Pinnacle Studio 12

How is the stability of the software? I used to use Pinnacle Studio 8 but eventually gave up as it was too frustrating. I found I had to save a project every 2 mins before the inevitable crash lost my work.

Dear Mr Morris,

First of all thank you very much for so useful article. I bought a program “Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate” few days ago. I have used Studio 11 before that without any problems. But now I have a HD video camcorder and I need to make films with full HD resolution. It is because I have bought version 12 Ultimate.
But unfortunately I cannot burn my HD films on the blu-ray disks! The program (Studio) is crashing and closing on the end of counting files (before a disk burning) without any comments. Terrible! I don’t know what is the plausible reason. Do you had any similar problems during your using and testing that program? (By the way, I have a Microsoft Vista32 SP1 operation system). I am very sorry that I have no any possibility to ask somebody else about that problem. Most of all that have no forum about Studio 12 version at the official website of Pinnacle Systems yet...
Thanks again.
Eugene Soldatenkov
St.Petersburg, Russia

Eugene, I have exactly the same problem with “Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate”. Also the same operating system, etc.. As a matter of fact, it crashes already when I start working on the sound effects. As soon as I pull down onto the track to work on the effects, it crashes. And when I want to work on the full HD 1920x1080p the pics jump, although I got a GTS 8800 video card and 3 GB of Memory. I just can't figure out what the problem is.
Anyhow, sounds like an old AVID problem. Absolutely ridiculous. The best thing would be to switch to Mac & Final Cut Pro, but I don't want to spend the money for this right now.
VollGeilerDirector
Vancouver BC, Canada

I decided to update everything and bought a new PC (with Vista 32 SP1 and 3GB of RAM), an HD camcorder and Studio 12 Ultimate. What a mistake! I have wasted hours trying to get Studio to output a rendered video of a friend's wedding back to the DV tape. Studio either crashes or simply refuses to output. Hours on the Live help line have produced lots of questions like "Is it plugged in" but no answers. All of my questions like "Is this a bug which needs fixing?" are simply ignored. It is so frustrating and time wasting - they should not sell a product until it has been thoroughly tested. There are other problems too, like the player window going blank as a scene changes in the Edit mode.

I liked pinnacle 12 studio so much that within 4 hours I asked for my money back, naturally no response from pinnacle. The problems are--It freezes all the time and for some reason even with the pinnacle hub for s video and analogue inputs it destroys the pictures from a perfectly working canon L2 hi 8 camcorder.The effects are kids play, I mean how many ways can you wipe a scene, side to side, up and down, diagonal and a lot of other goofy stuff.Talk about beating a dead horse. There is no useful imigination to it , unless of course if your 7 years old!! I bought powerdirector 7 and it is a lot more mature in its editing capibilities. It has black and white, sketch, old movie and a lot of other usefull stuff.I only wish it had a few of the pinnacle fades. If you have never edited on pc before find some other softwear than than pinnacle. Oh by the way if you want support good luck understanding a tech, unless of course if you are fluent in Indian english, much like their softwear,,,,useless............

I bought this over a week ago, have about 16 hours into it and no results. First after the download, I had to reinstall, then it would not allow me to download the dolby digital 2.5. Finally after three days, many e mails, and 3 live chats it downloaded. Now I was able to capture my files that were on the hard drive of the computer. I can edit, add music...pick the source dvd... click to make a disc, it freezes up my computer and does absolutely nothing. I have tried to call them, I have e mailed about 15 times explaining over and over the porblem and get no where. I called circuit city they will not allow me to return it. Since the company obviously are inept, I am out 138.00. any suggestions????

I was a die hard, I purchased all the versions from Studio 8 onwards up to version 11 plus upgrades and found each one progressively worse. After sales support didn't help either. But I was tempted once again to purchase version 12 until I read the previous reviews. Thank you for stopping me from wasting my money again.

I bought studio 10.8 with add ons some years ago and using it on windows XP ran into all sorts of problems. I upgraded to Vista when it first came out and ran into all manner of problems. I was looking to upgrade to version 12 thinking by now it must be up to speed, thank goodness I have read the reviews here. I will not make that mistake, sorry Pinacle. Does anyone have a better solution?
Thanks Mark

Have been using Studio-9 thru 9.4.xxx with good results until this past week. Dual-boot W2GPro and Vista HP 64-bit, 4x320GB SATA's, 8GB Ram, 3.2GB Dual Intel,
4GB Ready Boost (USB stick), dual LightScribe DVD's, etc (no problem with inadequate resources is what I'm saying). Anyway, my latest project, a bit more complicated than previous ones renders normally until about the third pass, maybe half-way to completion of DVD, and then ...hangs there... forever. Have changed the rendering to an empty SATA drive, reduced my display and saturation, closed off the internet, AV, other items not needed for rendering video, to no avail. Reloaded Pinnacle, reloaded the updates and drivers, no help there. Lately when opening Pinnacle an advertisement pops up offering the Studio-12 (basic) update for maybe 29.oo or so. Anyway, after hours of studying reviews of Studio-12 and Sony Vegas, have about decided to go with Vegas. The thing that kind of irritates me is that I bought Studio-9 w/breakout box directly from Pinnacle for about $200.oo and have tried several times to get back in touch with them, but my original customer password and user name doesn't work. Emailed them, they set another password, it doesn't work either. Feels something like a runaround. I'm getting to that point where time wasted with non-working items is worth more than the cost of dumping them for something that works.
Not saying that Studio-12 is not worth the time or price, or that it wouldn't work, just that I'm a bit hesitant to continue wasting time. So Googled the term "problems with pinnacle studio 12" and found your posts addressing the exact questions I was trying to solve regards Studio-12 and Vista 64.bit. Thanks for the input.

Update on Pinnacle 12:
Purchased Pinnacle 12 (basic) online, the download + backup disk (to be mailed). Download went well, loaded on Vista-64 OS like a rocket, reached down into the (inactive) W2GPro Drives and retrieved projects I had done prior on Pinnacle-W2GPro. Also got a popup from Pinnacle with two activation codes for premium content that I had with Studio 9.4.xx, and one I hadn't even known about. Edited and rendered a small retrieved file from the old version over on W2GPro side (18-minute - 28,000 frames - with audio and background music) video shot on Panasonic VDR-0210 mini-disk, rendered it so fast (a few minutes, 10 at the most) I wondered if it had actually worked, but it did. Sizzled a LightScribe logo on the disk, a decorative cover for the crystal case and sent it off to the people who asked me to record ther party. Felt really good to have it go so well. So decided to download a new mini-disk from the camera on a recent vacation and make a video of all the mountain colors.
That's when the problem raised it's ugly head: Pinnacle Studio 12 on Vista 64 (at least) cannot capture from the Pinnacle Studio Deluxe V2 Breakout Box (Now called Pinnacle 700 PCI). Tried different drivers from Pinnacle (11.50.0.42619) just in case the ones downloaded were incorrect. No improvement. Spent a lot of time trying different things to no avail, so have an email request into Pinnacle describing the problem and asking what I need to fix the problem.
SO, in the meanwhile, I downloaded (free trial) Sony Vegas, and it couldn't use the Pinnacle Breakout Box either. It identified it as "Pinnacle 700 PCI" in the choice dropdown menu, but then said it couldn't use it after setting it as choice capture device. And Sony Vegas doesn't load on the other side of this box (W2GPro) so dumping Pinnacle for Sony Vegas isn't an option. But the Sony Vegas people were really nice.
The way Pinnacle 12 worked on the editing and rendering phases, I'm more satisfied with it than with the prior V-9.4.xx iteration, and that's saying something because I'm not easily satisfied. So if Pinnacle can't come up with something to make Studio 12 happy with the Breakout Box, then I think what I'll do is give this camera to my Grandson, buy one that uses a firewire or USB link to the computer, and get on with making movies. If Pinnacle comes up with a fix, I'll let you know what it is, otherwise you can figure I've changed cameras to provide a different means of importing my videos rather than the Blue PCI Breakout Box.
Hope this didn't bore you too much, and hope it might help someone. If you have the Blue Breakout Box ("Studio Deluxe V-2", AKA "Pinnacle 700 PCI"), you're going to have problems capturing video with both Pinnacle 12 on Vista (at the least) and Sony Vegas won't read the device either. Best Regards, Codejunkie.

I have tried Pinnacle Software up to the Ultimate Version 11. I refuse to upgrade to 12 or higher. The software is JUNK! and crashes more than anything ever seen. Tech support is of no help whatsoever... Its fine for simply projects but anything worthy to be called a real production piece freezes up, terminates the program unexpectedly, and fails to burn the finished work. You'll have less frustrations using MovieMaker for simple jobs. Its pointless to spend hours working on a project and then the software can't produce the finished product. Serif Movieplus seems to be the way to go ... much nicer and it delievers as promised. No more Studio software for me EVER!