Pinnacle Studio 8

Live music picks

Miller’s timeless hits — including “The Joker,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Take the Money and Run” and “Jet Airliner” — are familiar to folks who weren’t even born when these songs hit the charts. His greatest hits set is among the 100 biggest-selling albums of all time in the U.S., with more than 13 million sold. And at 67, the enthusiastic and gregarious Miller is still a concert staple. As he told me in an interview in 2008, “My plan is to play my entire lifetime. As long as I can do it, I’m going to do it.” A former boxer and the son of a Church of God minister, Thorn has slowly built an audience with his scruffy charm and terrific songs that straddle the boundary between country and rock. He can be laugh-out-loud funny one moment and have you weeping in your beer the next. He has a knack for combining the poignant with the ridiculous, which is a pretty rare talent. His latest studio album, 2010’s “Pimps and Preach­ers,” debuted at No. 83 on the Billboard 200, marking a new chart pinnacle for Thorn. No amount of scandal can tarnish Kelly’s ability to fascinate the music-buying masses. It’s been a while since he scored a major hit, but he remains a popular concert draw. Like Kelly, California native and Atlanta resident Cole’s songs do better on the R&B charts than the pop charts. That’s a shame, because they’re usually classier than the competition. Take the Grammy-nominated “Heaven Sent,” which went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart. It’s beautiful simplicity, as the singer croons “I wanna be the one who you believe in your heart is sent from …” and then another, softer Cole coos “sent from heaven” before the first phrase ends. Ambrosius, formerly of Floetry, is promoting her debut album, “Late Nights & Early Mornings,” which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart in March. The album’s second single, “Far Away,” was a Top 5 R&B/Hip-Hop hit. One of the most critically adored bands of the late 1980s and very early ’90s. The roaring wall of sound, particularly J Mascis’ guitar overdrive, was an obvious influence on Nirvana’s late Kurt Cobain and Co. as well as the shoegazer bands of the early ’90s. It’s a minor miracle that the band ever reformed, since the disintegration of the original trio led to lawsuits and bitter songs. Rock ’n’ roll might never forget, but it obviously forgives sometimes.

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Making Movies with Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate

Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate, retailing at $99.99, is the most recent version of the company owned by Avid’s considerable line of software for content creation for video and audio PC partisans.  Pinnacle has always been steadfastly devoted to entry level consumers, and excludes the advanced mechanic editing characteristics of the luxury directed computer hardware optimizations that qualify others and Premiere Elements 8;  its concentration is definitely on a cleaner, more sensible interface. 3 versions of this software are available, with testing being conducted on the Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate, retailing at $99.99, which is the middle priced option.  Studio HD, at $49.00, does not include the encoding of Dolby Digital 5.1; authoring by Blu-Ray, as well as some other effects, and the highest priced, Studio Ultimate, at $129.99, includes a backdrop green screen as well as 4 additional plugins from Red Giant Software. The laptop used for testing included a screen of 18.4 inches; 800GB total disk space; Nvida GeForce GTS 250M video card; 6GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i7-820QM processor, but Pinnacle has stated that whatever computer running Windows 7; XP SP3; or Vista and having 1GB of RAM; a 1.8GHz single core processor; and a graphics card compatible with DirectX9 is adequate.  It is, however, recommended that computers using it are running the application have at least a 2.4GHz dual core AVCHD processor and 2GB of RAM for the application to perform at an optimum level. It is to be assumed that the Core i7 processor and its 6KB of RAM would have been more than adequate, but it was not perfect.  It was possible to create a number of short films, using an array of transitions, and it was a simple process to export these in each case.  Generally, it was a brisk, responsive program; quicker than the Adobe Premiere Elements 8, only not quite as fast as CyberLink PowerDirector 8.  However, there were a number of stability issues, with the program crashing once when attempts were made to exit the application in Windows 7 as well as save the finished work, and all the work was lost.  The program also crashed whilst attempts were made to create a menu for the disc, though it was possible to reinstate the task when the application was restored, in this case. The principle window has a 3 square interface that resembles that of both the CyberLink PowerDirector 8 and the Adobe Premiere Elements 8, but Pinnacle has wisely chosen a littler default sizing for the window in which the movies are premiered, a good feature for those with PCs that are lower performance, and this size is easily adjustable with a slider above the window.  On the top of the left hand side, 3 mode buttons enable choosing between the activities of importing your footage; editing your movie; and actually making it, this last being for configuration and export of the complete production to the internet; a tape; a file; or a disc.  The interface seemed brisker and far more reactive than that offered by Adobe Premiere 8, although it boasts only 2 video tracks, besides sound effects; music; and some others.  However, CyberLink and Adobe products do offer more flexibility in terms of layering and editing.

Pinnacle Studio 10 for Windows

Note that Studio 8 referred to the Audio track as the Original Audio track, and still does in the Help files. However, Tool Tips refer to it as the Audio ...

HWM

This is doable with Pinnacle Studio 8 but bear in mind that you'll have to render the entire timeline into one format so it'll • Pinnacle Edition DV <MT ...

How to do everything with your digital video camcorder

Using Pinnacle Studio SmartSound One of the reasons we really like Pinnacle Studio 8 is the fact that it includes its own royalty-free music generator. ...

PC magazine, the independent guide to IBM-standard personal computers

Several other readers had a love-hate thing with Pinnacle Studio 8; some moved up to ... Michael Koo recommended WinDVD Creator 2 over Pinnacle Studio 8, ...

HWM

HWM: How well has Pinnacle Studio 8, one of your latest video-editing software for the consumer market fared since launch last August? ...