Review: Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate video-editing software

Version 12 of Pinnacle Studio is hardly what we would call a drastic reinvention.

There appear to have been few immediately noticeable alterations since Studio 11.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing ­ after all, what would be the point of junking a perfectly good workflow simply for the sake of it?

What worked last time, still works here, such as the trio of tabs (Capture, Edit and Make Movie) at the top of the screen, which keep the task of editing a home movie as close to a three-step process as possible.

Elsewhere, things look pretty similar to when we last visited Studio; there are a couple of new buttons and tabs to explore, but the layout is essentially the same.

The Album window is still context sensitive and displays a selection of clips, effects, photos or music depending on which of the tabs running down the side is selected.

For the Ultimate Edition of Studio, Pinnacle has given up pretending that Storyboard editing mode is easier than working with the Timeline.

In Studio 12, the more detailed Timeline view is the default option for editors, though it is possible to switch to working with the Storyboard instead.

One of the new buttons launches Pinnacle’s most visible (though not necessarily the most important) addition to Studio: the Montage option. This is basically a glorified transition effect, wherein it is possible to drop clips and photos to create jazzy animations (‘photo album comes to life’, and the like) and spice up an otherwise run-of-the-mill holiday or wedding video.

The selection of Montage themes available is fairly generous and they’re all quite easy to apply, but the novelty will undoubtedly wear off quite quickly and using them to any great length is likely to produce a lot of identikit home videos.

Less immediately discernable additions to Studio 12 include improved support for importing and exporting different video formats. Native importing of full (1,080x1,920) high-definition AVCHD-format source video is now standard, though a powerful multi-core system is required for actually doing so.

At the other end of the deal, editors can now export straight to iPod, PSP, 3GP or DivX formats and even upload their finished clips directly to Youtube. Full support for burning discs in the Blu-ray BD-MV format is also included, obviously a Blu-ray burner is required for this. Mini Blu-ray discs can be burned to DVD in AVCHD format, and a similar feat can be achieved for HD DVD for anyone who has the required player.

In the press release accompanying the product, Pinnacle proudly boasts that some of Studio 12’s new features were instigated at the request of users. These features turn out to be some advanced audio-editing capabilities, including master volume controls and a timeline VU (volume unit) meter with peak indicators, which seem like an unlikely selection of things for the public at large to have asked for.

If they’d asked us, we would almost certainly have requested a stable version of the Studio code that didn’t crash unexpectedly on us mid-edit and force us to reboot Windows every so often. Unfortunately, despite Pinnacle’s claims of smooth integration with Vista, we experienced the precise same application fault (Event ID 1000, for anyone who’s interested) as we did with Version 11. Further proof, perhaps, that little has changed either on or under the surface.