Video Product Review: "An Edition for All Seasons - Pinnacle Makes Professional Level Editing Affordable" Written by George Avgerakis

Pinnacle, the sixth largest supplier of broadcast technology, has been known for many years as a manufacturer of quality video effects boards that were often incorporated into other manufacturer's hardware. Recent corporate developments have positioned Pinnacle as one of the five companies (the others being Apple, Avid, Leitch-DPS and Media 100) that make both the software and hardware for integrated nonlinear editing (NLE) workstations. What's more, Pinnacle's recent acquisition of Steinberg (maker of the Nuendo line of audio hardware and software), takes Pinnacle a step beyond by bringing proprietary audio options into the fold.

Pinnacles' newest offering, Edition, offered in two configurations (Edition DV, for $699, which includes the software and a Firewire, capture/playback card, and Edition DV 500, for $799, which adds hardware capable of real time playback) that is highly competitive in terms of price-per-power with all other DV-based NLEs. (Apple's Final Cut Pro, sells for $999, Avid's Express DV; $1,500, Media 100's i/dv; $1,995XX and Leitch-DPS offering no NLE for under $2,600). When installed on a recommended Windows (2000 or XP) computer, the total package would weigh in at about $3,000 to $5,000.

Edition also fits in nicely with Pinnacle's other products, coming in with features that will be a tasty upgrade to novice users of Pinnacle Studio ($99), and creating a good intermediate rung up to Pinnacle Purple ($1,499 with a total package price of $10-15,000).

Overview

A nice attribute of Pinnacle Edition is a set of buttons in the lower right of the screen that allow the user to select between several default layouts. Both the layouts and the overall design philosophy of Edition support all three styles of nonlinear editing; mouse intensive drag-and-drop (popularized by Premier and DPS Velocity), three-point editing (originated by CMX and advanced by Avid) and storyboard editing (introduced by NewTek on the Flier and now adopted by most of the entry-level systems like Casablanca, Canopus and Pinnacle Studio). Whichever way you want to edit (or learn editing), Edition provides the interface - and the ability to combine interfaces for combo styles, such as building a quick edit in the storyboard mode and then refining it with drag-and-drop refinements. I would consider Edition a logical evolution from previous editing workflow models.

Edition is a DV only editing system, and while the idea of upward mobility is being discussed at Pinnacle, there is no "cash credit" upgrade path to Pinnacle's higher range systems that allow for other formats of video, such as uncompressed SDI.

On first launching Edition, you'd think your Windows desktop had suddenly been redesigned. There is a new Start button - that starts all of Edition's basic functions and the functions of the editor have cleverly emulated most of Window's concepts. Instead of pull-down menus or "twirlies," simply right click on any area of the screen to access the available functions therein. For instance, clicking in "Control Panel," opens up the "User Settings" where you can drag and drop various functions onto a virtual keyboard for establishing shortcuts or emulating your favorite NLE. You can also access a rather powerful "media manager" which allows for any asset to be found by Boolean functions (AND, NOT, etc.) and some clever tools like, "ends with."

Edition's default layout is a "source and record" pair of monitors, with a timeline and bins sharing the available real estate. I've never been a big fan of source-and-record, although I assisted in the design of one of the first, D-Vision (which became Discreet's edit!), and realize that the majority of editors prefer this visual link to the video editing history (the videotape player-recorder analogy). So who am I to argue? The system works flawlessly as you connect a camera or DV deck to the Firewire port, acquire footage into any number of bins, sort the footage, assign picons or titles to the assets and pass each to the "source" window for trimming. As you edit, playback is handled by the "record" window. Here, some interesting things happen.

Edition features background processing of all effects. This means that when your edit is complete and you order the system to final-render and "print-to-tape," most of your work has already been done, while you were doing other things elsewhere! As many of you know, DV editing does not allow the user to see actual video playback on a TV monitor during editing. This happens later - after rendering. What many NLEs do show is real time previews - on the computer monitor. Real time previews are not big deal - the $99 Studio NLE does it well- but, strangely, Edition does not. No doubt Pinnacle's engineers realize this and I would expect the problem to be addressed in a future version. One sign of my confidence is the hardware that Pinnacle provides with their DV500 hardware. With Edition DV500, the most commonly used effects all playback in real-time. In addition, the DV500 model allows users to see their work on NTSC or PAL monitors, not on just their computer displays.

In the current version of Edition, you might wait a few seconds to see a picture-in-picture effect play back on the computer screen. However, when that's done, it's also rendered. And while it's being done, you can do anything else you want - build other effects, edit, trim, whatever. Pinnacle calls this, "background rendering" and its speed is dependent on the speed of the processor and amount of processors (obviously a dual Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon will do really well here). The background rendering is really impressive; it worked as advertised and I quickly became used to moving ahead on my edits - no more snack breaks because of rendering! I might even lose a few pounds with Edition.

A shortcoming of Edition that I missed is that no source machine control is offered (this comes in at the next level, Purple), so all captures are "wild," with no backup batch files to save your butt if you accidentally delete assets or want to return to a job months later to revise.

Editing

The design of Edition's interface is very well conceived with symbols that are so intuitive you needn't pause the mouse to get the definition pop-up (though this will work). For instance, in between the source and record monitor, just where your mouse will pass on the way to the timeline, there is a button that toggles between the classic edit modes, "insert" (yellow icon) and "overwrite" (red icon).

Edition's timeline is top-down, which means that the program view is assumed to be from the top of the monitor looking down through the layers. Adding overlays and P.I.P. effects, therefore require moving the top-most track down appropriately. New layers are not added above the current one automatically (as in Final Cut Pro, for instance) when foreground shots are added to the timeline. Editors enamored with JKL, keyboard controls will be happy to know that these professional tools are supported by Edition.

Because Edition is a multithreaded application, its calls to the computer's CPU offer some unique editing attributes that I have not seen elsewhere at this price point. In addition to the background rendering, multithreading allows a user to zoom the timeline in and out while the timeline is playing. You can also resize the tracks as well. In the record monitor, moving "measuring tape," based on timecode gradations and a bracket that indicates the current view of the main timeline, moves in sync with playback. This tool, which can be slid back and forth is handy for quickly finding areas on the timeline that you want to watch and edit, thereby eliminating a major headache in quick revision work after a client has had the first screening.

Complex composites are easily built in Edition with instant nesting and un-nesting of timelines or sequences before and after rendering. Using "slices" (Pinnacle's term for edit points and represented in the timeline as a handy feature), the editor can easily recognize and address subdivisions of composites which automatically form for every editorial event and color code themselves appropriately when a render is needed.

Slices {goes here, but why are they unique?}

Another multithreading feature is found in the source and record window where the mouse may be clicked and dragged right or left to extend the shot's tail or head, while playing. The (unlimited) undo list, also allows for an event anywhere in the list to be undone with appropriate ripple of undoes only on the events that are affected by the undo. I've asked dozens of NLE programmers to build this into their programs for years. {HOW UNIQUE IS THIS?}

A common test of an NLE's depth of media management is to move assets while the project is closed or the NLE is off. On starting a project, Edition is aggressive in its search for lost assets. Each missing clip remains in the timeline and bin, labeled as "offline media." Clicking the proxy clip, a search window is opened with the capability of reacquiring the media or finding it anywhere on the host computer or network.

Colorful Characters

I've found that one of the weakest links in NLEs, particularly low-end NLEs is their color correction and character generator routines. Edition's color correction (CC) facility is on a par with NLEs costing twice as much. For instance, the Color Editor features five parameters of control (Brightness & Contrast, Hue & Saturation, Color Gain, Equalize and Transparency), each activated by Mac-like twirlies. The color gain parameter, for instance, features individual red, green and blue sliders with 8,000 increments. The transparency window obviously controls the shot's opacity, but also includes an Edge Softness control that quickly adds a subtle, colorizable edge around the shot for the kind of "frame" effect that is so popular in mortised, picture-in-picture effects currently seen on broadcast sports and interview programs. Of course, all of these parameters may be keyframed to create delicate transitions of adjustment within a shot.

Edition's character generator was extracted from Pinnacle's successful FX Deko II software which has been used as the default CG for, the Superbowl, the 2002 Winter Olympics and networks like CNN and NY1. Most NLEs obtain CGs from third party vendors (like Inscriber), leaving the editor with a toss-up on whom to call when things don't work. Edition's Pinnacle pedigree results in a CG that is as intuitive as the host NLE, allows simple mouse-controlled positioning, scaling, rotating, coloring, texturizing, skewing, even kerning. Unlike third-party CGs which often require the NLE to halt while titles are produced, Pinnacle's timeline can be running or rendering while the CG is worked.

Special Effects

2-D and 3-D effects are created in Edition's sophisticated editorial subroutine which opens to a full screen that can zoom the playback window up and down. Zooming up allows for precise examination of a scene's detail. Zooming down, allows the manipulated shot to be moved out of monitor range by more than the width of the manipulated shot, providing for elaborate "off camera" preparations of the shot before it is seen by the audience.

Whenever a composite element is moved, a keyframe is automatically created on the subroutine's timeline. Keyframes can be slid on the timeline with real time preview. A mouse click opens up elaborate graphic controls which allow mouse-interactive, acceleration curves and splines. Graphic refinements such as frame borders and shadows with ramped colors can be keyframed to change parameters with time, providing an infinite array of effects. One clever advantage to the keyframe controls in Edition is the ability to select a particular keyframe's attributes and impart those attributes on all keyframes within the timeline by simply dragging and dropping the selected keyframe "diamond" into the center of the preview picture. I've wasted many hours of my life cutting and pasting keyframe attributes across a timeline. Never more.

Transportability

Edition offers an interesting feature in its "X-Send" command. Using X-Send, any asset within Edition, a sound clip, rendered effect, composite - whatever - can be sent into any other Windows compatible media software product, where all attributes are preserved. For instance, a stereo audio mix can be dropped into Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge 6.0, or Steinberg's Wavelab, edited and then returned to Edition. The same goes for a composite passage dropped into Adobe After Effects, changed and dropped back to Edition.

Editors, like myself, end up collecting an armamentarium of various techniques in a myriad of programs. The constant in-and-out time which is wasted by saving an asset from one program into hard drive and then laboriously opening it in another program is therefore obviated by Edition's X-Send utility.

Summation

The low price of Pinnacle's Edition NLE software might mislead shoppers into thinking this is a consumer-level product. Don't be fooled. Edition, supported by a choice of two DV capture/playback boards as well as OHCI firewire, is ideally suited to novice editors who want to start their own professional DV production suites or schools and universities who are looking for an economical training platform for a Media Arts Department. Edition lacks nothing in power, features or performance, except, the ability to control external tape machines. Although real time effects previews are anticipated on future versions, the software executes final rendering of effects in the background, while the editor is free to work elsewhere.

An experienced editor will appreciate Edition's low cost, easy learning curve, broadcast style CG and CC, and significant workflow advances over other NLEs costing about 10-20% more. Although Edition is strictly a DV domain system, without machine control, its price is well below most NLE programs of similar configuration. Edittion might just be the NLE that finally gets you to tell your boss that you're taking a permanent vacation.