Review of Pinnacle Studio Ultimate ver. 11

By Algird G. Leiga

President, Claremont Senior Computer Club

April 12, 2008

Introduction

Today we live in a world of digital information that can be overwhelming unless it is organized for easy access.  Over the last few years digital photographs and movies have become the preferred choice of consumers and professionals for documenting vacations, family events and business. Anyone with a creative urge to photograph people, plants, animals or almost anything in sight can do it with reasonably priced cameras that will produce incredibility good images. 

I suspect that many people have a glut of images and film clips that they want to share with family and friends, but are not sure how to do it.  Creating traditional snapshots in albums or individual photos is a choice that is available at stores such as COSTCO, Wal-Mart or your local photo store.  That choice can be costly and creates a bulky package of pictures to carry around and only allows one or a few people to view them at one time.  Another alternative is to use a computer to create your own CD or DVD shows.  This approach is attractive since usually the digital images are already stored on the computer hard drive.  Most people know a computer can be helpful for creating pictorial stories, but finding the suitable software that will allow you to document creatively life’s events in a reasonable time can create an impediment to getting started.  Fortunately, today there are several programs that will allow you to unleash your creative juices to produce professional looking DVD’s of slide shows or movies.  One such program that stands out from the crowd is Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11.  From my experience with the software it just takes is a little work and a novice can successfully complete a show to share with family and friends.

My Experience with Pinnacle Studio Ultimate

Basics

My software package of Pinnacle Studio came with three program disks, a user’s manual and a green screen cloth backdrop for special effects.  I installed the program on my desktop pc running MS windows media center 2005 sp2.  The computer is a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Pentium 4 CPU at 3.2GHz with four GB Ram.

No problems were encountered during installation of the program.  The next decision point was to check for updates.  I clicked yes to the update and it all went smoothly.  Although the update is a large file it was easily handled, since I have a high-speed DSL connection.  For people with a dial-up connection the wait could be intolerable.  After the update and registration, the program opened seamlessly and I was ready to become a “Hollywood” movie producer.

Over the last few years I have created a few DVD shows using Roxio and Pinnacle 9, so I have some familiarity with similar software.  However, I have not used those programs in more than a year, so it’s like starting anew with the new program.  Another motivation is to do something with my backlog of digital photographs and movie clips.  The Getting Started Guide was helpful to explain the basic steps for creating a show.

Creative Project #1

My first project was to create a show using digitized copies of old 8mm movies taken many years ago.  The quality of the movies was variable and usually not good, but these were precious memories of the “good old times”.  Since the audience for the show was family and some of the “old-timers” I created a digital movie introduction using my Canon 950 compact camera.  The quality of the movie and sound was excellent considering that I was using a snapshot camera.  After loading the digitized 8mm movies and my introduction into the computer I was ready to create my new show.

The Pinnacle software boots up a little slowly probably because it is a large file.  The opening screen is functionally appealing.  The three major categories, Capture, Edit and Make Movie partition the steps in producing the show.  The lower section shows a time line for the show as well as the sound track location.  The menu bar at the top from the File tab to the Help tab provides more functions to support creating a show.  As a first step I use the Setup dropdown menu to set the basic timing and other features of the show.  I did not need to capture images, since they were already on my computer, so I clicked on the Edit tab to start.  On the sidebar I clicked on the movie icon and easily brought up the digital movies I needed.  To avoid confusion I create folders with easily recognizable names to keep my photos and movie clips.  My old 8mm movies are in a folder called “family films” with a label for the individual movie reel files and the introduction clip.

An important step with old movies is to create individual clips within the overall movie.  The program does this with ease with one click.  The value of the step is to simplify editing the individual clips into a more coherent final show.  For example, the original 20-minute digital 8mm movie consists of many clips that can be individually moved to the new show and then edited for length or to remove a bad section.

With the clips identified in the file it was easy to click and drag the clips onto the time line at the bottom section of the screen.  With this technique I rearranged the original 8mm movie into a more cohesive story.  I could edit each clip as needed.  Up to this point the steps seemed intuitive and I did not need to use the user’s guide.  However, editing the clips was not that obvious.  With a little reading of the manual editing became simple.  By positioning the pointer at the start or end of clip an arrow shows up, and by holding down the mouse button and moving the arrow the clip can be easily shortened to remove unwanted parts.  It’s a simple editing process.  With all the clips on the time line rearranging the clips is easy.  Just click and move them to a new location.

The next step is to create titles and title pages.  Once again a click on the Title tab on the sidebar brings up a many preset backgrounds or even a blank one for customization.  I selected the “stone” background for titles, and dragged it to the time line.  Adding text to the page was easy.   A few mouse clicks brings up the text box.  The moue cursor allows you to move the box around on the background. 

After I added the needed titles throughout the show I moved on to creating a chapter section to define the various parts of the final show.  Clicking on the chapter tab on the sidebar brings up a good variety of chapter formats.  My choice was one with six chapters and by a click and drag I placed it on the timeline at the start of the show.  The program will automatically create chapters based on features you select.  However, my choice was to set the chapters at my selected points using the tools tab on the upper menu bar.   For each chapter a key image was selected by moving the timeline cursor to the desired point and clicking on the proper menu section.  It all went well, but all the steps need to be followed carefully to avoid a mix-up.

At this point I was ready for introducing transitions between the title pages and the various movie clips.  Fortunately Pinnacle has many excellent choices.  A click on the transition tab on the sidebar brings up a menu of more transition types that you can imagine.  My choice was a dissolve between movie clips and a more fancy transition between the introduction titles and my special introductory clip.  If you want to change the timing of the transition just double click it and a menu comes up where you can make changes.

The final step is to add a music background. A great addition to Pinnacle Studio 11 is a feature called Scorefitter Music Generator.  Essentially you can create a music background of any length in various styles using this tool.  Using the Tools menu tab you pull down a menu of music styles that can be easily added to the show simply by a mouse click.  I used Scorefitter for my special introduction and the front end titles.  The volume adjustment is easy and I could create a barely audible background during my introductory comments and bring up the volume for the next part of the show.  In addition, clicking on the tools tab brings up a menu that makes it easy to add songs from your computer library or from a CD.

It is possible to view the partially or complete show on the built in preview window.  This feature allows you to see if added edits or more content is needed to flesh out the final show. When satisfied with the new show there are several choices for making the DVD.  A click on the Make Movie tab brings down a menu of choices.  To be able to make a DVD the existing file needs to be converted to a DVD format before burning. My preference is to make the converted file and save it to the hard drive and then burn DVD’s from that file.  The create movie step is one area where some improvement would help.  The sequence of commands and the details are not as intuitive as I would like.  However, after reading the User Guide I could easily complete the show.

At the end of all this work I had a great (my opinion) movie show on a DVD that I proudly shared with my family and friends.  In fact they were impressed with the show and wanted to know how I did it.

Creative Project #2

Recently my daughter and two granddaughters, 7 and 9, paid us a visit and we made the rounds of attractions in Southern California. We visited Knott’s Berry Farm, La Brea Tar Pits, Griffith Observatory and the beach at Newport Beach.  Many pictures and even some video documented the visit.  I bravely told the young women that I could make a DVD show for them to take home at the end of the visit.  When the time came close to leaving I had to perform.  I added all the photos and video clips to the computer and with the experience gained creating the first show I quickly produced a DVD show of the visit.  My granddaughters were impressed!  I did it the hard way using various custom features.  I could have used the built in Pinnacle quick show feature, but I wanted to see if I had learned how to use the program.

The Bottom Line

Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11 is a super program to help you create DVD shows that will get all those photos and video clips off your computer and into the hands of friends, family and neighbors.  They will marvel at your showmanship skills.  The program has tools that are easily available to start simply and build your skills to create more complex shows.  Overall the many features and choices give you the creative tools needed to produce professional looking shows.  In my brief testing of the program I have only scratched the surface of the features.  I am looking forward to exploring various effects such as pan and zoom, picture-in-picture, special lighting, green screen composition, HD-DVD and many more.

Another feature is the improvements made by Pinnacle in significantly reducing software and computer crashes.   My experiences with earlier versions of Pinnacle were frustrating because of crashes.  I never lost the data, but I had to reboot the computer too often.  I did not see that problem this time.

I recommend Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11 to anyone interested in creating spectacular and entertaining DVD or CD shows for family, friends or business.  The price is modest for all the features that are available.