Pinnacle Studio, now in its 24th version, is a video editing application that's become steadily more powerful and speedier with each iteration.
Its maker Corel also develops VideoStudio video editing software, with Pinnacle positioned as the higher-end of the two product lines.
Pinnacle is aimed at near-professional-level enthusiasts, with excellent editing features and effects such as stop-motion video, multicam editing, and motion tracking.
Pinnacle also supports 360-degree VR content, and its rendering speed is among the best in our testing.
For those familiar with all the ins and outs of Pinnacle's interface, processes, and capabilities, here's a crib sheet of what's new in version 24: Tracking masks with keyframes, face motion tracking with mosaic blur, a new title editor, and improved keyframe controls.
The previous Version 23 added important new tools of its own, including, clip nesting, animated GIF creation, color LUT presets, selective color vectorscopes, and batch processing.
How Much Does Pinnacle Studio Cost?
Like most video editing software aimed at consumers to near-professional users (a group sometimes known as prosumers), Pinnacle Studio is available in a trinity of good, better, and best levels, with the entry-level Pinnacle Studio listing for $59.95, Plus for $99.95, and Ultimate (reviewed here) for $129.95.
Prices are for perpetual licenses, with no recurring subscription fee required.
Upgraders from previous versions of Plus and Ultimate save $35 and $45 off the full price, respectively.
If you need to edit 360-degree or 4K content, you'll need to spring for Ultimate, which also adds high-end effects from NewBlue and unlimited video tracks.
It's the only level that includes some of the new features detailed here.
Unfortunately, there's no free trial version of any of the Pinnacle Studio levels.
Several competitors, including Adobe Premiere Elements and CyberLink PowerDirector, offer free trials.
Can My PC Run Pinnacle Studio?
Windows 10 is recommended, but Pinnacle Studio also runs on Windows 8.x, and 7, and it requires 64-bit versions of those OSes, as you might expect.
It requires an Intel Core i3 or AMD A4 3.0 GHz or higher, an Intel Core i7 4th generation or later or AMD Athlon A10 or higher for UHD, multicam, or 360 video, and at least 4GB RAM, with 8GB recommended.
To get going you first download a small installer stub app, which then downloads the massive full program.
It's over a 2GB download and takes up 3.6GB on-disk after installation, so you'll want a fast internet connection and plenty of space on your hard drive.
Of course, if you're editing 4K video, you need a big disk anyway.
Importing and Interface
When you first run the program, you're invited to the program's User Experience Improvement Program, which sends anonymous usage data back to the company; turning that off is straightforward if you're not interested.
Next, a dialog tells you that the Import feature lets you record and open media files.
Import takes up the full program window, which makes it easy to pick the types of importing you need, whether it's from DVD, computer folders, stop motion, snapshot, or multicam.
The software can import 4K content, and you can star-rate and keyword-tag content at import, which helps you find it later.
The search bar also helps you find content you haven't marked in this way, searching instead for words in the filename.
One option on the Import mode is MultiCam Capture.
This opens an external app that lets you record your screen along with any webcams you have connected or built in to your PC.
You can use function keys to start and stop recording, and the tool produces separate, synced clips that you can add to your project bin.
It lets you adjust lighting and sound sources, and in my testing, it worked flawlessly.
Pinnacle's editing interface is pleasing and flexible.
It sports flat, 2D icons, and a pleasant black and gray color scheme.
The program uses the concept of Project Bins, in which you stash all the content for a given movie project—clips, photos, and sound files, but not effects and transitions.
This is a common approach for pro-level apps such as Final Cut Pro X, and it's a feature that Corel's other line, VideoStudio, does not include.
The whole program window is topped by four mode-switching buttons: a Home icon, Import, Edit, and Export.
The first is simply a Welcome screen offering tutorials (including the excellent Studio Backlot videos), info on new program features, and additional assets and programs for sale.
Edit mode uses the standard three-pane editor interface, with source content occupying the top-left quadrant of the screen, the preview window at the top right, and the timeline across the bottom half.
If you're used to having preview on the left, a handy switcher button lets you move it there without any fuss.
The Ultimate level allows an unlimited number of tracks, as mentioned earlier.
The Plus level limits you to 24 tracks, and Standard to six.
You can change the relative size of the panels, add a source-video preview, and switch the movie preview to full screen.
Interface panels can be pulled off and you can change their positions, as you can in some other editors, such as Magix Movie Edit Pro.
The preview window includes detailed controls, such as jog and shuttle, frame advance, and rewind.
You can also switch the preview between source and timeline.
You expand and contract the timeline (either the main one or the one in the preview window) with a clever mouse-drag action, but I wish there were a mouse wheel option for resizing the timeline.
Searching and sorting is available for any content, which is more than I can say for some video editing programs, such as Studio's sister application, VideoStudio.
Hiding and showing items by content type—video, audio, photo, and project—is simplicity itself.
There's an enormous and customizable assortment of keyboard shortcuts.
New for version 24 is a helpful Project Notes panel, to help you keep track of work progress.
You can also choose which buttons you want to display on the timeline toolbar, including Split, Add Marker, Trim Mode, Multi-Cam Editor, and Audio Ducking.
The interface makes no specific concession to touch input, which I find useful for scrubbing, changing value sliders, and tapping control buttons.
That said, scrubbing the timeline by finger did work acceptably.
The software now fully supports high-resolution monitors.
Rather than integrated help, you get an online PDF (that's still better than Adobe's unimpressive web help, which shows info for other products and from non-staff users).
In general, however, Pinnacle's interface is more accessible than those of some competing video editors.
Basic Video Editing and Transitions
Pinnacle uses a magnetic timeline, so any clip you drag and drop into it snaps to any existing clips, and you can turn that behavior off, if you prefer.
Dropping a clip inside another splits the original one, and a razor icon offers clip splitting, as well.
One thing missing is a button to drop a selected clip into the timeline at the current insertion point—most editors have this.
The Trim Mode button (or just double-clicking a join point) opens a second preview window so you can see the first and second clips' states at the trim point.
This is supposed to help with effecting slip and slide trims, but I find it less intuitive than the trimming windows of CyberLink PowerDirector and VideoStudio, among other apps.
Three- and four-point editing offer more in- and out-point precision.
You switch into this editing mode from the same button on the right side that switches among Smart Editing, Insert, Replace, and Overwrite modes.
With the three-point option, you specify in and out points on the timeline, and an in or out point in the source clip.
This way, when you insert the clip onto the timeline it will be fit to your specification.
Two insertion buttons appear on the source window: Keep Speed and Fit to Duration.
The second of these stretches the source clip to fit the target area in the timeline.
The four-point option lets you specify in and out points on both the source and the timeline.
When you use that, if your source selection is longer than the spot on the timeline you've marked, you see a dialog asking whether you want to align the source clip with the beginning or end of the timeline points, and whether to trim the source or overwrite the timeline.
If you choose the Fit to Duration button, your source clip is sped up or slowed down to fit the marked area in the timeline exactly.
I see how these could be useful options and less haphazard than simply dragging source onto the timeline.
In particular, the time stretching to fit a marked area saves you time.
Dog-eared corners of adjacent clips let you adjust transition lengths between them.
You can also enable dynamic-length transitions, or just stick with transitions of set lengths.
Cross-fades are accessible right on the timeline via the transition dog ears, but the place from which you get your fancier transitions is somewhat hidden, compared with how other video editors present it.
They're also not as simple to add to timeline clips, with no automatic duration option.
Sometimes I dragged a transition between clips in my testing and the app didn't add anything.
There is, however, a very full selection of transitions, grouped as 2D-3D, Artistic, Alpha Magic, and more.
The Seamless Transition tool implements an effect that's all the rage among amateur videographers.
As Davonte Douglas explains in this tutorial, you don't even need software to make seamless transitions, but software can in fact make them even smoother and more impressive.
The seamless transitions in Pinnacle Studio work like any other transitions: You just drag them from the source panel down between clips.
You get choices for downward, left-to-right, and upward motion between clips, along with variations for rotation during the transition.
You can fine-tune the motion by placing similar areas in selection boxes.
The Morph transition lets you draw guides in the first and second videos to affect the transition.
It's not quite as impressive as Final Cut Pro X's Flow transition, which blends jump cuts—for example, you might seamlessly cut a few words or even a sentence out of a single clip of an interview.
The Pinnacle Morph transition is pretty much a crossfade that lets you add blurry motion between clips.
With the Wide-Angle Lens Correction feature, you simply double click on a source clip, and then choose that option from the top menu.
There are six GoPro presets, but you can also manually adjust the geometry, making sure lines that should be straight are indeed rectilinear—an issue with GoPro's wide-angle lenses.
Masks
A Mask button right above the source panel accesses two kinds of masks: Shape masks and Panel masks.
The first sort can only create one 2D effect, but Panel masks can be manipulated with 3D motion effects.
You can create masks starting from a square, circle, pen, brush, text, or Magic Wand selection.
The last option is tricky to get an effective mask with; it took me several tries to get one that worked.
You can now apply a mask per clip, rather than just per track.
By default, each time you click on the image with the Magic Wand tool enabled, it selects everything of the same color, regardless of whether it's contiguous—but now there's a Contiguous check box, which addresses that problem.
You can hold down Control while selecting to add to the selection, and an Eraser tool lets you further refine the selection.
Even with all these options, it's hard to select a subject that's not a single color.
Much more useful is the Paintbrush tool, updated in version 24 with the very helpful Smart Edge option.
This is the best option for selecting objects that aren’t all one color, such as people in colorful clothing or a person with a vehicle.
Also new is the Face option, which identifies where a face is and places an oval matte over it.
This is useful for obscuring identities with the Mosaic option—best of all, it offers a tracking option.
In my testing, it did a good job following and resizing along with face movements.
The other masks types require you to edit keyframes to change their position and size.
But there are lots more functions to use with Masks: Opacity is one, which includes a feathering adjustment.
You can also choose Fill, Blur, Turbulence, Cartoon, Detail Enhance, Oil Painting, Pencil Sketch, Fractal Clouds, Noise Reduction, and more.
Alternatively, you can apply any of these functions to the Matte, or the unselected background.
Filter options include High Pass, Low Pass, Dichroic, and Color.
That last option lets you choose a color filter from a color picker.
Text masks are a fun option, also available in CyberLink PowerDirector.
You get loads of font options, as well as adjustments for alignment, rotation, and positioning.
Panel masks, as mentioned, can be manipulated in 3D using keyframes.
They differ from regular masks in that you can only have one panel associated with a track, and you choose an Asset—that is, a clip or image—for the mask.
Motion Tracking
You can get to Pinnacle Studio's Motion Tracking tool either by right-clicking on a track or by double-clicking on the clip in the timeline to open the Effects window.
First, you mask the object you want to track, but your only options are a quadrilateral and an oval—no irregular custom shapes.
It took a few tries to get it to follow my masked biker, but the tracking worked about as well as it does with other similar tools.
You can retrack if the followed object is lost.
It's a slow process, though, taking a little under a second per frame on my test system.
The tool lets you apply Mosaic and Blur to the tracked object, something you'll often want to do in a video for things like obscuring faces, license plates, branded items, or naughty bits.
But I didn't see an option to track with text, shapes, or even videos as some competitors can.
360-Degree VR Video
Like CyberLink PowerDirector, Pinnacle Studio now lets you work with 360-degree video, from cameras like the Kodak Pixpro SP360 4K and the Samsung Gear 360.
You can either do some basic editing while maintaining the 360-degree aspect or convert the 360 to standard 2D view.
I tested footage from the latter.
Confusingly, you have to add the 360 clip to the timeline first and then right-click on it and choose Add as 360 or 360-to-Standard....
