Well, much to my delight, I got home from a weekend away and found PSU 11 on my front steps. My initial task was (a) to have a successful install, and (b) edit and render *.mts video files I took from my Panasonic SD-1. Here is my initial take.

TOP LINE

What I can say, so far, is that the install was painless, PSU 11 recognizes MTS files, and on a slow machine, I could still do some basic edits (I'll confest, some of which I did based solely on the audio!). It outputs seemlessly to MPG-4 hi def. More info below....

INSTALL

I started using Pinnacle Studio somewhere around version 8 so my system is cluttered with multiple versions and patchs of Pinnacle Studio and its ancillary programs. To my relief, PSU 11 let me start from scratch and remove all the other versions. The install included the program disc, two "bonus DVDs" with FX and ProDAD and similar stuff, and finally disc 4, the "Ultimate" upgrade disc.

The install took about an hour of inattentive installation (so faster probably ITRW). I also presume there is a bunch of effects and the like on these discs that are only there to tease me into a future purchase, but I didn't get a chance to look too deep.....so more on that as I get there.

The install itself, however, was smooth and error free.

(Alas, it still takes 40 seconds to boot on my single core 3.2ghz machine!)

EDITING *.MTS

My initial trial was quite simple. See if it even recognizes MTS files from my SD-1 and then try a basic edit and render. Immediately my MTS files were recognized and easily imported, so that was a first among any program I have tried, including Nero which (last I saw) required renaming the MTS files to MPG.

The editing wasn't as seemless. Yes, I can edit.....but alas, not brilliantly in that the video preview is still very jerky and at times doesn't come close, BUT since this is a slow machine that I couldn't get to do more with raw MTS files in the first place, I didn't expect PSU 11 to change that. (A faster machine is still required it appears, sigh.)

RENDERING

Well the truth is, I don't really have any clue how to put PSU 11 through its paces. With my first edit, I rendered as mpg-4 in high def. It came out nice, but I will have to do a lot more experimentation before I can come to any real conclusions. As this is my back-up machine, tomorrow I will try an install on my faster core duo and see what havoc I can wreak!

Until then.....

Hmmm. Try running the program for several hours, switching between projects, and importing some files and see if it still crashed and freezes up. I will be impressed if they managed to fix some of the bugs... or the whole PS10 program.

Ok, I also got home from a weekend away and found PSU 11 in my mailbox.

Kind of the same experience as dakin:

INSTALL
Installation did run error free, but took time. I first did remove all other version of PSU.

IMPORT MTS
Importing directly from the camera worked, but did not preserve the metadata (date and time).
So I will still import with HD-Writer to preserve metadata on my original files and then open in PSU 11. This also worked fine.

EDITING
Editing worked but was very jerky. But my PC does not live up to the specs. So what else could you expect. I have submitted some questions on good/best configurations for AVCHD editing.

RENDERING
Tried different formats and all worked, but still slow (really need a new system)

Questions to Pinnacle Support

1. Will Studio 11 take full use of NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology in GeForce 8600 GTS?

2. Will Studio 11 take full use of ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform in the new ATI Radeon HD™ 2000 series?

3. Else what is the best graphics card that can be used.

4. Will Studio 11 run better on 64 bit processors

5. Will Studio 11 run better on quad core technologi?

6. What would be the best configuration for AVCHD editing.

……

So I had a rather unexpected result from my an install on my primary PC, which is a core 2 duo......

A month ago I spent hours trying to compare codecs, video drivers and the like between my two machines to see why the older machine would play AVC HD files....even if slowly and jerky....but not the newer faster one. It didn't make sense.

Nero actually has a nice program for showing all the codecs.....but ultimately the analysis got way too complicated so I dropped the project.

Enter PSU 11, which, as mentioned above, I installed on my primary machine after some reasonable success on the backup.

INSTALL

On this machine I had some troubles with the "bonus discs" (never got a complete install there) but the rest ran fine. Notably, it took less than 15 seconds to turn the program on, which was a very nice improvement.

RUN-TIME

Here's where things got funny for me. On a machine that would completely choke on any AVC files to date.....now runs AVC completely smoothly WITHIN PSU 11. It still didn't change and other programs so if its a new codec, it didn't apply anywhere else, but the only conclusion I could draw was that its actually possible to play AVC files on my faster machine, but that something is missing somewhere, whether codec, video drivers, or some obscure switch or setting. This all suggests I don't necessarily need a faster system, but, well, I'm confused.

The good news is, I can run PSU 11 with AVC files and edit them smoothly on a machine that wouldn't display AVC files before.

MORE EDITING

This is my next step. Hopefully more here soon, but I am losing heart about the AVC format because the reality is, unless I transcode or burn to disk, the resulting files require too much work to do anything with. I love the quality....but I'm getting excellent quality with other cameras that don't use AVC and even if the files are not as compressed as AVC, disk space is (relatively) cheap....so alas, I may sell my SD-1 and stick with the main street cameras.

That said, I have a lot of AVC files to deal with so will write more soon as to how PSU 11 handles them....but hoping to get some other reviews here as well.....

I started using a Athlon 64 3500+ with 2GB DDR1, GeForce 8600GTS and PSU11 was way too slow for normal usage. I even applied the Beta patch upon first usage. Beta 11.1.0.5175 which improves performance.

http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportF...rimdownload.htm

I then acquired a AMD Athlon X2 4600+, 4GB DDR2, 8600GTS for testing and it was much better but the preview window doesnt really work even after background rendering green bar was done.

So i take it further and try it on a system with a Intel Core2 Duo E6700 and its smokes the AMD X2 4600+ and the program is perfectly usable with AVCHD editing. Im a newbie but im quite pleased with the E6700 and am learning a better pace now. Id consider a Intel Quad core for a new machine.

-Im not Pinnacle but I slept in a Holiday Inn last night.


1. Will Studio 11 take full use of NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology in GeForce 8600 GTS?

8600GTS will only be good for video decode in apps such as PowerDVD Ultimate. Its not going to do anything for encode.

2. Will Studio 11 take full use of ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform in the new ATI Radeon HD™ 2000 series?

Dunno about ATI but probably good for AVCHD decode as well.

3. Else what is the best graphics card that can be used.

In my opinion a 256MB 8600GTS.

4. Will Studio 11 run better on 64 bit processors

Studio is a 32-bit application but it will run in a 64-bit OS with a 64-bit CPU. No known advantage I know of.

5. Will Studio 11 run better on quad core technologi?
Havent tried it myself yet but im betting it will be maybe 40% faster and thats alot in my book. http://www.techspot.com/review/36-i...6600/page6.html

6. What would be the best configuration for AVCHD editing.
Intel Q6600 with 2GB or more of ram. Just exceed their minimum requirement.

You guys are way past me when it comes to the technical side of this stuff. For what it's worth, here's a summary of my first experience with Pinnacle v11 Ultimate...

First of all I am running a dua-core 3.2 with 2 gig of memory. I have a Sony SR-1, which means I have .m2ts files.

Overall, Pinnacle worked fine for my first project (with a few things to work out). I moved 55 minutes of AVCHD files into my project, did a little editing and threw some tiles/transitions in and added a menu. No crashes...took about 2 hours to write the frames out and then burn a DVD.

I did however get no sound out to the DVD (except for the menu). I'm sure it has something to do with selecting 5.1 surround (which I expected to work fine, but it didn't. Guess I'll have to read and follow-up on that one. Anyone have any experience with 5.1 sound?

Also, I'm waiting for Blue-ray output format...but that will be awhile in a future release. I do see that Pinnacle has a beta version for AVCHD output...which will work for now. Has anyone tinkered around with that? I'm cautious about jumping in to try that out until it becomes an official service patch.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Thanks soupbone for good input and links to my decission process. Looks like PSU 11 took advantage of quad core already in 10.7.
Pinnacle has not answered my support question yet

PC Magazine's review is here

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2144739,00.asp

Looks like one of their opinions (going to a question above in this thread) is that it is dramatically more stable.

The rest of the review.....hmmmm......

I am reminded of a parable (that I no doubt will recount incorrectly--maybe someone remembers the exact one), where a person of relative means saves for years and buys a tremendous piece of art for their living room.

It is only after putting in the art piece that they start looking around and realizing that their furniture and rugs don't really live up to the same standard.....so upgrade everything else to match the artwork.

Quad core.....dang Thomas, would love to hear if you do get it, but I can't stomach that right now.....but then again, most of the videos I do are for posting on the web, and I don't see any gain at this point in starting with AVC and then having to render in another format.

I guess that begs the question....

If I start with AVC and render to another mpg format, am I better off, worse off, or the same than if I simply shot the video in the other format!

Did you activate all the features of the program? I think there was one requiring activation for Dolby Encoding/Decoding?

I installed the Beta for better performance but havent tried the author a AVCHD DVD yet because im out of blanks. Ill try this weekend.

AVC is just a version MPEG-4 (H.264). You can render to DiVX or profiles for use on webpages, ipod/psp. I wish PSU11 had a youtube profile.

Sorry -- I didn't completely explain myself. Posting on the web would typically always take transcoding and I do it all the time in PSU and a variety of programs. The issue for me is not whether I can do this....but that I want to watch it in HD right from the camera on my computer and others without transcoding (for instructional purposes).

Thus, most of the shoots I do don't require editing and I use special video watching programs to remember segments I want to study.

So for me I have to question the point of having HD quality if in order to watch it I have to have (a) store original files, (b) transcode to a watchable HD, and (c) store the transcoded file (plus, as is often the case, web size versions). That a whole bunch of work and a lot of storage for something that I had hoped would work so much more simply.

Don't know why I hadn't really figured that out until now. I run three machines and while I have thought about upgrading to a quad-core, for me it just doesn't make sense yet. Maybe in a few years when AVC codecs and the appropriate video cards and drivers are more universal and machine power isn't an issue, but I think I made a tactical mistake with this camera in getting too far ahead of the general technology.

FWIW, I am also no longer convinced it is a pure power issue either, given that Pinnacle can play raw avc files but nothing else on my computer will. As mentioned above, I've done my best to troubleshoot the issue and see why I get varying results from separate computers, but am at a loss to explain the vagaries.

Truth is, the SD-1 I bought is bigger than I typically would use in the first place....but it was just too tempting as I was there in the store in Akihabara! Sigh.....

I have the Ultimate edition. According to the website, the ultimate edition has Dolby 5.1 encoding. However, if I try to burn a disc with 5.1, it tells me that I need to activate the Dolby 5.1 feature. It then tries to charge me 2 UKP, admittedly a small amount, but I don't want to pay if I am not supposed to.

Have others had this problem? Easiest way to see, is to try and create a DVD but press the settings button. This will bring up a window where you can select 5.1. Then try to create the disc and you get the warning.

The Ultimate disc in the pack seems to install the 3 plug-ins, but doesn't seem to do anything about the 5.1 aspect.

Could others confirm what I am seeing?

I had the same problem with 5.1. Its supposed to be free with ultimate! Its a known bug with the Beta im using.
http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/supportf...etaDownload.htm

I just used 2-channel dolby or PCM. Moreover, burning any kind of media be it AVCHD or DVD always failed in PSU11. My workaround is to configure the burn mode to, "Create disc dontent but don't burn." I then change the image type to ISO and used Nero7 to burn it with success.

I can get the out put of video aspect correct but How do you make the menu templates for DVD in 16:9 aspect ratio. If I leave them as they are I can't even read the titles under the thumbnails on my tv screen.