Review by Zen

Pinnacle had a reputation for user-friendly, well priced software that made it easy to do amateur video editing. It’s an entry level video editing program. Current versions have been a little disappointing as they add new features but in the process make it top heavy and less intuitive and slow.

First off, there should have been an option to install and then search for media files - not indexing the media files as part of it’s install. That seems crazy to me as people may not want every media file on their computer to be available to Pinnacle. So I had to abort one install and then try and install on a newer computer that had almost no media. It finally installed and it was nice to have the live capture, and some needed features like straight to youtube. The interface is not too complicated and can be figured out for basic editing. For anything more sophisticated Pinnacle isn’t the software of choice! Rendering is still slow, and this version is not compatible with 4K, but for anything amateur that is probably overkill anyway right now.

Other than a few new features I did not find anything that was significantly different from 3 years ago. That version came with a green screen that my teenager used extensively to put herself in exotic landscapes! Pinnacle should focus on making this software more intuitive and easier to create effects - I feel like some things are easier done on iMovie than on Pinnacle, and that now comes free with an iPad!