Review by R. Eye

Note: In this review, I purposefully did NOT read the user manual and I expected all features to be obvious (e.g. on a par with other video/audio editing software) in the execution of Pinnacle software.

In mid December, 2014: I loaded Pinnacle Plus V18 from the CD and got installation error messages from Windows:nn1. Cant open .dtd file. Windows says this is a Unix hyperhelp support file. I don’t know what is trying to open this file. I told it to use Pinnacle to open it, figuring it might be a Pinnacle help file.n2. Cant open .wmdb file. This is a windows media database file developed by Microsoft. So, what is trying to open it?n3. Cant open .all file. A .all file is on my computer. Steinberg VST uses .all files.n4. Cant open .ovw file. This is a Cool Edit Pro file.

In the above cases, if Pinnacle was trying to open these files, why would I not get an error message from Pinnacle?nI brought up Pinnacle. The program (organizer) started searching my entire disk for all possible movies, music, and photos, loading icons of them into a Media tab. I have hundreds of video files and thousands of pictures and audio files. It then proceeded to tell me about errors loading various files. In my opinion, it would be preferable, and far less time consuming, to allow me to open my own files and folders to add media, rather than defaulting to loading ALL media. It could give me an option to load all media.

There was a new version to download. So that took another 10 minutes or so.

Noticed the graphics on my screen were not very clear. The letters were tiny and jammed together. The program should make adjustments for the screen resolution I am using.

I brought up Pinnacle and tried to load a .MTS file from a folder. It did not seem to recognized .MTS files, so I could not use it to create the video I needed to edit. Dont know whether I didn’t wait long enough or whether it was a new version, but so be it.

About a week later: I brought started Pinnacle again and it was now loading .MTS files - all of them on my disk. This time, I was able to drag and drop a .MTS file into the AV1 timeline. There is a view screen of the video loaded and current time position. To see if I could capture a picture or get a list of handy commands for the current video, I tried to right click on the current frame of the view screen. No option list came up. I would have preferred to see at least SOME commonly used options like Add Effect, Add Transition, save frame as Image, File Info, or things like that. Instead, I had to hunt for commands, icons, or options.

On the Media Tab, I wanted to drag and drop a movie. By the time the organizer finally finished loading all music, photos, and videos on my computer, it had hundreds of folder names, each one expanded and showing me icons of all the media files it recognized. I could not collapse these categories all at once via any options I found. I tried ctrl-minus keys at the same time, but that shortened the video I had in the timeline. So I undid that via ctrl-z (thinking that would undo the last command) and it removed the video from the AV1 timeline. Sigh.

I also notice that when I click on various things and edited video, the place in the Media Tab re-centered itself to a midpoint (in my photo library) that was not anywhere near where I actually was my position of hundreds of media folders. So I had to keep re-scrolling and finding where the clips were. Not good.

There is a Navigation title on the left side of the Media Tab and it has some options, but none to collapse all categories. It does allow view of only videos. But then, I have a folder where I keep my free video music from other video software. This is a really cumbersome user interface. Again, I should have been able to tell it what to load rather than having all this stuff visible in a miles-long longitudinal list of folders and files.

There is a 3D option at the menu top. This allows view of only 3D (to view only three-dimensional images and videos in my library). I clicked on this since I have NO 3D files on my computer. It never did complete, but it told me it was filtering… I stopped it because I had to sleep sometime.

Adjusting Video: The original video I shot was indoors and was too reddish and too saturated. I selected the video adjustments and clicked on White Balance and Levels. On my screen, this appeared to automatically adjust the picture, but it was not good looking on my screen. So, I played with the adjustments.

The individual adjustments are pretty good. There is one called Haze that I have not seen in other editors and appears to adjust the haziness of the video. That is a really nice and UNIQUE feature.

The White Balance adjustment works like a photo editor, except this is on the video section. You select (via an eyedropper) a spot on the current frame that is supposed to be white. The editor adjusts all the colors of that video in order to make that spot white. This is a very handy and user-friendly feature to have for color adjustment. I have not seen this photographic feature on other video editors.

The program appears to have other handy features, like its competitors, for things like splitting audio from video, taking a snapshot of a frame and saving it, splicing at the frame level, and others. Roxio (in my older versions) does not have frame by frame editing/splicing.

Audio: There is a graphic representation of the audio, panning, and volume. One of the volume adjustment knobs is for master level and one for current position. However, when I adjusted the current position volume, it lowered the level of the entire video. When I split the video, it adjusted the sound of the section I was on. So, the wording is misleading. However, you can add key frames (simply by clicking on the audio green line) to allow increasing or decreasing volume (and fade out/in) so that any loud or weak areas in the audio can be manually altered. This feature is similar to other product audio timeline methods, but in my opinion, it was more user friendly and obvious to a video-phile.

When I right click on a clip, it should allow me to add fade in and out of audio with some default setting (e.g. 1 second). I did not see this option anywhere and it seemed I had to manually add fade in and out of audio. I may have missed something, but it wasn’t obvious.

Titles/Text: I really liked the way the titles allow for graphical real-time fade in and out, time stretching, colorizing, etc. The click and drag method of fade-in and fade-out for a clip is much easier to adjust than using new window timelines with separate marker drags and drops. Pinnacle allows it right on the clip itself without having to deal with new windows and marking/unmarking. So, by adjusting the timeline wide enough, it is much faster to create an overlapping fading in and out title/text for a clip. Also, I noticed that dragging the timeline out and in also keeps the fade in and out at the ends of the title. With some other video editing programs, one has to manually go back in and move the start of fade in or fade-out to a different position if the title is extended.

Snapshot a frame: It is easy to take a snapshot. Find the frame you want and click the camera button. This puts the picture in a Collection tab along with the other tabs for media and transitions, etc. However, I could not find an easy way to get all the photos I took from the Collection tab to the file folder I wanted them in. Instead, I had to click on each photo, right click, select export, and wait for the exporter to come up. Little did I know that each photo was in a different folder. I would much rather have the program ask me where to place photos than to put them somewhere and then allow users to later discover them somewhere on their drive. There was also an autoname checkbox. Thinking that this would auto-name each photo by adding a number to it, I checked it (and by the way, it did add a number to each photo). Because I did not know these were saved automatically somewhere else, the autoname came up on every single photo I was saving to the folder I had selected. I believed I had to click it and export each and every photo. And each photo save asked me if I wanted to overwrite every time I exported. Each photo save also gave me an option to open the folder to view the photo (which I declined since I had just saved it). Come on folks, just tell me in the beginning where photos are being saved, and don’t ask me to open it each time!!nnClip Manipulation: One can mark a beginning clip, go to a later clip, and hold down shift and click on that last clip you want in the clicked series (just like clicking on first and last Windows files in an Explorer Window). You can also stay in zoom mode and hit the end key to get to the last clip. When you hit shift-click, all clips will then be selected in between. This allows grouping or moving a sequence of clips. Some other programs do not allow that shift-click to mark all clips in between. Rather, you have to use the mouse to click and drag across all clips to mark them for moving. Pinnacle allows both methods. That, I like!nnOn the down side, moving a clip to the left leaves the other clips where they were and creates a gap. There is a Magnetic Snapping button, and a Smart Editing selection that seem (as they are worded) to allow for automatic clip moving. However, I could not get these to move the following clips to close a gap automatically. So, I had to select all clips (from the gap on) and move them manually. They snapped to the end of the last clip gap, but I would have preferred that the gap close automatically.

One last note. When you copy (ctrl-c) and paste (ctrl-v) a text title, it creates a duplicate of the text title to which you can then add or modify text, length, fades, etc. It does not affect the original title. At least one other competitive product changes the original title when you change the copy. I find that more difficult to work with than a clean, new, editable copy.

Disc Menus: I found this mostly straightforward to use. One great feature is that you can move sub-menus to a previous menu and delete the subsequent sub-menus. I cannot do this with other pre-canned menus and sub-menus. They do not allow moving of scenes or adding to the number of scenes the say Pinnacle does.

One thing seemed to be a bug. I changed the color of text on the Scene Selection button on the main menu. In the editor, I changed it to red, but it appeared black in the editor. When I clicked OK, the viewer and thumbnails showed red text. But pressing play on the menu viewer (to simulate a DVD menu) showed black. Then I discovered the Stereoscopic button had been checked. I don’t recall checking this, but I might have. Since I don’t have anything 3-D, this was a nuisance (as well as mind-bender).

Saving files: It was not apparent that I could save a project and have everything (including disc processing) saved. When I created a menu, it seemed to be a separate disc project file. It was not clear that the original movie project file had or had not been saved when I saved a disc project file. Since these are all in the same video editor, it would be easier to use if it were a single project save, and not separate saves. Also, it seemed to be an Export rather than a save. To this user, export implies a new changed rendering of a video file. This is completely different than saving the video editing of a file which is a completely separate formatting of an original file which does not change the original.

Burning to Disc: I could not burn the project to a DVD. Although I inserted a blank DVD+R and the file size to be written was only 17 minutes of video, it told me the medium did not match 4.7GB and asked if I should proceed anyway. I said Yes. It told me there was not enough room to burn the disc even though it showed there was plenty of room. I tried several blank DVD+R disks, and a dual layer blank disk. Same message.

I went to the website to see about technical support. The instructions said I should have received a number when I registered my product and that I had to have registered within the last 14 days to get technical support. I received a password via email but no such number. The only telephone number to call was a sales line. I checked the FAQs and found the error message I had received, but the only fix for it was to insert the proper sized disc. There is an option to submit an impersonal (email) request for technical support or to have paid support. This is a rabbit hole I did not go down. There was no technical chat capability.nSo, now I have a fully edited movie, a fully edited menu, and no way to save it to a DVD or to be sure I have saved it to my hard drive. And, no way to contact Pinnacle directly in my hour of need before I shut down. Pinnacle users may derive what they will. Adobe encourages its users to contact them directly. Hmmm…

Summary: I found most of the software features to be as good as, or better than, competitive products.n Copy and paste of a title creates an independent copy of that title;n Adjusting video includes a haze adjustment;n Clip length is easy to adjust and has the fade (video/audio) move with the adjustment;n Marking clips for inclusion in a group is straightforward (click first and shift-click last marks all clips in between); and,n Taking a frame snapshot is easy.

Some areas of improvement were the following.n Initial installation gave mysterious error messages for file types I had to look up;n Two new versions were released in the week I tested this;n The automatic population of the library is very cumbersome when you have thousands of files on your system. It should ask before doing this;n Right clicking on the view port should have some kind of menu;n A right click on the clip (audio or video) should allow for selection of either to fade-in and/or fade-out;n Could not find an easy way to close gaps created when a clip is moved to the left or right.n Have some way for users to contact the help desk when there is an obvious problem.n There should at least be a technical chat capability for quick questions.