However, it’s a shame that text becomes blocky in animations that scale the characters up to large sizes.

The animations are all preset, but it’s easy to mix and match these presets for the Enter, Emphasis and Exit phases of the animation, and to adjust the length of each section.įunctionally, this is the best text animation of any low-cost editing software. Some include animated backdrops such as sparkling lights or swirling lines, and they’re unusually stylish for home-oriented editing software.

The 32 templates are lively, attractive and cover a range of styles. New to the Ultimate edition is animated text. It’s nicely implemented with the ability to overlay ghostlike images of previous frames to help create convincing animations. It’s also possible to create stop-motion animations, albeit only using cameras with a live PC feed such as a DV camera or webcam. More successful is the ability to pluck videos from non-encrypted DVD and Blu-ray discs. It’s meant to be geared towards cameras that record to memory cards or hard disk, so we were disappointed to find that we had to trawl manually through the complex folder structure of an SDHC card to find the AVCHD footage contained within. Effects settings can be copied from one clip on the timeline to another, and there are new effects for generating lens flares, cartoon-like colours and stabilising shaky camerawork.Īn Import tab replaces the Capture tab in previous versions. We really appreciate the ability to resize the preview window, although this control disappears on a desktop narrower than 1,440 pixels.Ī Favourites folder lets users create shortcuts to hard disk locations, and a Project Bin gathers all the used media in one place.

Pinnacle claims improved ease of use, and beyond the cosmetic changes to the interface there are some welcome enhancements. As such, most people will prefer the pricey Ultimate edition reviewed here. However, it can’t generate Blu-ray or AVCHD discs and it doesn’t support keyframes for animating effect settings. WIth HD being in the name of even the cheapest (£50 inc VAT) version, it means that all versions support HD footage. 13 is unlucky for some, so Pinnacle Studio has jumped straight from version 12 to 14.

Pinnacle studio 14 xbox 360