Pinnacle STUDIO 11 User Manual

Pinnacle Studio version 11 ReadMe

Pinnacle – a division of Avid

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------­Congratulations! You are about to enter the world of professional quality movie making. If you

encounter any issues when working with Studio or Studio Plus version 11, please read the manual
and this text.

Technical Notes

1. Updates

When you run Studio or Studio Plus you may be prompted to install an update to the software. We
strongly recommend you go through this update procedure as it will enhance your Studio
experience. You can also get the latest update from http://www.pinnaclesys.com/support

2. Studio SmartMessenger Tool

Studio has a built-in tool called SmartMessenger. This tool informs you of the latest Studio
updates and insures that you get the best performance out of your application. This tool also
gathers performance and stability statistics from your Studio program. This information is used for
statistical analysis and helps Pinnacle make a better program. This report does not contain any
personal information about you or your system. If you wish to disable the auto-run of Smart
Messenger, you may do so by selecting Help / Software Updates within Studio and choosing
“Prompt before checking for updates”. If your system is not connected to Internet, we recommend
you to regularly check if an update is available from http://www.pinnaclesys.com/support.

3. Processor and RAM on XP vs. Vista

There are different system requirements for Studio on Windows XP vs. Windows Vista. They are:
Windows XP



Intel® Pentium® or AMD® Athlon® 1.8 GHz or higher (2.4 GHz recommended)



512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)

Windows Vista (32bit recommended)



Intel® Pentium® HT or AMD® Athlon® 2.4 GHz or 1.6 GHz Dual core required



1 GB required for Vista (2 GB recommended)

4. Graphics System Test

Studio and Studio Plus use the GPU on your graphics board for real-time video processing and
playback, so they are heavily dependant on the graphics hardware as well as the display driver
version. The first time Studio is run, it will check the capabilities of your graphics board and driver.
In some cases, you may be instructed to update your display driver or graphics board.

5. Graphic Board Memory

Studio and Studio Plus11, use the Graphics board to render effects. The video resolutions that
may be edited are determined by the amount of memory on the graphics board:

Windows XP

• 64MB – Standard Definition video only

• 128MB – HD up to 720p

• 256MB – HD up to 1080 i/p

Windows Vista

• 128MB – Standard Definition video only

• 256MB – HD up to 1080 i/p

nVidia Quadro boards – Because these boards reserve 16MB of memory for internal use, it may
not be possible to edit video at the expected resolution, i.e. a Quadro with 128 MB may only be
capable of SD editing, a Quadro with 256 MB may only be capable of HD up to 720p editing.

Shared Memory – Graphics cards that do not have their own dedicated memory and instead use
the system’s main RAM are not capable of HD editing. This includes Intel onboard graphics (i845,
i860, i915, i940) and nVidia TurboCache graphics cards.

6. Editing with AVCHD Files

AVCHD is the latest High Definition format for consumer camcorders. It is based on the H.264
codec and offers high compression with minimal quality loss. The result is small, great-looking HD
video files, but at the cost of a more complex compression scheme requiring more processor
power and more system memory. Please ensure you meet the minimum system requirement
below:

Minimum systems requirements:

• Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.4 GHz or higher required

• 1.5 GB RAM required (2 GB required on Vista)

• DirectX® 9 or higher compatible graphics card with 256 MB required (ATI®

Radeon®9600+ or NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6 or higher recommended)

• Windows XP requires a UDF 2.5 driver to recognize the disc

When editing an AVCHD production, project complexity has a major impact on how the system
performs. Please take note of the following when working with AVCHD projects:

• When importing AVCHD clips into the Album, thumbnails will take longer to render than
thumbnails from other SD and HD CODECs.

• When adding transitions between AVCHD clips, a preview may not be seen until
background rendering has completed.

• When adding a picture-in-picture effect (using the overlay track), a preview may not be
seen until background rendering has completed. An exclamation point in the Preview
window may appear, indicating that background render has not yet completed.

• DVD menus are not supported on AVCHD disks.

• When creating a DVD we recommend NOT using motion backgrounds in the DVD menus

or chapter thumbnails.

• The recommended project length for AVCHD is 20 minutes

• When burning AVCHD projects to DVD the only HD output format is HDDVD. Blu-Ray

support will follow in a future Studio release.

• Although a mixed format timeline (SD, MPEG2, DV …) is allowed within Studio it is not
recommended in AVCHD projects.

Important notice for playback AVCHD discs: