My favorite use for the pinnacle stuff I purchased was to throw it in the trash can.

Studio 6 was my first NLE. For single track work, it was WAY easy. But it does seem that it's gotten buggier as time went on.

I had Pinnacle 7 as my starting (teething) video software but I needed more so I kept checking the PCLE S8 forums and then decieded on Vegas. Maybe we could ship Zippy to that forum. He'd fit in real good there. No use for Studio 8 here.

> is there anything in Studio worth having in the toolbox along with Vegas?

Yes, I still use Studio for the SmartSound and Hollywood FX Pro. SmartSound Movie Maestro is only $49 so you could by that (it’s the same functionality that’s packaged with Studio) but I already have Studio so why waste the money as long as I’m keeping Studio around for Hollywood FX anyway.

I was a long-time user of Studio so I have the Hollywood FX Pro version and it’s an outstanding 3D FX editor. What I do is make a cross fade in Vegas of the two clips I want to make a 3D effect for. Then I split the events and drag to an upper track with ripple edit off so that it leaves a hole. That’s where I un-fade them (i.e., place them end-to-end) and render that section. This is what I import into Studio, split into two events again and add the 3D effect I want. Then when I render out of Studio, the resulting AVI fits perfectly in the original hole that I cut out in Vegas.

It’s a lot of work but Pinnacle is never going to make a Hollywood FX Pro plugin for Vegas and I can’t afford $1500 for Boris Red. So I use Studio as a host for Hollywood FX Pro. It’s just like using a stand-alone version of Hollywood FX Pro. Not as nice as a plugin but it’s as good as it gets. I think Hollywood FX Pro it well worth the extra $149 price tag.

~jr

The CD will work very well as a drink coaster :)
(sombody had to say it)

I have both Studio7 and 8. I don't find them particularly buggy, as long as you're not trying to "push the envelope." I still keep S7 around because it has the excellent TitleDeko, which in my opinion is far superior to the titling in Vegas. S8 has a titling program, but it's not TitleDeko, and it's nowhere near as capable. Still, I keep S8 around because it's so easy to make a quick DVD from it.

I still have Studio on one of my computers. Haven't used it much since I got Vegas 4.0. I only miss two things and, in fact, these are the reasons I still -- once in a blue moon -- go back and use the program, despite its bugginess.

First, its print to tape feature is much quicker than the one in Vegas. If you are doing a cuts-only project, with just a few titles and overlays, you can print to tape within a minute of finishing your editing. By contrast, if you print from the timeline in Vegas, the program insists on rendering a whole bunch of files. This is true even if you just put a file on the timeline and immediately print to tape. This is a needless waste of time.

The second reason has already been mentioned, namely TitleDekko. The titling in Vegas is really primitive. While I have seen many examples over in the Sundance forum of snazzy titles created with Vegas, these results required LOTS of work, using multiple tracks and effects.

Despite its bugs, I still recommend this program to friends who just want to edit their home movies. It is still, by far, the easiest program to learn and use for the casual user, and the bugs usually don't show up if you don't make long movies or push the product too hard.

JohnnyRoy, I'm interested in the process you're using. As a Dazzle DVD Complete owner I got a cheap copy of Studio 8 with the Hollywood FX package. I wasn't even going to install it until I read your post.

I'm working on a corporate photo montage (slideshow) now on which the customer wants me to be deliberately heavy on the whiz-bang. It's a small, super laid-back company and they are going to show the DVD at a year end meeting/party. The whiz-bang part sounds like the kind of thing I could use that Hollywood Fx for. What sort of effects and transitions are you doing with it and what do you think of trying to import a longer section of V4 DV-AVI into Studio 8? Also, are you noticing any quality hit going from V4 to S8 then back to V4?

Don't toss the program CD because Pinnacle has, imho the best TGA mask sequences and overlay graphics. They work really well in vegas.

riredale,
Are you sure S8 lacks Titledeko? It's listed on the program info.

I stand partially corrected. The help file for S8 says that S7 had TitleDeko bundled with it, but that for S8 they incorporated many of the TitleDeko features directly into the program.

When I first began to build a rolling credit with S8 last year, there were a couple of things that gave me pause, and since I still had S7 on the system, I went back to the ol' faithful TitleDeko.

In looking at S8 just now, I note that the titling screen is very different from TitleDeko. What I don't know yet is whether the full functionality is still there. One thing I noticed immediately is that you can't "paint" over some text already typed in order to change the font or other attributes. You have to do it by first selecting the new font, then re-typing in the text. Again, I've only spent literally 2 minutes looking at it, and there might be some other way to do this.

Keep it fot Title Deco & for the Hollywood FX & if you like plastic music keep Smart Sound as well.

The Hollywood FX Basic that comes with Studio 8 is just 16 transition effects with no way to change them. Not very exciting. If you bought the Dazzle upgrade to Studio 8 for $49.99 that’s all you got. But it’s good to show you what Hollywood FX can do because it contains all of the Plus and Pro FX with watermarks. For $30 more you could have gotten Studio 8 with Hollywood FX Plus, which gives you the editor so that you can tweak existing effects and it has 188 additional effects. Once you have the editor, you can modify existing effects and you will see the power of Hollywood FX. Finally the Pro version was $60 more but I don’t think they have that $60 offer anymore. So to go from Basic to Pro will cost an additional $149. This gives you the ability to create and save your own FX.

I use Hollywood FX to add 3D objects into my videos. I did a video once that had an amusement park ride about barnstorming and so I found a 3D model of a biplane and had it fly into the screen and crash into the title shattering it into pieces that revealed the video underneath. I’ve created transitions using 3D models of StarWars tiefighters that bring the new video in as the cockpit of the ship. Just wiz-bang stuff for opening a sequence. I also use it when I’m doing wedding video for friends. It has nice transitions where you can wrap the current outgoing video around the label of a bottle of champagne and have the bottle tip over and pour out the incoming video onto the screen. It also has a nice book transition with turning pages that’s good for weddings and video yearbooks. I only use it for opening or closing sequences or to delineate major sections of the video.

You can do a lot of this with Ulead Cool 3D Production Studio too and that’s also $149 so you might want to download the demo of that and play with it as well. I haven’t had the time to spend with Ulead Cool 3D but it has impressed me by what it can do as well. I just learned on Hollywood FX Pro so that’s what I tend to gravitate towards. (old habits die hard) ...and also Hollywood FX does render a whole lot faster than Cool 3D PS. (by a magnitude)

If you export as uncompressed video you will not see any degradation in the video. For longer sections I’m sure you could get away with rendering to DV and not see any degradation either. You are doing the same thing when you make a transition in Vegas (i.e., it gets re-rendered).

~jr

This post is spot on:
"The only thing, it does NOT completely uninstall well. Even after uninstall, if you plug a DV camera into your PC, you may be prompted to work with it in Studio...even though it's uninstalled...very shoddy and careless uninstall routine. I want nothing on my PC labeled "Pinnacle."

I've been trying to regedit that damn Pinnacle MJPEG out of my VidCap menu with no luck. If anyone has the solution, please post it!

And if anyone wants my copy of Studio 8 AV (the one with the analog DC10 capture card) please let me know. I'll sell it cheap, and be glad to see it go.

Good info JohnnyRoy. Thanks for the details.

I'm not sure I'm ready to get that far into Pinnacle, though. Is that champagne bottle transition included in Hollywood FX Plus For Studio? I do like the sound of that preset. I can imagine wrapping the company logo around the bottle and then pouring out one of the group shots they took outside their building and I think that's just the kind of whizbang that would wow 'em.

Unfortunately the champagne bottle comes with the Pro version ($149). There are over 300 FX with Pro. The FX that come with HFX Basic are: Airplane, Balloon, Block Pieces, Flyoff, Glass Break, Page Peel, Scissors, Spider, Wedding Bell, Wild Curl, Ball Split, Eraser, Particle Vortex, Scroll, Warp, River Door. As I said, these will give you an idea of what it can do but I understand not wanting to invest too much in Pinnacle. I also have Studio 7, which is very stable so if any of the Studio 8 patches messes things up too bad (and every once in a while they do) I can go back to Studio 7. Hollywood FX Pro does have some great transitions for a corporate video with multiple fly-in windows and spinning world globes (good for an international flavor), etc.

I purchased Hollywood FX Pro back when I was using Studio 7. I would have never given Pinnacle more of my money if Studio 8 were my only impression of them. Pinnacle was kind enough to give Studio 7 users a free upgrade to HFX Pro 4.6 from 4.5 (which shipped with Studio 8) that had more features and was the equivalent of their (then) Hollywood FX Gold. (HFX came in Bronze, Silver, and Gold) So they effectively gave their Studio 7 customers a free upgrade from HFX Silver to HFX Gold. They didn’t have to do that so that was really nice of them. I think their heart is in the right place, they just don’t know how to build quality software.

I would take a serious look at Ulead Cool 3D Production Studio. It's a free download to try and it has particle effects now (snow, smoke, bubbles, fire) and you can also map video to a surface. So you could make something like the champagne bottle effect. Also for just wiz-bang effects, take a look at particleIllusion 2.0 SE. It’s an outstanding particle generator that can add some great effects to your videos or even just the titles. It’s only $99 or you can get a FREE copy in Digit Magazine #64.

~jr

I must be missing something. I have seen several references to using Title Deko output in Vegas. I have studio 7 and studio 8. Like most others, I have little use for it. But I love the titles it can generate. But the Title Deko in 7 and the modified whatever in 8 can only save files in ".dtl" format. I assume that is some proprietary TitleDeko format. How are you using Title Deko output in Vegas?

Thanks.

2G

A couple thing you can do...

1.) Using media generator in Vegas, generate a 30 second or so pure green or blue avi video clip.

Take that clip into Studio 8, put whatever title you want over the blue/grrrn clip, render to avi.

Bring that avi file back into Vegas, Chroma key it and you have a great title overlay.

2.) If you wanted to use one of the cute animated transitions from Studio 8, you can export a few seconds of video from Vegas, apply your transition, then bring it back in to Vegas.

For all its' weakness, Pinnacle titling is really great looking...

Something for which to keep an eye out: BorisFX reportedly is coming out with Graffiti, reportedly at the end of tis month, with hooks to Vegas...