Pinnacle Studio 8

This is a low-cost video-editing software for beginners or home users. Version 8 has the option of publishing your content to a CD or even a DVD. The main window is clean and uncluttered, but can pack in quite a lot of information during editing. There are three main menus–capture, edit and make movie. Studio 8 can take video from a digital camera, analog video source, or Sony’s MicroMV. A neat feature this time is that it automatically senses breaks in scenes, and will break them down in the album space for easy use. A number of impressive transitions and sound effects can be applied to these. Use the built-in text tool to easily create titles and menus for DVDs. The final video can be output in several formats including MPEG 1, 2, AVI, RealVideo and Windows Media. Audio can be saved in WAV, MP3, and still images in BMP, JPG, TIF, etc. You can also add your own background music, such as songs and voice-over. The application has a nice and easy feel to it. Even amateurs will be able to use it without much hassle. A slight hitch we found was that sometimes the application appeared frozen, especially during the capture process, when it actually wasn’t. The software is highly recommended to anyone who already has a video-capturing card and is looking for a good inexpensive video-editing application. 

Anuj Jain