Outgrown Pinnacle 12, what's next
 

I should preface this with saying, one annoying thing about Pinnacle, IMVHO, is their upgrade path. If I had Pinnacle 10 Plus, when I upgrade to Pinnacle 12, I am bumped back-down to Pinnacle 12, and must pay again for the Plus version.
I think the upgrade path should be Pinnacle 10-> 12 or 10Plus -> 12 Plus for the same money.

OK... so I have Pinnacle 12, and am wanting more professional features. Do I just upgrade to Pinnacle 14 Ultimate and stay with what I already know, or is there another equivalent product out there?

You now move to Sony Vegas after a good clean install of Windows OS.

while I am a dyed in the wool Vegas guy since early version 2 and would like to see you as a Vegas user, I think to be fair you need to try whats out there and see which works best for you. Vegas has a free fully functional 30 day trail, Edius does also I believe (might be a shorter trial but IIRC it is fully functional) and Premeier. Try them all, see which feels right and go to it.

I will say that Vegas Platinum which is the light version of Vegas has almost as many features as the big boys, and is a lot less expensive so it would be a good way to get started. You might want to check it out.

Vince, I'm a Pinnacle refugee and now a Vegas Pro user for several years. I have a hunch that you'll like whatever NLE you move to. Editing in Pinnacle (I left at v9 <shudder>) felt to me like I was running a marathon all bound up in bungee cords...only to move 2 yards. <gasp>

A friend and wedding videographer at the time showed Vegas 5 to me and what it could do for him. Wow. I bought Vegas 6 then and haven't looked back. I'm sure that if he had showed me a different NLE, I might have bought that instead because Pinnacle was so horrible. I agree with Jeff to scrape your system clean of Pinnacle. At least try Vegas, probably the most bang for your buck.

Steve

What features are you wanting from an NLE that you don't have now?

Vegas, You'll like the speed.

I was also a former Pinnacle Studio user. The main problem with Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate was that it still did not natively support 24p or 60p, nor did it support 1080-line progressive video at all. Upon import, these files got re-converted to a different frame rate in the case of 24p or 60p content (they got resampled to 30p, with image quality loss or choppiness) or to interlaced in the case of 1080p content. In addition, I found Studio 12.1 Ultimate unreliable for importing 1080i MPEG-2 content extracted from HDTV broadcasts even after extracting the actual MPEG-2 data from other containers due to the lack of the proper GOP encoding in such files.

If you got downgraded from 10 Plus to standard 12, you also lost all HD editing capability. The standard edition of Studio 12 cannot handle HD videos at all - it is limited to standard definition only.

The current $50 "standard" edition of Studio, Studio 14 HD, still lacks true HD authoring capability although it can now handle AVCHD videos and can burn menuless AVCHD DVDs (or, for HDV content, the standard Studio 14 can recompress them to a format that's suitable for uploading to a Web site such as YouTube). Pinnacle Studio users should step up to Studio 14 Ultimate (as of version 14, the Plus and Ultimate editions have been combined into a single Ultimate edition that's priced the same as the former Plus edition) in order to get basic HD Blu-Ray authoring with menus.

At that point, I gave up on commercially available $100 NLEs, and went with Vegas Pro plus a few freeware software programs and converters.

I forgot to mention that the "standard" Studio 14 HD can also downconvert HD content to SD for authoring to SD DVD. But like most other NLEs at all price points, Studio does not do a very good job at this. Studio simply blends the two fields when downconverting 1080i to 480i, which results in a blurred image that's especially noticeable in moving scenes. (Or, for downconversions from 720/60p to 480/30p which is then encoded inside a 480/60i stream, Studio simply drops every other frame and downsizes the rest, resulting in somewhat choppy motion.) Studio 14 HD still has an authoring feature that can only output to standard definition, and it allows only the most rudimentary of menus (no custom links to other menus, no "nested" menu structure and a maximum of only one menu per movie disc). For more complex menu structures and/or authoring anything with menus to HD (Blu-Ray or AVCHD) disc, you'd need to purchase the Studio 14 Ultimate if you want to stick with Studio (as the basic Studio 14 can create AVCHD discs but with no menus).

I'm a former Pinnacle user (versions 7 - 10) who has upgraded to Vegas Pro. I'd used FCP extensively and loved it's features but it didn't work well with the type of projects I was working on (surf films - where I had lots of clips arranged in various folders stored on several hard drives, rather than project specific "media bins")

When I first used Vegas I found it a bit strange at first - partly because it worked so simply. I didn't have to set up project properties, scratch disks, media bins etc for every little project. I could simply open Vegas and start editing, browsing through my folders using the explorer just like I did in Pinnacle.

I found Vegas to be so much simpler than FCP and Premiere Pro (I also use CS3 sometimes because a colleague who I collaborate with sometimes has it) but at the same time it offers an amazing amount of control.

I haven't used the Movie Studio Versions of Vegas so I'm not sure how "crippled" they are, but they are a lot cheaper than the Pro version, which itself is not very expensive for what it offers you.

I look back on my Pinnacle days and wonder how I ever lived without the features of Vegas.

I'm a former Pinnacle Studio Versions 7 - 11 user. I finally got fed up with how many features required arcane workarounds to get to produce a usable result. The final straw that broke the camels back was when I discovered Studio couldn't keep a 2nd system sound track in sync. Or even if it played in sync in the editor, it would be up to three seconds out on the rendered DVD.

All of my deliverables so far have been standard DVD. I shoot HDV using a Sony HDR-HC9. Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro Pack handles the HD footage & downconversion very well. I have no complaints whatsoever.

With Vegas Movie Studio you get DVD Architect 4.5 which handles ONLY DVD authoring.
Vegas Pro comes bundled with DVD Architect 5.0 which DOES handle BD authoring.

Coming from Pinnacle Studio to Vegas Movie Studio, I would recommend getting this:

VASST - Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Training DVD

In addition to supporting menus only in standard-definition projects, DVD Architect Studio 4.5 (which comes with most editions of Vegas Movie Studio) does not natively support 24p video content, which gets recompressed and interpolated to 30p. Vegas Movie Studio itself does not officially support 24p (which explains the lack of a 24p rendering preset) although you can render 24p by using a custom setting.

The newest edition of Vegas Movie Studio, Vegas Movie Studo HD, is even more stripped down than most of the other editions of Vegas Movie Studio. Whereas the standard Vegas Movie Studio can only handle standard-definition content, Vegas Movie Studio HD can handle AVCHD and HDV content but completely lacks all disc-authoring capability (meaning that any AVCHD DVD discs created by Movie Studio HD will lack menus, and Vegas Movie Studio HD cannot author standard-definition content to disc at all because that edition of Vegas does not come with any version of DVD Architect whatsoever). However, this lack of authoring features is understandable given that the target audience for Vegas Movie Studio HD is the user who wants a quick and easy way to get HD content from an AVCHD or HDV camcorder to a video Web site which supports HD content such as YouTube or Hulu with a bit more flexibility and versatility than the software which comes bundled with most camcorders.

MS Platinum does provide BD authoring within the NLE itself. You just don't get menu abilities, for this you need the separate DVD application. Personally, I don't use menus, titling is quite enough...