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Pinnacle Edition 5 [technical specifications available below] is a big step up from Pinnacle Edition DV and is the first major software package for Pinnacle. (The previous version was just something they acquired in their corporate expansion). Pinnacle have a lot of eggs in the Edition 5 basket. They plan to introduce a new full version every 12 months and a ".5" version in between. So expect 5.5, 6.0, 6.5 etc in due course.
Talk on the street is that Pinnacle are pulling out of manufacturing real time video editing cards altogether. It appears they are going to continue to invest their efforts into developing just software products for the video editing market. Perhaps they are counting on the fact that PCs are getting faster and faster to dispense with the need for any dedicated hardware to do the real time rendering. But it's a half-way house at the moment. Pinnacle Edition 5 itself is a pure software package but they are bundling it with an ATI chipset graphics card (the old ATI Radeon 8500 with came in All-In-Wonder versions) under the product name of Pinnacle Edition Pro i.e. Pinnacle Edition 5 + ATI Radeon 8500 chipset card = Pinnacle Edition Pro
Major Advantages:
InstantSave - Mirror (RAID 1) type data security without the extra cost of RAID. Pinnacle Edition 5 keeps saving your data as you work so should your PC crash on you the theory is that you won't lose the last 15 hours worth of work. (It works well from our limited trials and is a feature we've been asking for for a long time)
Convenient DVD authoring-from-the-timeline facility. This saves a lot of switching between applications, or playing the MPEG2 and then returning to the editing package to make changes. It's also very easy to use.
Integration with the graphics card allows you to do some of the rendering on the graphics card itself rather than relying completely on the PC's processor. There are advantages to using the wider bandwidth of the graphics card, but this "feature" also adds some complication to some otherwise simple tasks.
Pre-emptive Rendering: Unlike Premiere and others Pinnacle's Edition 5 renders your transition in the background after you've previewed and configured an effect, thus saving time when you want to output your project.
Highly configurable workspace and nice clear user interface. The increase in maximum resolution you can Pinnacle Edition 5 to is now 1600 x 1200 allowing you to see a lot more of the interface.
The capture tool is much better and now allows capture by time code & also open ended capture with scene detection alongside manual logging and manual capture.
Major Disadvantages:
Slick DVD Authoring from the Timeline but the integrated DVD authoring capabilities are fairly limited for a "Professional" Video Editing package.
Steep learning curve. Don't let the manual fall off the shelf, it could cause some serious damage. The "abbreviated" manual is a couple of hundred pages in size. But the Quick Reference Card is a handy feature.
No AC3 encoding, no facilities to create or input Dolby Digital quality sound. Which really is a bummer.
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