View Full Version : Pinnacle Users


Deb Brush
February 22nd, 2009, 09:59 PM
I am a new user. Was a network story producer.... now moved on and producing on my own.... oral histories. Got myself a mini DV, lavalier mike, light from Home Depot, tripod and I'm on my way. So now I am getting my feet wet.... well, I'm in waist deep actually..... with Pinnacle on my Dell PC. I am able to give clients a DVD of clips from my work. However, I need a guru to answer some questions..... first is how to print out the edit list. I can call it up... but can't see how to print it out.
Thanks for any help. I have 9.4 Version.

Chris Hurd
February 22nd, 2009, 10:08 PM
Thread moved with re-direct from DVi Announcements to Non-Linear Editing on the PC.

I believe this refers to Pinnacle Studio 9. Deb, are you able to copy and paste the list into NotePad or WordPad, and print from there?

Phil Seastrand
February 23rd, 2009, 01:12 AM
I don't have Studio 9 anymore, but with Studio 12 I'm able to copy/paste the "list view" contents. Is this what you mean by "edit list"? I pressed "Cntrl-A" to select all the clips in the list view, right-clicked and chose "Copy". I then opened NotePad and was able to paste the list.

Does this work with Studio 9?

Deb Brush
February 23rd, 2009, 09:43 PM
Hey you guys, thanks so much for your quick response. Yes, Phil... I believe we are on the same page.... it's the list of shots I'm working with. And you and Chris answered my question. I guess I can't print the list from Pinnacle, I have to cut and paste it over to a word document, which is fine except..... it doesn't seem to cut and paste the clip number along with the list. And that just means more work... I am sometimes dealing with 90 or more clips... and they need to be numbered.... on the printout.
NEXT question is about the chunks of 17+ minutes of footage that Pinnacle captures at a time from my camera. Is there anyway to keep a continous timecode going? Or am I stuck with starting at zero each time.
Thanks.....

Phil Seastrand
February 24th, 2009, 01:40 PM
NEXT question is about the chunks of 17+ minutes of footage that Pinnacle captures at a time from my camera. Is there anyway to keep a continous timecode going? Or am I stuck with starting at zero each time.
Thanks.....I assume you are referring to the clips parsed during capture. I don't know of any way to have Studio change the way it manages the timecodes. Keep in mind that this product is aimed at the non-professional and timecodes are not often in the target audiences' vocabulary.

Adam Gold
February 24th, 2009, 02:41 PM
NEXT question is about the chunks of 17+ minutes of footage that Pinnacle captures at a time from my camera. Is there anyway to keep a continuous timecode going? Or am I stuck with starting at zero each time.
Thanks.....Hm. Sounds like your Hard Disk might be FAT rather than NTFS. 17 min is just about 4 gigs, which is the file size limit in FAT or FAT32. Convert to NTFS and you should be fine. This question comes up all the time and that's usually what it is.

Deb Brush
February 26th, 2009, 10:02 PM
Hm. Sounds like your Hard Disk might be FAT rather than NTFS. 17 min is just about 4 gigs, which is the file size limit in FAT or FAT32. Convert to NTFS and you should be fine. This question comes up all the time and that's usually what it is.


Thanks, Adam....don't know how to do that, but I'll play around and see if I can figure it before I ask more...

Deb Brush
February 26th, 2009, 10:15 PM
Thanks for your help everyone.....
Here's another question I hope you can help with....
Calling up files..... I have trouble everytime I try to return to a project.... the whole filing thing for Pinnacle has me frustrated.
I have everything on an external E drive.
Is there a way to find projects that I expect to come up in the MOVIE CLIPS section I've created?.. but never seem to unless I spend a lot trying different alternatives til I finally get them to come up..... (sometimes it's on the path of MY PROJECTS... sometimes it's AUXILLIARY FILES...sometimes it's TEMPORARY FILES...MY VIDEO...AUTOSAVE 1... STUDIO PROJECT... is that enough of a mess? And if it's my fault, is there a secret way to find where the heck the projects are?
and then
should the Files Type always be "STUDIO FILES"?
Thanks....
The same problem happens when I want to call up CAPTURED video.

Adam Gold
February 27th, 2009, 10:47 AM
Thanks, Adam....don't know how to do that, but I'll play around and see if I can figure it before I ask more...
You should be able to just right-click on the disk in My Computer and choose "Convert to NTFS" in the flyout. I think. If this doesn't work, go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management and it should show a list of your disks as well as what the file system is. Try right-clicking on the disks or their icons to see if you have the "Convert to NTFS" choice. If not, you may need to do a reformat, which will destroy your data, so you'd need to back up. But in doing the reformat, just choose "Quick Format," which will save you some time.

The benefit here is if you go the latter route, you've also done the best defrag available as well (thanks to Harm Millaard for that tip).

Deb Brush
March 4th, 2009, 08:09 PM
Looking for a Pinnacle User in Buffalo, New York area.... anyone out there?

Rob Morse
March 5th, 2009, 04:52 PM
Try going here Error (http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/default.aspx)

Bruce Foreman
March 7th, 2009, 09:49 PM
Thanks for your help everyone.....
Here's another question I hope you can help with....
Calling up files..... I have trouble everytime I try to return to a project.... the whole filing thing for Pinnacle has me frustrated.
I have everything on an external E drive.


No matter what you do, I think Studio is always going to put some things on your C: drive. Pinnacle Studio literally "vomits" control files all over the place. But a little bit of organization will help some.

I setup the following folders under Pinnacle: Captured Video, My Projects, Finished Videos, Imported Music, and Photos.

Captured Video is where I specify for video captured over firewire to go.

My Projects is where I specify Studio to save what I'm working on. Here you MUST use "save as" or Studio will assign "my video 1" "my video 2" etc. and I try not to let this happen, if it does I delete these.

Finished Videos is where I have Make Movie place anything I render to AVI, WMV, or any other file format.

Imported Music is where I place any music file generated from something like SonicFire Pro so I can "point" the album in Edit mode to.

Photos will be for still photos I need to put on the timeline and like Imported Music this will be the folder I can point the album in Edit mode to.

You do kind of have to think ahead and have Studio place or save stuff where you want it as some of the defaults seem to make no sense.



Is there a way to find projects that I expect to come up in the MOVIE CLIPS section I've created?


Sounds like MOVIE CLIPS for you serves the same function as Finished Videos for me. You have to be sure that you specify this folder in Make Movie or Studio will place it on whatever path you last had open.

Remember use Captured Video ONLY for capturing from your camcorder and be sure you specify this folder when capturing.

Use MOVIE CLIPS only for videos you render from Make Movie and be sure that folder is exactly specified each time.

That should help.

Bill Spearman
March 14th, 2009, 09:23 PM
Bruce,Thank you for your post, it's more help than anything I have found on the Pinnacle support site. I have been very frustrated by Pinnacle Ultimate 11, seems I spend far more time making it work than I do anything else in the process, it has a mind of its own. Your comments about the defaults not making sense reallly hits home.

Bruce Foreman
March 17th, 2009, 10:07 PM
Bill,

It is not the favorite "darling" of most on this forum but it does do an awful lot on those individual computers it runs well on. For me it has been the most "bang or my buck" all in one from capture to finished DVD program on the market.

My only real complaints for now are two: It is a resource hog for AVCHD, yet it does edit AVCHD natively without transcoding; and Pinnacle tried to get rid of SmartSound from Studio in favor of a vastly inferior Scorefitter.

Fortunately there are workarounds and in future versions they will allow SmartSound Inc to design a "plug in". A lot of us had acquired a fair "library" of purchased music (SmartSound also has a standalone program called SonicFire Pro for editing and scoring music in form you can import).

What do you use for music?

Bill Spearman
March 17th, 2009, 10:37 PM
Nothing yet. I am still finding my way through, thus far my only commercial job is producing instructional video. I welcome any recommendations, about music or anything else for that matter. I know I have much to learn.

Bruce Foreman
March 19th, 2009, 12:42 AM
SmartSound is some of the richest sounding, mostly real instrument music in the Royalty Free arena. Once you buy it, usage rights include any venue for your video production except national TV or Theatre chain exhibition, this leaves open selling any quantity of video on disks, use in your videos on the web, local TV broadcast, pretty much anything you want to use it in.

Like ScoreFitter, you can score to variable lengths, not limited to fixed 15sec, 30sec, or 60sec cuts. Check out the special sale for a few more days at the link below. All of the albums are priced at $49.95 each, all seem to be multi-layer (using their software you can change the mix of instrument layers to your liking). SonicFire Pro 5 Express Tracks edition comes free with purchase of any album.

To use this software, first in Studio time the segment you want to score (multi layer format cannot be made to work as a plug in in Studio), then open another window and fire up Express Tracks. Define the duration you need and select your music album and track. Play it trying different "mood mixes" or instrument layer mixes until you have what you want and export that as an AVI file to somewhere you can point the Studio "album" function to in order to find it. Drag the AVI to the music track in Studio and position it where you want it and see how it works with the video.

Listen to the sample segments of each track on the albums on special at this link:

SmartSound Specials (http://www.smartsound.com/specials/index.html?utm_source=mar09new&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=qxpn&utm_term=header_img)

Deb Brush
April 6th, 2009, 07:23 PM
Bruce... Haven't gotten to check this site in a while... but what a surprise when I did. You were able to answer my dilema! And it sounds so simple... I can take charge!! And I will.
But I was sure it was "just me" so I was glad at your response.... At least now I know what I am dealing with.
Thank you so much... I do like Pinnacle... easy for me to do what I need... just fading in and out between clips of stationary subjects being interviewed for their oral histories.


No matter what you do, I think Studio is always going to put some things on your C: drive. Pinnacle Studio literally "vomits" control files all over the place. But a little bit of organization will help some.

I setup the following folders under Pinnacle: Captured Video, My Projects, Finished Videos, Imported Music, and Photos.

Captured Video is where I specify for video captured over firewire to go.

My Projects is where I specify Studio to save what I'm working on. Here you MUST use "save as" or Studio will assign "my video 1" "my video 2" etc. and I try not to let this happen, if it does I delete these.

Finished Videos is where I have Make Movie place anything I render to AVI, WMV, or any other file format.

Imported Music is where I place any music file generated from something like SonicFire Pro so I can "point" the album in Edit mode to.

Photos will be for still photos I need to put on the timeline and like Imported Music this will be the folder I can point the album in Edit mode to.

You do kind of have to think ahead and have Studio place or save stuff where you want it as some of the defaults seem to make no sense.




Sounds like MOVIE CLIPS for you serves the same function as Finished Videos for me. You have to be sure that you specify this folder in Make Movie or Studio will place it on whatever path you last had open.

Remember use Captured Video ONLY for capturing from your camcorder and be sure you specify this folder when capturing.

Use MOVIE CLIPS only for videos you render from Make Movie and be sure that folder is exactly specified each time.

That should help.

Deb Brush
April 10th, 2009, 09:35 AM
Try going here Error (http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/default.aspx)
Rob... thank you... Didn't know about the forum.... and it's one more outlet to get questions answered... Yay.

Deb Brush
April 13th, 2009, 03:31 PM
Is this possible? At this point, When I go to Caputure, the only option I get is from my Canon mini DV camera through my firewire. I only have Pinnacle Studio SE 9.
Thanks from a totally illiterate but trainable user.