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Home » Pinnacle Studio 16: Capable Yet Inexpensive NLE

Pinnacle Studio 16: Capable Yet Inexpensive NLE

Recently, the folks from Corel came to town, treating us to a demo of the new Pinnacle Studio 16 Ultimate, a capable video-editing program with some innovative features. While this won’t turn up at major facilities anytime soon, this new release has chops that will satisfy the needs of the most demanding prosumer users, with probably a few producers and ad execs thrown in too.

If you’re familiar with this part of the market, it might be a surprise that Studio is now a Corel product. Until this past July, Avid owned the NLE as part of its consumer division. Seeking to concentrate solely on the pro market, Avid sold the Pinnacle product line as well as M-Audio, its prosumer music hardware and software company.

Watching the Pinnacle Studio 16 demo, I was impressed with its slick interface and capable features. Unusual for a product not marketed to the pro user, the app includes Nvidia CUDA support, NVIDIA 3D Vision support, free cloud file sharing and storage with Box, and Red Giant plugins, to name just a few ways the app will differentiate itself in the market.

While Corel makes VideoStudio, an NLE aimed squarely at consumers, the company won’t muddy the waters in selling the Studio line on its main website. Instead, plans are to keep Pinnacle Systems as a stand-alone division with major offices in Silicon Valley and Germany. That’s important, as the product incorporates rich DNA, going back to the original Pinnacle Systems of 1986. (Pinnacle Systems, the original company, didn’t launch an NLE until later.) Over the years, the product also benefited from acquisitions that included FAST MultiMedia and Miro, as well as spending seven years as an Avid product.

Cool 3D Editing Features

The app’s support for Nvidia 3D Vision is a neat move for the product, though of course you will need an Nvidia graphics card, such as the Quadro or consumer-oriented GeForce. With such a card, you can edit and preview 3D work in both full-screen and window modes. Of course, actually showing such 3D for larger scale viewing requires a 3D-capable set, or Sony’s PS3.

3D is still rather unique in the world of NLEs, regardless of whether they’re consumer, prosumer or pro, although the latest version of Avid Media Composer addresses such editing. As mentioned before, Pinnacle Studio also takes advantage of the latest Nvidia CUDA enabled graphics cards for a fast editing and rendering experience.

Built in Cloud Sharing and Collaboration

Each product in the Pinnacle Studio 16 family includes up to 50GB of free in-app cloud storage and file sharing via Box, allowing you to download media and project files from any browser.

What might be more useful to many users is editing in the field on a tablet, specifically an iPad. Pinnacle touts its iPad app–Pinnacle Studio for iPad—as offering capabilities far beyond Apple’s version of iMovie for the iPad. Might be worth it for the producer on the go. iPad edits can then be transferred to a PC with the Studio 16 program to finish.

Other features

As with Corel’s other products, Pinnacle Studio 16 includes extensive built-in video tutorials, in this case produced by Class on Demand. You also have the ability to import from a wide range of digital devices, while an innovative storyboard feature lets you lay out shots visually.

You might also be interested in using the more than 2000 2D/3D effects, menus and animations; create custom-fitting soundtracks with Scorefitter; or make use of instant sharing via Facebook, YouTube, iPad, Apple TV and more.

For $129, Pinnacle Studio 16 Ultimate not only delivers seven premium Red Giant plugins (including Trapcode Particular and Magic Bullet Looks) but you’ll be prepared for compositing via the included piece of green screen fabric.

Not a bad place to be for an app that’s had a long and winding road from the pre-history of NLEs to today’s digital everywhere world.

We’ll follow up with a more in-depth review of Pinnacle Studio 16 Ultimate sometime soon.

For more information check out Pinnacle’s website. (Don’t be confused by the Avid name still on the site—it’s actually Corel you’ll be dealing with.)

–With additional material by Dan Ochiva

About Joe Herman

Joe Herman is a filmmaker, artist and post production specialist and writes often about the industry. You can reach him at joe[at]legendmultimedia[dot]com. Or reach and follow him on Twitter @JoeHermanTweets.

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Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

NJ – Governor Murphy signs $14B Incentive Program Bill – the NJ Economic Recovery Act of 2020

 Film tax credits — amending existing programs to include provisions for so-called New Jersey film partners and New Jersey film-lease partners and allowing an additional $200 million of tax credits annually over 13 years.

Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

Film Commish announces date for production restart

In her December 18, 2020 news update, MOME Commissioner Anne del Castillo announced that the Film Office is now accepting permit applications for production activity that begins on July 27th.

She also announced awards now (Awkwafina) and more. To read all of the Film Commish’s bloggy sort of news column, click here.

Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Nikon to Stop Making Cameras in Japan

Nikon has fallen on hard times as of late as its camera sales have cratered, and now there’s a new indicator of how dire its financial situation is: the company is reportedly pulling the plug on making cameras in Japan after over 70 years of doing so.

To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

 

 

 

Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

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In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

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Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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