Studio Plus Version 12 (**** out of four) is the newest version of a program that provides full-featured video editing tools and is also fun to use. The program includes video capture, a video editor and movie creator, all designed to work with common digital and analog video formats, including the new HD format. There’s drag-and-drop simplicity for the beginners and plenty of sophisticated features for advanced videographers. The program works as well for preserving or sharing personal videos as it does for creating presentations, training videos and product demonstrations.

Studio Plus Version 12 uses three steps to complete your project. Step One: Connect your camcorder to a computer and capture your digital or analog video onto the hard drive. In the DV (digital video) SmartCapture mode, the tape contents are captured in a reduced quality format that requires much less disk space and allows quicker editing. Following editing, the program controls your digital camcorder to recapture the selected scenes or segments at full quality. You can choose to do full-quality capture initially, but this requires more disk space (about 13GB per hour of DV, more for HD) and a fast hard drive. The program also allows full quality MPEG (motion picture expert group, a compression standard) capture. SmartCapture is not available from analog sources, so the program defaults to full quality MPEG capture.

The program uses automatic scene detection to divide your video into scenes for convenient editing. For DV, scene detection is based on shooting time/date, with a new scene created for each new time/date. Scene detection for DV or analog can also be based on video content, where a significant change in scene images creates a new scene. You can also automatically create a new scene every x seconds or manually while viewing the capture. You can also capture photos directly from your digital still camera. Many other options are available for the more advanced user, but the defaults worked well for us and had us on our way to Hollywood.

Step Two: Edit the captured scenes. Start by arranging the scenes in the sequence you want. The scenes are displayed in an album as thumbnails representing the first picture frame of each captured scene. Click on any thumbnail to watch that scene, and then drag and drop the thumbnail into the story board. Choose the next scene from anywhere in the album and place it in the next spot in the story board, and continue on until you’ve completed the sequence. Add snapshots if desired and preview the result any time during this process; then rearrange, add or delete scenes and snapshots with drag-and-drop ease.

Now the fun and creativity begins. Switch to the time line display, and thumbnails display the scenes so you can trim the beginning and/or end to exclude people or unwanted parts and the like. A slider bar allows you to go frame by frame to choose exactly the right spot, and scenes can be split to remove shots in the middle.

You can include one of the hundreds of scene transitions, which range from simple fades or wipes to wild Hollywood/TV FX-style swirls, page turns and more. Preview a transition and drag and drop it between the scenes.

The original sound from the video is carried over in the editing process, but you can add background music using Pinnacle’s ScoreFitter to create music automatically timed for the length of your complete production or selected scenes. Music in a wide variety of themes and styles is included, or add your own music and/or narrations. Use the handy mixer to balance the volume from the video, background music and/or narration.

For a really cool production, add titles. Very easy. Type the text you want directly on the selected scene, pick style, colors, motion, duration and position, and the text is added. It’s equally easy to add photos, illustrations or animations and preview the results. You can fix color or brightness in the videos and filter out noise or scratches in the audio, if needed.

The Chroma Key tool allows taping a subject in front of a "green" screen and then during editing substituting any scene to replace the green screen. Also in this version are Picture in Picture and Pan and Zoom effects.

New to this version is Pinnacle Montage, which are professionally designed themes with a coordinated beginning, middle and end. Just select from the included themes (party, travel, wild and more) and place your video clips in the place holders, add titles and snapshots if you want, select music, and it’s done.

Step Three: Make your completed movie from your project. You can then record your movie on a VCR connected to your computer, burn CDs in AVI, WMF, Real or MPEG 1,2 or 4 formats for computer viewing or create streaming video for iPod, PSP or the Web including YouTube. Or burn it in DVD, VCD, SVCD or the new AVCHD formats and BluRay too. Extensive disk authoring is available in these latter formats to make interactive disks with menus and buttons to let the audience choose which scenes to watch.

The default features of this program, including Montage, make creating videos quick and easy, but you can also use the many included options for a great custom look. Expect a learning curve for using the advanced features, but there’s plenty of help from a 320-page printed manual, tool tips, on-line help and user tips. We liked this program and recommend it highly.