Pinnacle Studio 26 vs. 25 - Should you upgrade?

Join David as he does a real world comparison and review between Corel Pinnacle Studio 26 and Studio 25 video editing software. Should you upgrade?

00:00 - Introduction
00:43 - Background
03:12 - Rendering and Proxy Editing
03:50 - Gap Markers
04:00 - Saving workspace layout?
04:25 - Audio Drift
05:16 - Time Remapping
05:32 - Crash Recovery
06:02 - Audio Ducking
06:39 - Titles
07:02 - Masks
07:16 - Importance of Clean Installation
08:02 - Summary
08:31 - Closing

Music:
(Pinnacle 25 royalty-free music):
Pulsing Dance
House Fever
Reaction Time
City Night Groove

[brianacraman]

Thank you for your in depth review David. I used Pinnacle from about version 9 to 18 (including the Avid Studio days) and all through the process it limped along and I lived in hope that the next version was going to be better however as you say you learn how far you can push the program and you work accordingly albeit frustratingly. Each year I looked forward to upgrading in the hope thiungs would get better and each year I was disappointed. Thinking it was my computer I upgraded to an hp z640 workstation but the new version of Pinnacle I was using (I can't remember which now) wouldn't even load. After 2 weeks of messaging the Pinnacle people and watching many youtube videos, reloading the program I realised it was probably time to try something else. You hope that day would never come after many years of investing so much time, effort and money into the program. I thought I'd try Cyberlink Power Director and I really couldn't believe it. It worked. And straight away. No looking up countless help videos. And I could add all my fancy tricks and it didn't fall over. Anyway after years of being very happy with Power Director I thought I would buy Pinnacle 26 for my laptop (before seeing your review unfortunately) to try and reload some old studio files and export them as MP4s as I had only saved my files on DVD previously. I thought surely by now things would have improved. I opened an old studio file and it sluggishly loaded. The memories of old Pinnacle versions came flooding back but I gave it time to load and get itself sorted knowing it was loading an old file. Finally after locating moved files etc it came time to export to an MP4 file. It started and I thought hmmmm... perhaps things have changed. The last time I looked at the computer it was about 60% complete. I left the room and came back about 1/2 hour later only to find Pinnacle 26 had shut itself down and there was a failed file saved on my hard disk. I closed the laptop with all the familar feelings I had when I had bought previous versions of this substandard software. I'm not here to sell Cyberlink Power Director but can tell you honestly it can do everything Pinnacle can do and actually works. And a lot quicker. I feel Pinnacle and its owners have had enough of my money over the years and the last $100 I just spent on Pinnacle 26 will be the last. Thank you again David for confirming my beliefs. Get out while you can. 🙂

[MichiganPeatMoss]

May 2023: Shopping around right now. Current Amazon reviews give favor to Studio 25 over 26. A lot of great info. Thanks.

[ExomatrixTV]

Make also a video comparing this with Corel Video Studio Pro 2023 or Corel Video Studio Ultimate 2023 with your current Pinnacle Studio 26 .... There are 100, 000s of people (maybe millions) around the world who really appreciate that if you did :)

[carlhardy]

Thanks for the info. I am using Pinnacle 23 and have been thinking about an upgrade.

[zeebrook]

I have been pondering purchasing Studio 26, and thanks to this video, I have decided to give it a go. I loved it when it first came out all those years ago despite its problems. Thanks David.

[Steviegtr]

I too have used Pinnacle from 15 onwards with terrible results. Having lost a hard drive crashing I moved to 26 ultimate. I had lots of problems. I opened a ticket with Corel & they gave me instructions as you say of deleting 25. Also cleaning up the cache etc. Now so far it has been great & so much faster than any previous versions. Txt can still be a little test & see but overall I am happy with the version 26. I do a lot of youtube video's so it is paramount that i have a good editor to do this with. Thanks for your video.
Regards.
Steve.

[Weeks]

Thanks for the review, it's what I needed as I research my next editing move. I finally have to let go of Pinnacle Studio 15... the last of the old-style editing version of Studio. For my project, I really wish I could keep using 15, it was perfect for me

[Perspectologist]

Pinnacle, that brings back memories. I liked the way it worked, but it got too buggy for me. I eventually switched to Vegas. I think it felt more complicated to use, but crashed less. I’ve been away from video editing for many years. I’m not sure what I would use if I had to get back into it. Thanks for sharing your experience with Pinnacle.

[skf]

I used Pinnacle Studio in 2000 to edit mini DV and output to DVD. Almost without exception each project would get to the 95% mark - and then something would happen to make the last 5% take 95% of the time. Really frustrating as when it worked, it worked good.
If I got back into it, I'd probably find something "free".
Thanks for posting, very interesting.

[worksconceptsllc]

Thanks David! I started off with 22 and made it to 24 and got MultiCam Capture. All was ok so I decided to get 25 and that was a mistake! I literally placed 5 DOZEN calls to customer service for the constant crashes, went through 4 install attempts with CS, and had to get a MultiCam zip file because the 25 install wiped my paid version and reverted it back to LITE. Finally, I requested a refund after 15 days and reinstalled 24. I think I will stay here for a while. Thanks so much for your review. You have saved me a lot time and headache. Good luck with 26! 🙂

[stevekellett]

Thankyou, you just help me make up my mind. !!

[HamNoytheDutchGuy]

Thanks for the review of 26 vs 25, i am still working on 25 with some of those nasty freezes and crashes, so maybe this can change my mind for the upgrade ;)

[devious_j]

I use pinnacle 20 to edit my videos. Then have to use pinnacle 25 to put the 3d titles in. Pinnacle 25 and 26 has As too many bugs in it. It keeps crashing when I try to edit. I really wish pinnacle would fix all the bugs in the program and make it run more smoothly. Also they should give us the complete program with all the features for free and not charges extra.

[rockel]

I went overboard to give it a try (version 24 left me behind with a lot of grey hair). Probably 27 is being released next month. But 26 was sharply priced for the upgraded Ultimate version now (€50 with an additional Newblue effect pack). 27 will probably be on it's lowest price at around €80/90 for first 6 months). But I just didn't wanted to work with 24 annymore...

A few things looks improved, like menu's and side programs. In 24 it sometimes felt like I was still working on Windows 95.

Rendering also seems to be quite faster. But I also think it's because I directed my nvidia card correctly this time. So seems I have the benefit of my GPU now. And it seems it has a lot more timeline and export formats to work with now.

But still encountered some crashes and glitches. Like it made me suddenly jump to an pther time on the timeline while working (not such a big deal though). And already had a few crashes. Like I just had 3 crashes in the last hour by justvpressing the "export button" in the upper side of the screen.

I didn't had the time yet to dive really deep into it yet, because I was bussy importing all my previous made titles etc. (Which is a pain in the ass until activating legacy functions/ watchfolder/ missing files tree).

But the overal performance seems good so far. I needed to restart 24 miltiple times after working on more complex projects or rendering. Felt something was cloging up there (think this also resulted in crashes).
But 26 seems to be more stable on that field so far.

Edit:
Rendering seems not to have made a great difference. Seems it seemed much faster. But now it seems that it was the difference of complexity of the video. Other videos render very "slowly" again.

[SkrillRevive]

Any tips on dealing with event log issues? It never gave me that problem before but now it seems to be popping up over and over.

[marko]

Did I understand correctly that the audio drift problem is because of the phone that was used for recording and not Pinnacle Studio itself?

[Tyken]

Thanks for the video, David! Had some great info in it, very helpful.
I was wondering if you (or anyone else) have had any issues with the playback when Time Remapping (either reversing the clip or just speeding/slowing it). I didn't have any issues with the remapped clips in 25, but the playback in 26 stutters and never shows it running properly, even when the timeline is showing it completely rendered and all clips around the remapped one playback perfectly?
I've been jumping between 25 and 26 regularly when I need more remapping done as again 25 has no issues. I know you mentioned that uninstalling 25 might help the preview playback, do you think uninstalling it may help?

Thanks again, you are one of very few people online with any reviews/tutorials for Pinnacle and its many little annoyances and quirks. Good to know others have issues too

[diymanual]

Hi David, thanks for the informative video. Is there a way to create youtube shorts (vertical) from a regular formatted video and maybe use motion tracking so that the frame moves with the subject? I would like to create shorts on some of my videos but I just can't figure out how to do it. I am thinking of subscribing to Canva to create shorts from some of my videos but I'm sure Pinnacle have that capability but it is not obvious to the users.

[jnprfilms]

cuechion i have adobe premier element 2023 and it work whit Pinnacle Studio 26 or 25

[ataszek]

do you know how to improve the hardware and speed up the program? I'm not talking about updating drivers here. I have windows 10/11