Another good package in this price range is Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro Pack and should be considered as a viable alternative (less themes, an additional video track)

Overall, I am very pleased with "Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12" and it's ease of use. The huge number of effects, transitions, and themes will keep this software fresh for the foreseeable future. Recommended!

5 out of 5 stars

Need to edit? August 28, 2008
I first got a Pinnacle product four years ago, Studio 8. It worked great, did what I needed it to do, and that was that. But it was designed for XP, and when I got a new computer that ran Vista, it wouldn't work. I tried Corel Videostudio 11 Plus, and while it promised the world, I had great difficulty getting it to do even simple things. Then I remembered Pinnacle, which is made by AVID. For those in the business, AVID is the standard editing system for films and television, and I've spent many a day supervising shows inside professional editing rooms. So I got Studio 12 Plus. Right away I got to work, and it was great. Then I was given the opportunity to try Studio 12 Ultimate, and it's even better. All 3 Studio programs (Basic, Plus and Ultimate) provide easy to learn time-line editing, but Plus and Ultimate add more bells and whistles, primarily, titles and effects. Of course, if you are just stringing together your home movies or making a slide show, you might not need all the extras. But if you need to add professional looking titles and professional effects to your presentations -- which I do -- then you will be really happy. I was already a happy user of Studio 12 Plus, now I am an ecstatic user of Studio 12 Ultimate. It requires a light bit of patience to understand all of its functions and capabilities, but trust me, it is worth it. I give it 5 stars.

5 out of 5 stars

Excellent value for the money August 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

About fifty years ago I dreamed of becoming a film maker. Things weren't like they are today with hundreds of universities and thousands of elementary and high schools offering courses in film and video. Opportunities fell into three major areas: TV commericals, feature films and non-commercial films for training, teaching, fundraising and the like. The latter was the easiest to get into.

The basic tool was the Arriflex 16mm camera. Very expensive, so you rented one. And the lights. And the Movieola for editing. Production for even simple films was an involved process. And everything was expensive.

Today, of course, a high quality video camera costs a couple of thousand dollars, but cameras perfectly aqdequate for most purposes are only a few hundred. The biggest revolution, in my opinion, has been in editing. Way back when (it is truly painful to so old, you mean almost 50 years ago), even the simplest dissolve from one shot to another had to be done in the lab - the very expensive lab.

Now you plunk down about a hundred follars or so and you get a video editing package like Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12. Pinnacle Systems, by the way, is owned by Avid Technology, the granddaddy of digital video editing.

Ultimate is a very nice package for the beginning through mid-amateur videomaker. It is limited to two video tracks which simply aren't enough for truly serious production work, but more than adequate for many, if not close to most, ordinary purposes.

The package is rich with features. It will handle most widely used video formats, with the glaring exception of Quicktime. It handles Blu-Ray and AVCHD. The program has a plethora of tools: color correction, video and sound effects, a rather cool background music generator called Scorefitter, a kind of gimmicky Montage" themes tool which can be thought of as sort of pre-packaged look for your video, Chromakey, titling software, DVD menu creation and a whole bunch more. Frankly if you want a detailed description of everything included with this package, a visit to the Pinnacle website would be well considered.

There is a lot of substance to this package, much of it supplied by well known third-party programs like boris Graffiti (titling), Magic Bullet Looks Studio, proDAD VitaSAcene, (the last two are video effects, programs)and SmartSound music and sound effects. Don't get too excited, though: most of these packages are more like samplers. Still there's enough there to satisfy a lot of needs.

One irritating feature of Ultimate is that Pinnacle wants to sell you things: training videos, more special effects packages - and the third-party suppliers want to sell you things as well. The frightening thing is that after you've used Ultimate for a while, you may want to buy them!

Output to DVD, video files of various formats and the now ubiquitous YouTube is simple and dependable.

Ultimate is a fairly easy program to use with a relatively clean interface which is guided by a drag-and-drop philosophy. Still, reading the manual is highly recommended if you want to get the most from Studio Ultimate.

All in all, this is an excellent package for the beginner use up to the point where they might be considered a moderately advanced amateur. It certainly is not competition for Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, but most people don't need anywhere near that kind of power. It is, in my opinion, more straightforward and easier to use than Adobe Premiere Elements.

I have it running on an Intel Core 2 based machine with With Windows XP Pro SP2 and only 2 GB of RAM. So far it hasn't crashed once and responsiveness has been more than adequate.

Overall, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12 is a very nice package and packs a lot of power for the price. Fairly easy to use and stable. It is certainly not competition for top-tier video editing programa, but for most people who just want to make their home videos look better or learn production techniques, it will do very nicely.

Jerry

4 out of 5 stars

All-around prosumer/consumer video package August 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

First, like several other reviews I am a prosumer photographer but I only dabble with video. I've been recording HD video with my Canon TX1 for close to a year now and thought Pinnacle Studio Ultimate would be a good compliment for me.

Installation was a snap with several customization options. It was the typical install without much fuss. I have used the software on both my Windows Vista machine and a Windows XP virtual machine. After a good bit of use, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate v12 has performed well on both setups.

I have been impressed by the number of templates and themes that are available in the software for menus, text, graphics, etc. Several of the features and plug-ins (such as Magic Bullet and Graffiti) are very neat but seem to be limited in overall capabilities. Coming from an amateur video guy that may not mean much, but I felt limited in some of the options. It was either take the default or deal with it. I say that with caution, as I also felt that the software package allowed me to create very nice videos with just a few clicks. Perfect for the consumer or amateur, but likely limiting for the professional.

The software ran well on my machine (but I do have a PC stocked with plenty of hard drive space, RAM, and CPU power). The export options were varied with everything to web publishing to mobile devices. Luckily I do not have any experience with Pinnacle's customer service as it appears that many customers have had complaints.

At the end of the day I consider this to be a good purchase. Are there better packages out there? Absolutely. However, for a consumer that dabbles in video I find this to be an excellent choice for the price. I may not be able to create superior videos, but Pinnacle Studio Ultimate does offer me the ability to kick things up a notch.

4 out of 5 stars

Great program for consumers--not for pros! August 21, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

Let's put our expectations in check. This is not a professional video editing program. Pinnacle Studio 12 is an amazingly easy to master, simple to use program aimed for consumer video editors. As I noted in my USA TODAY video review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYZYjRLpvk&feature=user) it's a program to learn with; eventually you will want to step up to a more advanced program like Sony Vegas or Final Cut. Thanks to a cool new feature, called "Montage," you can create a "video wall," of multiple images--a great way to open your show. I demonstrate on the USA TODAY Talking Tech web video show.