I sent the following email to Computeractive magazine (letters@computeractive.co.uk). I hope others in the UK will join me in urging Computeractive to stop recommending Pinnacle studio. I notice for a few issues now you have been recommending Studio 10, and have given it 5 stars. Some of your readers may still be struggling with Studio 9, and the appaling service which Pinnacle has provided for that product. When they issued version 9.4.3, (still the latest), there is a problem with the capture process. This exhibits itself by the rendering process hanging mid-way through. The program doesn't hang, just the rendering. This problem does not exist in version 9.3. There is a discussion thread at http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/229311/1697746-434791 which has been going for months now. Pinnacle's solution to the problem was to introduce version 10, and ask users to upgrade. Their response to this problem has been shocking; they have sold a product which is not fit for the purpose for which it was sold. They should not be allowed to get away with this, and I would urge Computeractive to check my facts, and then stop issuing a recommendation for Studio 10. If Pinnacle support version 10 as well as they did version 9, it will cost you lots of time and money. Be warned. Allan W B Stalker
If you have (audio)problems in captured files by Pinnacle you can use in stead of Pinnacle a little freeware program called WinDV. I experienced problems with some files captured by Pinnacle 9.4.3. The problem seemed to be in the audio. I decided to capture the suspected parts with WinDV . With this program you can easily capture your film and store it in AVI format. Be carefull: Under "config" select AVI-2 format! AVI-1 format is not recognized by Pinnacle. The only "disadvantage" of this program is that it stores every scene in a separate AVI file. So you end up with a lot of files. Make a project in Pinnacle to glue them together by generating a new AVI file. After I had done this, I experienced no further problems.
Thanks. I'll try that one. What I'd really like to see is Pinnacle to come out from under their desks and fix this problem. At least give me some kind of thing called "clip sweeper" or "toast buster" to clean a corrupted clip or tell me which ones are bad before I start a project and drag a bunch of crap into it.
I have had the same rendering problems as the rest of this post. but last night after 100+ hours of waiting, Success!!!!!! i went back to version 9.3 and re captured my dv tape using 'Win DV' i opened the old project, deleted the old dv input and replaced it with the new 'Win DV' AVI2 file ( note you have to use AVI2!!!). i saved the project and closed the program. I disconnected the internet, killed every program i could the reopened studio. i then burned to disk a 83 minute project that included photos, Fx transitions, tape captures, titles mp3 sound and audio, but no menus. the rerendering took for ever. ( like 5-6 hours) i had to put an ice bag on my external hard drive to keep it cool. several times i checked and it looked like the program had stopped/frozen, but the used and unused counter was still ticking slowly so i let it roll on. i will report back on my next 100 minute project soon. thansk for the help.
Hi kenhenry. If you've gone back to Studio 9.3, you don't need to capture with WinDV. 9.3 works just fine for capturing and editing and rendering.
I have to say thank you to all who have replied to this thread. I have been watching it for the past 4 days; I finally got around to trying to finish my masterpiece 4 days ago and found it would hang during render. After finishing reading the majority of this thread I have been given enough information to make my 68 movie render. It came out wonderful. Here is what I did: From selimap's suggestion I rendered to AVI which was a lot faster and allowed me to find the 2 places where the redering logic was getting hung up. I then removed the audio associated with these 2 places. Then I rendered with best quality to a file which later I made 5 copies of the DVD from. I found I did not need to trash the entire audio of the clips but only portions of the clips. Fortunately, all that was there prior was background noise which when missing was not noticed with the background music. This worked for me. I have 9.4.3.70 of Studio. Prior to this simple fix I had done all the checking of memory, disk systems, and other imaginary hoops that are suggested by the Pinnacle web site. To be honest, I was willing to toss out the program a day ago. However, now I am sort of happy with it. The user interface and capabilities increase significantly the bang for the buck. If the company could have just come out with a tech note it would have saved them a lot of bad press. Ultimately, I do not know if I will be throwing more money there way when it comes time to upgrade. However, for now I am not searching for something else. Thanks again to all, I hope I have helped someone else as the others on this forum unknowingly helped me.
so pleased to have helped. what a great feeling when you find you have a great DVD (well my partner thought so) and haven;'t wasted all those hours of Editing. i agree, the user interface is fine, once you explore the program and effects it does everything I want to do, the only! issues are the technical ones. But it is a trap because your .stu files aren't compatible with any other programme, so of you have quite a lot, do you abandon them to start again with some other software or upgrade to more Pinnacle stuff that doesn't ork properly. I should have tried just removing audio rather than the entire clips, I may reinsert in the next remake - thanks for the idea. I will be showing my film to my local Bird Club, so it's worth getting it nice.
I have been following this thread from the beginning. Like most other people my Pinnacle 9plus freezes on rendering the movie. When I moved from Pinnacle 8 to 9 - no real problems but then hit a brick wall with the rendering - this I now believe coincides with the loading of Pinnacle 9.4 patch. I've had 2 projects that I haven't been able to complete for the last 4 months - one group holiday that I was due to have ready for Xmas and have only been able to accomplish this at the weekend. To say I've wasted a lot of hours is an understatement! Pinnacle support is dire and if it wasn't for the fact that I knew this system did work in the beginning I would have given up long ago. My workaround for this problem (thanks to previous contributors to this thread) was not to try to burn the disc straight away but to make the film in AVI format(this keeps bombing you out but keep restarting and in AVI file small chunks of the film eventually are saved)then bring it back in AVI format, piecing it together before burning it to disc. This worked for me and I was able to retrieve 70% of the film. Before I reloaded film from camcorder the part of the film that I couldn't save, I removed the patch and went back to Pinnacle 9.3. This worked exactly as it should do - it's still annoying that on starting Pinnacle it prompts me to load that patch that is clearly faulty. I will stay with Pinnacle 9.3 and won't go to Pinnacle 10 as every site I've been on says it is full of problems and is a step back from 9.3.
as I think I said earlier, I removed 9.4.3 and went back to 9.3 but it froze exactly the same and was not the solution, so this won't work for everyone. Unless the problem was the capture in 9.4 as I didn't recapture in 9.3, just tried rendering. I now have a very good film, but it was hard getting there. The great thing is how these virtual communities support each other. And if you want to get involved with another type of virtual, and virtuous, community, I highly recommend www.freecycle.org.
9.3 IS the solution, but as I pointed out just a few postings back, you must capture in 9.3. It is the capture part of 9.4 which is faulty.
Thanks everyone...I have just spent 7 hours on Pinnacle Studio 9 plus trying to burn a dvd that I captured from camera. I had noticed one of the AVIs wouldn't play on Media player but was ok on Nero showtime. I suspected corrupt avi so re-captured several times. Always during the render process it hung at the same spot. I should have checked forums the first time it happened. Thanks to you guys I now have Windv capturing for me with zero frame drop. (I spent days previously trying to get Nero7 to edit as my previous Nero5 did, until I checked forums and then tossed Nero in the bin)
You may already had Pinnacle in touch with you, but I thought I would let you all know that Pinnacle has just sent me a Customer satisfaction Survey via email. I of course told them what they most likely didn't want to hear about their product. However, maybe at last they are responding to public concern over their products performance. I would give you all the link but it is unique to me. If you were to reply using it you would over wright my offerings. If you want to tell them what you think then contact them via your own countrys home page and request a survey.
i cannot believe i am in this mess - i keep hoping i will wake up and it has all been a nightmare . . . "Pinnacle stopped rendering just as I was about to burn an editied 15 minutes of film to disc. I then downloaded PS9 patch 9-4-3. Pinnacle has now stopped responding entirely. I tried to remove/reinstall the Pinnacle but it will not remove, and my pc is starting to shown signs of crashing". "this occurs at the end of a three month period of editing - now on indefinite hold - which has entailed buying a digital camcorder, a new computer, and a new external hard drive". "this is one extremely dissatisfied customer". "please advise at your earliest possible convenience?" "sincerely, etc" sent to Pinnacle: 11.Mar.06 at 8.25pm - no-one has the right to author such an unreliable software?
update Pinnacle will now not allow me to uninstall (error message), therefore i cannot re-install. after 3 months i am completely stuck - i have the meticulously edited film to burn to disc, but now a hung/crashed software to check my every move is there no end to this - at this rate i will be buying a third computer and looking for an alternative edit software ... come on, pinch yourself, it's only a bad dream?
update just uninstalled + reinstalled Pinnacle 9 (took all evening). this time i tried to save the movie to AVI. Pinnacle went through the whole movie then stopped, didn't ebven attempt to render ... HDD powered down, then nothing - no message, nothing - that was 11 minutes ago, this never used to happen, there was never a gap between creating files and rendering - it's as if a bit of Pinnacle got lost somewhere ... i will be seriously looking for a refund if they can't sort this out? now 15 minutes and nothing - no sign of life - cannot click 'file' and save my project cos all those keys are disabled because 'creating file/please wait...' mode, yet nothing stirs. so i wait. i will leave pc on all night then check again, what else can you do? hell!
update: from the jaws of hell . . . - or, out of night, breaketh day - crazy software: when the software finished going through the movie, it had created the avi file, without telling me; then when i finally lost patience and stopped the program/project it said i was *cancelling* it; then when i looked in my harddrive, there was the avi. so did i let Pinnacle burn it to disc? no way after the last 48 hours! i imported it to Nero6 and burned it to dvd-rw there. now sleep, gentle sleep . . .
I have the same rendering problem as everyone using 9.4.3. I'd like to downgrade to 9.3.X. My problem is that my CD version is 9.0 (which I patched to 9.4.3). Is there a place on the pinnacle web site where I can download the patch to bring it up to a 3.X version?
I had to downgrade as well. Remember the fault is with the capture, so you must capture again. Since Pinnacle have refused to sort out this problem, I have no qualms in offering you the patch. I still have it, but it's 58.9Mb. I have broadband, so it's not a problem for me. How can I get it to you? Would afterdawn allow me to upload it to a central location? If you are prepared to send me your email address, I will be happy to send it to you. I still think we should collectively sue them! Allan Scotland
I was using ver 7 and then needed to edit 20GB of video into a DVD (4GB). I read some upcoming news about a 'great' version 10 coming which promises to solve all my problems. I got nothing but misery after upgrading to version 10. Almost not even a working product .... now the agent who sold me the product has gone missing! I installed version 9 and it was better than v10 and at least I could get some editing work done. But when I went into Make Movie (rendering) ... the nightmare with Pinnacle seems to come back. After reading the post here about this product, I will be changing to something else. My advice to all ... stop mucking around with Pinnacle. It's a joke ... go with something else that work.
Everyone claims that the problem is in the capture. So can anyone explain this. After my earlier problems (see earlier in thread) I finally cut out all 'corrupted' clips and had a nice DVD. I now wanted to improve it slightly. I saved the working project (still renders and burns OK) to a new name. I added some more voice overs, lowered the volume on parts of the master track, and extended the time a few stills showed. That's all, no new movie clips. It refused to render. Paused at a point previously OK. I tried from the start again - working project, add the voice overs etc. Fails to render. Finally, I cut off a few seconds off a few clips and tried again - success. I've no idea why or how. Is it just random?
