Average Customer Review: ( 36 customer reviews )
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37 of 38 found the following review helpful:
 One star is One too many Jul 28, 2006
By Bill G. Holder
"climaxsprings"
Let me sum up this software "total junk"
Pinnacle will give you one free support phone call for help, then $25 for the next call.
They give you free email support, but answer everything but your problem. They try and blame it on Windows XP, and will have you reload Windows.
I owned Studio 8, and it worked fine. Went to Studio 9, and had a few problems. Upgraded to Studio 9 Plus, and after a week of trying to make it render my projects with no sucess, and crash after crash, I removed it from my machine.
They sent me an offer of their all new 10.5 plus upgrade, Hollywood FX, 3 of their Premium packs, and a hat that says Studio 10 on it. This said that the program had been rebuilt from bottom up. This program should be called "Crash after Crash", and the only thing that works is the hat.
If you feel the urge to waste $100, and hours of your time, just buy this product.
Look at the reviews on Studio 10, and the other Studio products, and most only have one star. Out of over 100 reviews over 95% had one star. I found one with 5 stars, but looking at the reviewers other reviews he is obviously an employee, or share holder in the company. He wrote a 1 star review on a Sony competative product, and 5 star reviews for other Pinnacle products that you would not own if 10.5 worked.
35 of 36 found the following review helpful:
If you would like to raise your blood pressure 300%, this is 4 U! Jul 03, 2006
By angela F
"student"
I had purchased this item because the university had the version 9 and it was nice. Teacher had forwarned us
"Do not buy this product... I am only letting you guys use this because this is the most easiest software for video editing"
Did I listen? No. Silly me purchased this for use in my home because I didn't want to spend hours doing this in the cold school lab. I took hours of video footage. I also used my own voice in some videos like I was suppose to...
When it was time to upload my videos into "movies" and save it for an AVI form... it worked in three of my movies... then... crashed...and crashed... and crashed... and crashed....
So my final project for this class is half done. My presentation for my class was as if I didn't put hours and hours of editing since I was only able to show the 2 out of the 10 videos I did for the class. Thanks to Pinnacle and this POS software, I am expecting an extremely bad grade.
Never buy this product. Ever. Go and get some other video program from other sources. You can download a nice one to preview it and if you like it you can pay the same price. NEVER buy this product.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
From good to bad Jul 22, 2006
By Was Loyal
I've been a user of Pinnacle version 8 (which I loved), and needed to update to a version that could burn dual layer DVDs. What a disappointment this "upgrade" has been. Crash after crash. What is most disappointing is that Pinnacle built in a feed back system so the users could "help" them develop a better product. This means to me that they knowingly released bad code, and used their customers as guinny pigs while sticking us for a $100. Guess what, I don't want to help Pinnacle build a better product. I want a product that works when I purchase it.
Lesson learned. Next time I read a bad review on a product, I'm staying away.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
 Get out your wallet...the purchase price is just the begining! Jul 19, 2006
By S. Monken
"Just want to make movies"
I have studio plus 10.5, not the titanium version, but I am writing my review here because amazon does not appear to carry the standard version.
First, if you do not have a firewire port, you are not able to import your footage from your camera, regardless of what type of connection you have. Secondly, you are unable to import footage from a DVD. The manual and online help clearly say this is possible, but it just isn't.
The last and biggest gripe is the features. Only a portion of the editing tools or effects are made available to you with this version. If you want to do certain things, like import mpeg3 video, you must purchase an activation code!!! Yes I said PURCHASE. If you want the extra features, you must PURCHASE activation codes for each one separately which will nickel and dime you to death (the only one I looked into cost $3.99) This program seems more like something you would download off of tucows to try, rather than purchase at a store.
I can't get past my frustration with having to pay to do every single thing I want to for me to recommend this product for what it does have.
12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Good Concept but Product Does Not Live Up Jan 19, 2007
By K. Rayman
"Webkennection.com"
I have been using Studio 8 for some time to edit videos, add titles and menus, and adjust audio and video. Other than an occasional crash, Studio 8 actually worked well, was easy to use, and had many features only found in high-end video production products.
I was excited when Pinnacle came out with 10.5 Titanium. I had read the reviews about Version 10 and problems, but I figured they were now on version 10.5 and all the problems had been worked out. Whoa, was I ever wrong. First of all, Studio 10.5 crashed when installing the bonus CD that came with it. Next, the activation key that comes with registering the bonus did not work. Tryed again, reinstall and activate or unlock a feature and still did not work. Okay, so I can't use that feature, lets fire it up and create a video. My editing system is not the newest but by no means is it a slouch either. I have a 1.8gh system with 1gb ram and an 128mb 8x-AGP NVidia graphics card. The first thing I noticed upon reboot is the additional 3 services Pinnacle added to my system startup to slow it down. When I first fired up Studio 10, it took nearly 2 minutes for the program splash to go away and program to come up. I then imported a video from DVD -- another 10 minutes for 40 minute video. Okay, so now I have a video and everything is great, lets start editing. First thing I noticed is wow, this is really, I mean really, slow. Adding a simple text caption takes about 2 minutes after waiting for 3 hour glasses (one to open the add text caption, one to set options, and one to save your text caption and update the video). Next I wanted to check out all the great features of the Titanium edition. Hey, all the features are premium. Okay, I will just click on the link to add this feature. Good Gosh, another $20 bucks for just one feature that I have in version 8. Wait somethings not right. Yep, thats right, got a lot of features that 8 does not have but they are all locked. You have to pay $10 to $20 for each package and there are tons of them. So, I decided to make just a basic video with a basic menu. I created a 12 minute video with 4 chapters and main menu. Next I clicked on Make Movie and Create DVD. Set up to burn to DVD direct and clicked go. After 20 minutes, the menu still had not been rendered. I left the house and came back 4 hours later only to find out it was still rendering movie.
Conclusion: I now have Studio 8 back on my system. I have several systems and loaded Pinnacle Studio 10.5 on a Athlon64 running Vista with 1gb Ram and Radeon 9600 and it is not much better. Both systems were updated to the 10.7 patch. I have numerous problems and not one has been answered by Pinnacle support. My main menus only render black boxes instead of thumbnails. Pinnacles answer is they are aware of this and it will be released as a future feature. Future feature, they had it working fine way back in version 7. If you have hours upon hours to do video editing, have the patience of Job, and can afford to shell out a few hundred dollars for features of which many are in 8, then this is the video editor for you. For everyone else, make sure you try the download from Pinnacle first. You cannot return this product to Pinnacle once it is opened. Their answer is this product is provided without any warranties or guarantees.
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