The newest version of Pinnacle Studio Plus 10 became available only a short time ago, which delayed the start of our endurance testing. We worked with beta version 10.2 of this product until mid-February, at which point we experienced erratic test system crashes. Worse than that, we kept having to re-start our tests, wasting hours of effort in the process. This led us to restructure our project so that we could write each minute of HD video to disk under different names.

We didn't experience many problems with the new 10.5 version, which permitted us to carry out more complex tests without having to worry about wasted time or effort. The good news about this editing software is that with Studio Plus 10.5, Pinnacle offers software that's easy to use, and that can produce usable results quickly - as long as users produce two video tracks. Video export is subject to the same constraints as those for Premiere Pro 2.0: Encoding HD video takes a long time, even for PCs that have multiple CPUs and support new CPU functions. Even the rendering engine in the professional Liquid Edition doesn't help much.

Pinnacle permits users to create finished, edited materials in either MPEG-2 or WMV9 format. The DivX codec is also supported, but only at a maximum resolution of 1280x720 pixels, and this combination isn't advisable in tandem with the Sony HC1.

The only video editing software in its price class with HD support: Pinnacle Studio Plus 10.5.