PRODUCT REVIEW
Pinnacle Rises to Top With Studio 11

Avid Technology has long had a sterling reputation among video professionals for its editing systems. However, while widely respected with the pro set, its consumer offerings have been at worst ornery and at best, disappointing. Then the company acquired Pinnacle.

Pinnacle's heritage in consumer video on a PC stretched back to the days of low-octane computing, so it knew a thing or two about what worked with desktop dabblers and what didn't. That knowledge was just what Avid needed to bring its video verve to the consumer market.

The pair's latest offering, Pinnacle Studio 11, is a watershed product, one that raises the bar for consumer video editing on a PC.

Porsche Without Mag Wheels

There are three editions of the software -- Standard (US$49.99), Plus ($99.99) and Ultimate ($129.99) -- but even the economy version is a very robust application, less a Ford than a Porsche (minus the mag wheels, perhaps).

This latest release of the program has been written to run under Windows Vista, but I found it perfectly happy running under good old XP, too.

All three versions of the program share some new features.

The interface has been redesigned. Most notably, this release of the application has a wide preview window. That makes editing widescreen video -- video with an aspect ratio of 16:9, the ratio used for high-definition content -- easier to work with.

A slider control has also been added to resize the preview window. That lets you claim more screen real estate for your timeline when editing a video.

Timeline View

In timeline view, you have access to five tracks.

A video track displays your video or any still shots you may want to incorporate into your production.

The native sound for the video is displayed graphically in a track beneath your video.

There's also a track that shows any titles and overlays you add to a shot.

Overlays supported by the software include picture-in-picture, which lets you run a clip in a window in another clip, and chromakey effects.

Green Screen

Chromakey effects allow you to shoot a subject in front of mono-color backdrop -- usually green or blue -- then add video or still images behind them during the editing process. A green drop cloth is included with he package.

There's two more more sound tracks -- one for sound effects and another for music.

In addition to the timeline view, there's a storyboard view. It displays only thumbnails of your clips. That view facilitates dragging and dropping around clips in your production.

The third element of the interface is a palette where media items are displayed -- thumbnails of your video clips, transitions, titles, photos and graphics, sound effects and music.

Web Video Creation

With this version of Studio, Pinnacle has improved its importation features, making it easier to set up locations for your video files and for renaming them.

Another new feature in Studio is Scorefitter. It includes a library of MIDI music that can be styled to fit the mood of your video. Better yet, it will automatically trim its music to perfectly fit the length of your production.

With Web video so popular these days, Studio's new Web Upload feature is especially timely. It will automatically turn a video project into a file suitable for viewing in cyberspace and upload it from within Studio to some of the most popular video viewing sites on the Web.

HD Ready

If high-definition video is your thing, you'll have to go beyond the standard edition of Studio. Both the Plus and Ultimate releases support HD workflow.

Even if you don't have an HD video camera, you may still find HD features useful, since any digital camera that can produce stills of 3.1 megapixels or better can be used to produce HD slideshows.

Don't worry about buying an HD disc burner. Studio will burn HD video to a traditional DVD disc.

Truly Ultimate

Although ordinarily the use of the word "ultimate" to describe software borders on hyperbole, that's not the case with Studio. Its Ultimate version contains three plug-in programs that give Herculean muscle to the editing package.

VitaScene is a special effects package that can add real pizazz to a clip.

You can give it a cinematic "look" -- turn it into black-and-white or oversaturate its colors, for example -- or add shimmering light effects to video and text.

Unlike the cheesy effects found in many consumer video editing programs, VitaScene's effects actually add interest, not distraction, to a shot.

Studio Ultimate also contains SoundSoap, a truly easy way to clean up the sound in a video clip.

Then there's MovingPicture. That plug-in, which is used by professionals at places like the BBC, CNN and the Discovery Channel, lets you create elaborate pan-and-zoom effects on still images.

Packed with features and a joy to use, this latest version of Pinnacle Studio will release the creative juices of anyone who wants to edit video on the desktop.