If you want to work with video, Pinnacle Systems' Studio 9 is an excellent way to do so. This comprehensive, consumer-oriented video-editing program is reasonably priced and easy to use, maintains everything that was good in the prior version and offers compelling new features. And compared to the last version 8, which was prone to crashing, Studio 9 appears to be more stable, which alone is worth the price of an upgrade.

To start, Version 9 is a newer and better Studio program with new features. None are "must-haves," but give you more control over editing video and applying effects. A new automatic editing tool, called "SmartMovie," lets you select and arrange video segments, define titles, choose a song from your hard drive and select an editing style that includes "music video" and others. And with a single click, the program creates an edited movie with titles, transitions and special effects. While the results from this feature are adequate, the novelty has limited usefulness.

The software offers new audio
and video restoration tools and an
image stabilization filter that can
improve shaky handheld shots. An
automatic color correction feature
improves poorly lit shots and acts
much like a camcorder's white
balance function. Analog cleaning
filters can help restore video that
was obtained from fading, old
videotapes, while a noise reduction
filter removes wind noise, hiss and
camcorder whine.

Studio 9 now supports RTFx video plug-ins and VST audio plug-ins and lets you apply audio effects such as reverb, graphic eq and normalize. While image filters that simulate an old time movie and add ripples, lens flare and other visual effects are fun to experiment with, they have almost no real utility. Evolving with the times, the software now captures, edits and outputs 16 x 9 widescreen video and creates surround sound soundtracks.

As before, Studio 9 is a first rate
program for editing video, adding
transitions and titles and burning
video onto DVD or CDs. The
software continues to make it
easy to edit video by simply
dragging and dropping scenes
onto a Storyboard or Timeline.
We've always preferred the
Timeline view that shows the
position and duration of clips on
a relative timescale, and lets you
zoom into a scene and accurately
edit its length as you view it.

As in previous versions, the program offers lots of tracks to accept and arrange video, audio, transitions, titles, sound effects, and background music, and independently edit sound and video. You may easily apply transitions that include cuts, fades, dissolves, wipes, slides, and pushes, and 3-D animated transitions that include page turns, spinning balls, breaking glass and more. The program comes with a generous collection of transitions. Be warned, however, that some transitions are displayed as options, but are only available at an extra cost-a sneaky way to sell an upgrade.

Studio 9 gives you great control over audio. You may rip wave or MP3 files; record voice overs; change volume levels and add music from a CD, and a SmartSound feature automatically aligns musical soundtracks with the duration of a video sequence. The program's music generator adds adequate background music that's based on a style that you choose. The music isn't fantastic and sounds tinny, but what do you expect from a computer composer?

When you've finished editing your video, the program lets you save movies in various formats that include AVI, MPEG1 & MPEG2, RealVideo8 and Windows Streaming Media, and burn video onto a DVD disc-complete with interactive menus. Documentation is thorough and fairly easy to understand.

If you own a DV camcorder, have a Firewire port installed on your PC and own an appropriate Firewire cable, you can immediately use Studio 9 to capture video from a DV camcorder and save it as a video file. If you own an older analog camcorder you may still capture video, but you'll have to rely on other capture hardware that is available from Pinnacle and other sources.

When we worked with Studio 8, the prior version, we often found ourselves waiting as the program loaded video, which was a royal pain. We were pleasantly surprised with version 9 as it did a far more efficient job of loading video and allowing us to quickly get to work. And version 9 didn't cause our test computer to crash the way that the shaky version 8 did. If you've been frustrated with version 8, version 9 is worth the upgrade.

In all, Studio 9 is a well-designed, competitively priced program that is versatile and complete. It delivers the directorial goods for those who want to edit home videos or want to work with semi-professional tools. And if you've struggled with the last version, it's worth the upgrade.

8/18/04 www.daytrum.com Editorial Staff

video-editing - Pinnacle Studio 9

Capture video from your camcorder

Studio 9 offers various tracks