reviewsTes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
78 MAXIMUMPC june 2007
W
e weren’t kind when we reviewed
Pinnacle’s Studio 10 in our April
2006 issue. It was buggy and
unstable, and we couldn’t fully install it on
our Athlon 64–based machine.
So what do you get if you take Studio
10 and bundle it with a box of hardware?
Shockingly, not a bad package.
That’s because Pinnacle has been
busily stomping bugs out of Studio 10 to
get the program up to snuff. Part of the
problem with the original Studio 10 was
that it was a total shift from the even bug-
gier legacy code in Studio 9 to code bor-
rowed from the company’s pro product,
Liquid. While the original version of Studio
10 wouldn’t install properly, took hours
just to launch, and crashed randomly,
we’re happy to report that the 10.6 version
included in the box installed without any
major issues.
We say this because we did get a
scary dialog box from XP that said origi-
nal OS files had been replaced during the
install of Studio 10, but XP booted and
worked fine. We, of course, were then
prompted to update to version 10.7.
Studio 10 is easy to use. With
background rendering, RAM previews, and
multithreading included in the product, we’re
starting to change our opinion of this software.
Pinnacle also touts the ability to workwith HDV content with 10.7, and indeed,
we had no issues importing HDV content
from a Canon HV10 camcorder. And unlike
Adobe’s half-assed Premiere Elements
3.0 attempt at HDV editing, Studio 10
gave us a preview window of the capture,
and scene detection worked properly.
Although it can’t yet burn to Blu-ray discs,
the program can generate HD-resolu-
tion content on a single- or dual-layer
DVD. Since all HD DVD decks and Xbox
360s will play these, it’s a cheap way to
get HDV movies without paying for an
HD DVD burner and discs. The catch, of
course, is that you have to pay an addi-
tional $50 to enable the program to burn
that content.
Studio MovieBox Plus is about more
than just the Studio 10 software though;
it’s also about the
hardware package. The
company bundles in a
microphone for record-
ing voice-overs. It’s not
the greatest mic in the
world, but it’s certainly
better than the plastic
boom mic most of us
got with our Sound
Blaster Live! cards.
One bitch we have
about it: It uses a rather
large jack that makes
it very difficult to have
the speakers and the
mic plugged in simul-
taneously on a Sound
Blaster X-Fi.
Pinnacle also
includes a hardwarecapture device that has inputs and outputs
for composite video, stereo RCA, DV, and
S-video as well as a six-pin FireWire 400
port. The box itself plugs straight into a
USB port. We’d heard complaints about
the capture capabilities of the box, but
we didn’t have any problems using it to
acquire analog footage from an old Hi8
camera. We suspect any complaints of
jerkiness come from people with under-
powered rigs. We did, however, have
issues trying to capture HDV footage
through the onboard FireWire port. We
ended up using the FireWire port on our
Asus board instead.
One other goodie Pinnacle bundles
in is a backdrop to be used for Chroma
Key, aka green screen, effects. Pin the
sheet to a wall and shoot footage of your
friend holding the mic and you can easily
drop in a still image of the White House to
make it look like your friend is filing a news
report from D.C.
Studio MovieBox Plus isn’t perfect, but
with most of the major bugs dead and its
handy collection of hardware trinkets, we
think the beginning moviemaker will find it
worth a look.
—Gordon Mah UnGPinnacle Studio
MovieBox Plus
Can Pinnacle polish a turd?
a USB 2.0 capture box, microphone, and green-screen background make the Studio
MovieBox Plus a fun package.$150, http://www.pinnaclesys.comstudio moviebox plusthe StinG
Includes a handy collection
of hardware and is easy
to use.
SPy GaMe^8
Must spend an extra $50 to
output HDV content.
Pinnacle Studio 10.7 lets you preview your hdV footage—
the competing product from adobe doesn’t.