Pinnacle Studio HD 15

Pinnacle Studio HD Editor's Review

Give your pictures and videos just the right touch of homemade Hollywood magic with this awesome Windows editing package.

Choice is a good thing.  With the 2011 Holiday Season fast approaching, I know that many are going to be taking a lot of video and digital pictures, and are going to be struggling with the best way to share the memories.  Yes, online services like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, are nice; but not everyone has or wants to create an online media account. This is why I like applications like Pinnacle Studio HD. It’s a media editing and sharing application for Windows.

Pinnacle Studio HD makes it easy to edit your movies and digital photos like a pro. With it, you can quickly import videos and photos from a wide range of devices, and then edit scenes and create professional-looking HD movies with over 1,800 included effects, titles, and other content. When you're done, you can export complete projects to today’s most popular formats or burn them to DVD, and share them with the world. If you make a mistake or your PC crashes, don't worry. Pinnacle studio HD has a unique new Archive and Restore tool that conveniently backs up projects to preserve your work.

After you have your video and pictures imported and have created a project, you can access over 1,000 unique, professional-level transitions and effects with themes from Pinnacle's Hollywood FX Volumes 1–3. The app also includes HFX Editor for creating custom effects.  Best of all, the app includes the ability to edit HD video on your computer-with ultra-fast performance when using AVCHD and H.264-based formats.

Pro’s: Supports HD, H.264 support

Con’s: Will require a PC with a lot of RAM and processing power for best performance

Conclusion: For an application of its kind, Pinnacle Studio HD is a great choice. It's easy to use, and has a great deal to offer in terms of editing features and effects.  Please note, however, that value-based PC's may not be the best choice to run this or any kind of video editing software on, as it will be easy for your PC to become processor bound during rendering or burning operations.  The more PC power you have, the better of you're going to be in the end.