Pinnacle Studio 8 is an excellent package for novice video editors, with an easy to use interface and intuitive tools. It's a pity the package is let down by persistent bugs.

Pinnacle Studio 8, the company's newest editing app includes DVD authoring, new 3D transitions, and a host of useful, well-integrated editing tools for both the novice and intermediate video editor. Whether you're just getting started or have made your first feature, Pinnacle Studio 8.0 won't disappoint. .

Good support, tentative install
Installation is easy, but in our tests, not glitch-free. When we tried to install the second CD- ROM into Windows 2000, Studio 8's installer attempted to replace some key files that were already installed. If you ignore these warnings, and just leave your files, the program works just fine.

To their credit, though, tech support and documentation for Studio 8 boasts the kind of detail usually reserved for products that gone through many years worth of revisions. In the 258-page manual, you'll find well-written information on every niggling little feature in the program as well as editing and DVD creation tips. The website, open anytime and all the time, is stocked with where you'll find extremely useful user forums, FAQs, drivers, and software updates.
(Editor's note: Since this review was originally written, several bugs have surfaced in the Studio 8 package. Potential consumers would be well advised to check Pinnacle's user forums to ascertain if they're likely to fall into the bug category before purchase.)

Familiar interface, new features
Like the original Studio, Pinnacle divides Studio 8's interface into three main parts: Capture, Edit, and Make a movie. You can control any DV camcorder hooked up to your computers FireWire interface from the Capture section. Here, you'll find two of our favorite features from the old Studio product, Smart Capture (which records video at a lower resolution, sacrificing video quality to save you storage space) and Auto Scene Detection, which now lets you select and organize video clips by date, specific time (say every ten seconds) or by video content (such as a change of scene). Studio 8 can handle digital or analog video, but you can only import AVI or MPEG digital video files. Unfortunately, the more flexible QuickTime gets the shaft.

Another bummer: While most DVD authoring programs encode a single video stream (say the audio/video coming from a camcorder), Studio 8 encodes the DV footage to MPEG, then renders all the transitions and mixes the audio from three tracks to stereo. Although MPEG encoding takes awhile anyway, the whole process takes longer about 1 hour longer than it should.

Fortunately for Pinnacle, Studio's editing tools make up for lost time. Studio 8 now also has two additional editing views, accessible from icons on the top of the Timeline view or as menu selections in the View menu; a Storyboard view (where icons are arranged in grid from top to bottom, with transitions marked as symbols between icons), and a traditional text view, where each edit is literally listed as text one cut after another. The Storyboard view works especially well for quickly assembling a rough cut of your video, and then using the Timeline view to refine your edits.

Burn me, baby
In addition to smooth editing tools, Studio 8 now supports DVD authoring, and when used on a system with a DVD or CD-ROM burner, DVD and VCD burning. Similar to the DVD authoring tools offered by Dazzle DVD Complete or Sonic Solutions MyDVD, Studio 8 uses 27 preset menu designs, which contain elements (such as buttons and moving backgrounds) that you can modify using the new Title Editor window. You can also create opening credits and name titles to play over your video. Just drag and drop to modify transitions or titles. (For example, dragging a left-to-right "Push" transition to the beginning of the clip moves the title into position from left to right.) It's here that the more persistent bugs have surfaced, which is of course the worst time for things to go wrong, just as you're going to finish. Again, we'd recommend a trip to Pinnacle's user forums to see if bugfixes emerge before purchase.

One of Studio's most impressive features is the ability to create chapter settings within the timeline as you edit, so you can go straight to a specific part of your video from the menu. Move the Timeline Scrubber to the section of your video where you want a chapter setting, right click your mouse and then select "insert chapter marker." And viola! Studio 8 automatically places a small chapter marker in the timeline and also adds another button to your DVD menu that shows an image in the button of where you placed the marker--a huge time saver when creating a DVD menu from your video material.

It's a winner
With it's improved video editing features and new DVD authoring capabilities, it's clear that Studio 8 is still the reigning champion of the low-end editing tools. Although Pinnacle needs to add QuickTime support and fix the current run of bugs, this program's elegance and simplicity make it the ideal first video-editing program for beginners who want to do both video editing and DVD authoring.

Pinnacle Systems Studio 8.0
Company: Pinnacle Systems
Price: AU$279, Upgrade AU$149
Distributor: Pinapplehead Distribution
Phone: 1800 657 601

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