Others say...

"I'd give it a no star...."
While you can ah.....sorta edit....Video capture lags badly. When I say this let me also say that my machine is an Athlon64 3100+ with 512MB DDR 400, ATI 9600 128MB video (How I got the software)250gig 7200 ata 133 drive and it has done nothing but drop frames faster that it gets 'em....Yeah I have went thru all of the settings blah DMA blah defragement blah etc.... so when I transfer to DVD from VHS AND after waiting for the (Choke) render (like 3 hrs)well....jerky video on DVD is what I end up with.....Lets face it, pinnacle is crap...I am just glad that I did not have to purchase the software....Sure would like to know of somthing that actually works....

"Unreliable, more hassle than it is worth"
I received this software free with an ATI video card, and frankly, it's not worth that. The user interface and what you are supposed to be able to do ith it are all very good concepts. A neat product. However, if you plan on putting together anything longer than a few minutes worth of clips, this software doesn't seem to be able to handle it. we have about 18 minutes worth of videos, pictures, transitions, titles, etc. Most of the time the sound doesn't work at all. Sometimes the vide sound works, but not the background music. Sometimes it all works. We chopped our project into 8 "sub" projects, and the sound is working somewhat reliably again. We tried burning the project to a disc, but it crashed 10 seconds or so into the process every time. a patch seems to have addressed that, but now we are trying to figure out how to make a single DVD (based off of a single menu) with the 8 sub projects we are stuck with since the one big project will not work properly. Sadly, like most retail software these days - this seems to be a pretty good idea that had aboslutely no quality control whatsoever. As a computer programmer who works with lots of digital images/photoshop - I know my PC has the horespower - this software just doesn't work very well. This is the type of software that frustrates many computer users - when a program is supposed to do something and it simply doesn't. Or, sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn. Or, sometimes it does a little bit and sometimes... I've read that most video software at this price level is simlar, but I certainly will not pay for a pinnacle product after this experience. Hopefully there is something more reliable out there.

"Complete garbage!"
I agree with Dino "nada"s June 10, 2003 review. Way too much time rendering and compiling a 1 hour 25 minute video. On average, the program would crash twice before anything (if anything) is copied onto a DVD. By that time, more than half a day is wasted.

Amazon.com requires that a rating of one to five stars be awarded in order for my review to be posted. I am forced to rate this product a one star; one star too many.

Enough said!

"Great Editor, not great authoring"
This is a great editor. Then again, you must remember to check out pinnaclesys.com to get the patches to make it updated. I had few problems with it. In the 30+ editing hours I used to make a movie, it did crash twice, but those were 30 hours of intensive use. The features that I liked best were the simple drag and drop . I give it 4 stars on the basis of an editing software.

Authoring, on the other hand, is a different story. It takes hours to encode and output to a dvd. The menus are nice, if they fit your situation(which they usually do). I needed a program with complete control over the menu.

Pros:
User friendly for average user
Transitions are easily used
Automatic shift entire assets when you drop a scene into timeline
Cheaper than version 9
Scene detection (splits movie into scenes)
Titles look good
All work retained after a crash

Cons:
It is slow detecting scenes from video
Titles are a bit difficult to arrange
Crashes
DVD burning options


My suggestion: But Pinnacle 8 instead of 9 to save some money, they are practically identical(I have both and prefer 8). Edit with PS8 and output your movie as an MPG(which takes significantly less time). Then use a program like DVD-Lab (free 30 day trial), which is made to author dvd's, to burn.

"Pinnacle Studio 8: Perfect programme"
Review : Marijn Bouwhuis, 14 years old, (holland)
I think it's totally ridiculous how people think of pinnacle, they are just taking the piss. It just works well and probably their computers don't function well. The people who made this reviews are very negative about pinnacle. E.g. they say that it takes a long time to open Studio 8 (Same as Pinnacle), but when I open the programme it takes about 10 seconds to open. The effects are of very good quality, and you can do a lot of combinations. It's very easy to work with Pinnacle, and maybe the people who wrote this reviews want something more professional, but I don't know what I could use in this case, I already asked many people for a better programme, but they don't know I think the people should not blame Pinnacle when they want something which is more professional. They should just instantly buy something more professional.
Now why do I think Pinnacle is a very good quality programme.
You can upload videos straight from your camera into pinnacle, it's carefully explained and very easy to perfrom. You can also upload music and put it all into your movie.
When your movie is finished it's very easy to burn it on a dvd disk, it's even possible to do this with pinnacle.
Now I made a screenshot (with the bottom PrtScSysRq) of pinnacle studio 8. As if you can see it looks easy to work with. You can select whatever you want; upload videos, music, photo's. It's even possible to make a menu on the beginning of the movie, so that you can select which chapter you would like to see. Isn't that cool?? There is also a possibility to put titles in it, or make something in slow-motion, which is super, because when you've done something humorous and it's on tape, you can show it in slow-motion so you may even laugh louder! All this makes Pinnacle Studio 8 fun to work with.
The review of Dean A is quite funny, but I think he's not really serious. He should become a writer, maybe he's already. It's funny because he blames Pinnacle al the time; the stages he describes are really not true. He really describes it as a very slow programme, but really it isn't, I'll take up the time now how long it takes to open: One, two, three, four, five... Just five seconds!! He just needs to buy a new computer, so Pinnacle can also open in five seconds.