Video Product Review: "Fifth Edition has it All - Review of Pinnacle Edition 5.0 NLE" Written by George Avgerakis July 17

By now, video editors, young and old, should know there is a big duality at hand in the way nonlinear editing systems are being designed. One side - we'll call it the Proprietary Board Group - sells software, combined with proprietary peripheral cards. The other side - we'll call it the Software Only group - sells software that employs the host computer's hardware. Each side attempts to offer its customers the ultimate in effects without waiting for rendering. Obviously, the products of the Proprietary Board group - let's call them PBs - were more expensive.

In the early days of NLE, the PBs had the lead, because host computers had nowhere near the horsepower to manipulate any kind of video in real time. But as computers, following Moore's Law, became more powerful and less expensive, the Software Only group - SOs - gained ground.

SO NLEs, like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Vegas, etc. continually cut into the marketshare of the PBs as their engineers figured out ways to exploit the computer's central processing unit (CPU) and RAM. But a smart PB manufacturer, like Pinnacle, seeing the writing on the wall, wasn't about to sit around and take a beating.

Pinnacle, which mastered the art of inventing affordable special effects and NLE peripheral tools for more than 20 years, recently launched a new line of SO NLEs, specifically targeted to the low end of the buyer spectrum. Low? How about $79 street price for Pinnacle's entry level Studio8?

Comfortably niched between Studio8 and the beginning of Pinnacle's PB line of NLEs we now find their newest addition - Edition, which only months after its initial launch, has undergone a massive upgrade (from v X.X to v X.X priced at $699 without DV capture card, $799 with capture card) with significant advantages over all other NLEs in its price range and even some competitive features that challenge PBs costing five times as much.

Apple's Final Cut Pro, sells for $999; Avid's Express DV sells for $1,500, Media 100's XX; $XX and Leitch-DPS offering no NLE for under $XX). When installed on a recommended Windows (95, NT or XP) computer (about $1,500 with drives), the total Edition Pro 5.0 package would weigh in at about $3,000 with a good monitor.

By the way, if you own any other editing system and want to consider trading it in for Edition, Pinnacle will sell you Edition Pro for $499 if you turn in your current editor - any model, any brand! (Hmm, I've got an old Touchvision NLE somewhere in the back closet.)

Second Edition {Dennis: Why is it v.5.0 when it is only the second version?}

As many of you know, most DV editing systems do 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. Now, Edition Pro ($999) breaks this rule by allowing real time previews on both the computer and TV monitor. If you don't choose to spring for the extra money to get the Pro version, the lesser versions of Edition still support real time playback on the computer monitor.

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. Currently, there are only two companies, Pinnacle and Avid, that make their own hardware and software for both SO and PB NLEs. Pinnacle's recent acquisition of Steinberg (maker of the Nuendo line of audio hardware and software), further enhances Pinnacle's vertical integration, making it even more parallel to Avid's.

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 Studio8, and creating a good intermediate rung up to Pinnacle Purple.

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. These layouts and the overall design philosophy of Edition support the three principal 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 with the Flier and now adopted by most of the entry-level systems like Casablanca, Canopus and Pinnacle Studio8). 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 routines.

On first launching Edition, you'd think your Windows desktop had suddenly been redesigned. There is a new Start button - which starts all of Edition's basic functions. Many of 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."

Acquisition

Edition is principally a DV editing system, but with the optional Edition Pro hardware, the user can capture and record composite and S-Video. While upgrade paths are currently being considered at Pinnacle, there is no upgrade path from Edition to Pinnacle's upscale range systems that allow for higher resolution formats of video, such as uncompressed SDI.

The default layout of Edition is a "source and record" pair of monitors at the top, a timeline in the middle and clip bins displayed at the bottom. 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.

While direct playback/record machine control is not offered in Edition (this feature is added in the next level, Pinnacle Purple), Edition does support auto scene detection so that an entire tape may be acquired without operator intervention as the software senses the beginning of each shot and stores it as a separate clip in the default bin.

The previous version of Edition only supported operating sreen resolutions up to 1,024 by 768, but the new version supports resolutions up to 1,600 by 1,200, for an interface which is much easier to watch for 8 hours a day (or more).

Editing

The design of Edition's interface is very well conceived with button symbols that are so intuitive you needn't wonder about what they do. But if you did wonder, a definition pop-up will tell you as soon as you park the mouse for a second on the button. In between the source and record monitor, just where your mouse will pass on the way to the timeline, there is a button that opens up the insert options (insert and ripple to tail, overwrite, etc.).

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, requires 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 who prefer JKL, and other keyboard controls will be happy to know that these professional tools are supported by Edition.

Because Edition is designed to multithread its calls to the computer's CPU the program offers some unique editing attributes that I have not seen elsewhere at any price point. In addition to the background rendering, multithreading allows a user to zoom the timeline in and out while the timeline is playing.

In the record monitor, a moving "measuring tape" moves in sync with playback. This tape is based on timecode gradations and a bracket indicates the current view of the main timeline. This display tool is quickly being installed in many NLEs. It reminds me of an old video game, Defender, which serves to represent the macro view of a sequence (the entire edit) within the scope of a micro view (the viewable portion of the timeline). 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.

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. Some NLEs cannot do this, but demand that the editor undo events in consecutive order.

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 and then to open the project and see how easily the program reorganizes its assets. 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 over a network.

Colorful Characters

I've found that one of the weakest links in NLEs, particularly low-cost NLEs, is their color correction and character generator routines. Edition's color correction facility is on a par with NLEs costing twice as much. Similar to Final Cut Pro's ability, the CC in Edition can select individual color ranges within a shot, such as the color of a shirt and execute refined adjustments, within an automatically inserted traveling matte, to allow "object specific" corrections without affecting other elements in the scene. While the mattes cannot be exported for use elsewhere in the timeline, such as using them to substitute textures or keying video, and real time color correction is not supported, the ability of Edition's CC engine will match most editors' demands.

Edition's character generator was extracted from Pinnacle's successful FX Deko II software, which has been acquired as the default CG for such in-house sports franchises as the New England Patriots, XXX? Diamondbacks, the Superbowl, and networks like CNN and Turner Classic Movies. 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 and Rendering

2-D and 3-D effects are created in Edition's sophisticated editorial subroutine, which opens to a full screen that feature's a timeline and a playback window that can be zoomed in and out. 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.

Edition features background rendering 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 rendered!

The status of each segment's render is displayed simply in a "status stripe" {DENNIS: What is the real name of this?} at the top of the timeline. Each clip (or an overlap of clips) is represented on this stripe as a "slice," to indicate the render status of the clips beneath. If a slice is shown in red, it means the slice is not ready to preview, yellow means the slice can preview in real time but is not rendered and green means the rendered and ready to print to tape. During a normal edit session, it is common to see the color of these slices progress toward green while you are doing non-playback functions, like composing a super title.

Complex composites are easily built in Edition with instant nesting and un-nesting of builds before and after rendering. By examining the slices on the status stripe, the editor can easily recognize and address subdivisions of composites.

Pinnacle has significantly reduced render times by accessing the computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) as well as the CPU. While access to the CPU is limited to the CPU's buss speed (say, 133 megabytes per second), {DENNIS - check these figures please} the GPU, working through an AGP 8X buss can be accessed at 2.2 gigabytes per second. This quantum leap in NLE-to-Computer interaction allows Edition 5.0 editors to assemble highly complex special effects and composites with little or no preview lag and nearly invisible rendering.

A good test of an NLE's speed is to start assembling a multi-layered segment and see exactly where the green bars change to yellow and then red. Here's what I built:

1. A video clip with internal color correction.
2. A super title with internal fade in and out during the duration of the video.

Here, the timeline went to yellow, indicating a rendering was in process, but that real time preview was still supported.

3. Two additional super titles, moving on independent 2D paths from off camera left and right across the screen and out the opposite sides.
4. A chroma-keyed video clip, downsized to fit as a mortice in a corner of the screen
5. Another title, on a crawl, with a lens flair effect
6. Another video clip, with soft edge and drop shadow, executing a 3D page curl reveal and then turning on the X and Y axis with perspective, before moving off screen
7. Another video clip with two 3D page curls.

Up to this point, most of the segment was still yellow, but of course, but the entire sequence was playing in real time and scrubbing was smooth as glass. Then I added another video clip and the indicator line went red, indicating that finally, the GPU/CPU capacity of the computer had been exceeded. And what kind of computer was I previewing on? {WHAT WAS THE COMPUTER WE WERE WORKING ON at B&H?}

Would a Compaq W8000 workstation, with a Pentium IV 7XX MHz CPU, and an nVIDIA XXX work better? {SHOW WHAT HAPPENS}

How about an IBM Intellistation with dual Pentium IVs, and a Matrox 550 GL video card?
{SHOW WHAT HAPPENS}

Why did I use these computers? Well, they happen to be the staple iron of most nonlinear and computer editing production studios - it's what I do. Presumably, it's what you do or want to do and the point is this; As long as you have a decent computer, the CPU doesn't matter as much as the GPU and GPUs are easier and cheaper to upgrade than CPUs. {I MAY EDIT THIS OUT}

Picture-in-Picture (PIP) has been added to all effects in Edition 5. I noticed a significant improvement in the lens flare effect from the previous version of Edition, but alas, there is no motion-tracking feature available. Finally, the popular 3-D effects package, Hollywood Effects 5 is included in Edition 5 to provide a wide range of rendered 3-D effects.

DVD Support

As recently as September 2002, when my book, "Desktop Video Studio Bible" was issued, there were only two manufacturers of DVD creation software. That's all changed as DVD creation is quickly being incorporated into NLE packages. Edition currently has what I would judge as the most robust DVD creation engine of any NLE on the market.

Creating a DVD from the timeline required two steps; compressing the timeline into an MPEG2 format and building interactive Menu pages. Edition's compression algorithm is near real time and is initiated with a simple mouse click.

The creation of menus is also easy, incorporating a gallery of included templates. Although the gallery has dozens of alternative designs, users who want to customize their menus will not be faced with a learning curve. The interface, which displays the template also allows the user to drag-and-drop-modify any element on the page, retype titles and even drag-and-drop graphics into the design.

The most amazing feature of the menu design software is that video clips may be dragged from the timeline, directly to the menu buttons where they instantly appear as real-time motion menus. For those of you not familiar with this term, motion menus are those cool buttons that feature a looping clip of video on their surface. This feature alone used to cost me an extra $1,000 for a Sonic designer to incorporate in my productions! I call this, "One-Job Return on Investment," and clearly, this feature alone, makes the decision to purchase Edition a no-brainer.

In about 20 minutes you can put together a design that would have once taken 3-4 hours of a very well paid DVD artist. I smell a paradigm shifting here, don't you?

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 dragged and dropped 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 a Steinberg Wavelab session, can be edited and then returned to Edition. The same goes for a composite passage dropped into Adobe After Effects (AE), changed in AE, and dropped back to Edition.

Editors, like myself, end up collecting an armamentarium of various techniques in a myriad of programs. Unfortunately, this wastes a lot of in-and-out time by saving an asset from one program into hard drive and then laboriously opening it in another program. This wasted time is recaptured by Edition's X-Send utility.

Summation

Pinnacle's Edition 5 NLE software, available in three levels of price and capability, is ideally suited to the novice or experienced editor who chooses to work exclusively in the DV domain without source or record machine control. For experienced users, the option of Edition Pro allows S-VHS and composite throughput, as well as real time previewing to an NTSC monitor. Priced below most NLE programs of similar configuration, Edition 5 may be a first choice of an editor moving into the professional arena or for experienced editors, who wish to break out of the full-time job category and start their own shops on a shoestring budget. I might add, it's not a bad editor for high end shops who occasionally get the DVD/S-VHS project and don't want to tie up the high-priced edit bay.