Pinnacle Studio Reviews

I picked up Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 24 early this year and used it once for a small project. I was happy then, though honestly I don't think it's worth anywhere near what I paid for it. Fast forward to just days ago when I wanted to use it again. Downloaded the updates, started working, everything seemed fine. Then several hours in, disaster. The timeline and exports had bad frames, just grey spacers with a loading symbol where the actual video should be. I noticed it while moving through the timeline. The first minute looked good, but into the second minute of my three minute clip, there were unrendered frames everywhere. I'm pretty tech savvy with software, so I spent hours trying every fix I could find online. Deleted Pinnacle, cleared caches, checked my hard drive, confirmed my PC and video card were running great. Reset the software, deleted and reinstalled it, rebooted several times. Then I found out this has been a recurring bug for years. I'm not buying this again. I used to run a software company for over a decade, and this kind of attitude kills companies. I'm moving to DaVinci Resolve. It's way better and actually works.

The bad reviews out there are pretty accurate about this product. I have a Pinnacle Studio Ultimate license, but the program shuts down whenever I try to import anything. There's zero support from Corel. I spent money on something completely worthless.

I grabbed Pinnacle Studio 24 for cheap as part of a bundle deal, and the content packs made it look appealing. It's definitely not worth what I spent. I got past that annoying upgrade prompt and tried some basic tasks. The whole thing ran slowly, had bugs everywhere, and didn't do half of what it advertised. Trying to remove it was its own nightmare. I got an error saying 'The setup encountered a problem' and it wouldn't uninstall. There's a help article about dealing with failed uninstalls, but it tells you to download a RegDelete tool without actually giving you a link. Then it tells you to hunt through your drive for folders with 'studio' in the name and maybe delete them, but only if you're sure, otherwise don't. Really helpful. There's tons of free video editing software that's way better.

I'd give it zero stars if I could. STAY AWAY STAY AWAY STAY AWAY. Their customer service is awful. Instead of actually helping you, they just try to sell you the next version. There are way better products out there that cost less and actually take care of their customers. The way they treat people deserves to put them out of business.

I'd read that this was ideal for beginner video makers. I had made some really basic stuff with old Windows Movie Maker and needed something simple but with standard editing features. I mostly create slideshows with tons of text since I'm sharing a lot of information. These aren't quick TikTok videos but they're not complex multi-camera productions either. My project was about 7 minutes, mostly pictures with text overlays. The way Pinnacle handles text and titles is incredibly awkward. I ran into way more issues than I should have. Get this, 24 point text on one slide would look different from 24 point text on the next slide. Happened every time, whether I copied the text box to keep things uniform or created new ones. I battled that forever. Sometimes the text boxes wouldn't let me move them or resize them. That's so basic it shouldn't even be an issue. Back in old Movie Maker, positioning text anywhere on screen was simple. Maybe my computer didn't have enough memory, but the timeline would do strange things sometimes, like display photos in the wrong order.

I switched from an older version to version 26, thinking I'd find real improvements. That was a mistake. The older version was easier to use and had effects that got removed in the newer one. The biggest problem is there's no audio during editing, which looks like a software bug. I still don't have any answer for how to fix this. Has anyone else run into this problem?

Pinnacle studio and I have this weird on-and-off thing going. It has problems but it used to work okay. Not anymore though. Yesterday I lost a bunch of editing work, and when I restarted the program it kept bugging me about upgrading. I was like, absolutely not. They keep trying to make me buy the latest version even though what I already paid for is super unreliable. It's getting old. I'm checking out other options like DaVinci Resolve and FinalCut for different systems. I'd rather stick with Windows for my editing work, but honestly the frustration is getting to me. If I find other tools that are less annoying, I might just jump ship permanently.

It's way past time for this. Still no support for 21:9 aspect ratio. Can't set custom timeline resolutions or aspect ratios either.

VERSION 25 IS AWFUL FOR EDITING BOTH PHOTOS AND VIDEOS, JUST TERRIBLE. I'm going to find a simpler video editor. I had Pinnacle way back and it was straightforward for making videos. I created tons of videos and was satisfied with how the older version worked. But every time they add technology, it gets harder to use and more aggravating. I don't want to feel stressed just making a basic video. The editing tracks for both video and photos are just badly designed. It's too much to describe.

I'm jumping in on this too. The product frustrated me to no end, and the customer service was equally bad. The program installed fine, but when I opened it, it showed the splash screen, then the startup window appeared, and right after that it crashed straight to the desktop with no error message. It happened immediately. My system is Windows 11 on a Lenovo P1 Gen 4. The support team was useless. They kept asking me to run system diagnostics twice, told me to reinstall the app multiple times, wanted me to install outdated graphics drivers, and made me download a DirectX package that's over a decade old.