Review: Pinnacle Studio 12 Plus video-editing software

When a program gets to version number 12 we tend to start wondering whether the manufacturer really has any big ideas left.

Certainly, the list of new features in this latest version of Pinnacle's video-editing program isn't long. However, the best of them are all extremely useful.

Top of the bill in Studio 12 is Montage, which is essentially a set of very sophisticated templates that allow users to combine multiple video clips on screen all at once.

There are around 80 of these templates altogether, organised into a set of 11 main themes.

These themes range from relatively simple split-screen effects to the complex Videowall, which breaks the screen into a grid containing a dozen or more small video clips that all play at once.

There are other templates for sporting events, and a set of album templates that organise a series of video clips onto the pages of an album – rather like a photo album, except that the album displays moving video instead of still photos.

Rival video editors, such as Adobe's Premiere Elements, would struggle to create such sophisticated effects, so this certainly gives Studio 12 an edge over its rivals.

The other main features are less eye-catching, but still very useful. Video clips taken from devices such as webcams and mobile phones can be quite small, sometimes resulting in black bars around the image when it's displayed on a larger computer or TV screen, so Studio 12 has a new command that will expand the image to fill the full size of the screen and remove the bars.

We've often struggled with this problem in the past so this feature alone – modest though it may seem – would swing our choice in favour of Studio 12 over some of its rivals.

We also liked the ability to set 'key frames' for the volume control, so that it's possible to adjust the volume with single-frame precision. And for those creating projects that use time-consuming special effects, or burning big sets of files onto DVDs, you can leave Studio 12 running all by itself and just tell it to turn off the computer automatically when the project is finished.

We tested these features in Studio 12 Plus (£70), but most of them are also available in the less expensive Studio 12 Standard (£40) – although this lacks some of the additional special effects and high-definition features found in the Plus version. There's also an Ultimate version (£90) that includes additional special effects and titling features for the more adventurous video buff.

Whatever your budget, features such as Montage and the black border removal are so useful that we'd certainly recommend this upgrade to existing Studio users – as well as to newcomers who are looking for an affordable video-editing program.