The Amazing Pinnacle Studio App for the iPad

If you live long enough you are bound to see everything.

That’s my take after looking at Avid Studio for the iPad. And I ain’t even that old :).

But when you open the Avid Studio on your iPad today, you are urged to download Pinnacle Studio, a similar high-end editing app owned by Corel. Avid Studio has stopped support.

Certainly I love “the cloud”.  Having my data anywhere and everywhere, brings a new meaning to Bill Gates statement: “Information at your fingertips.”

And speaking bluntly I thought it would be a cold day in hell before I would be video editing “in the cloud” let alone on a tablet. I admit it, I was wrong.

In short I cannot believe what a five euro app can do. Yes I use Camtasia, Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Avid MC on Windows. The evidence of these applications manifests itself in a seriously overstocked C drive.

Avid is well known for creating the best editing suites for your desktop, ans since Corel has bought the consumer line of Avid editing tools,  they’ve brought the power of a prosumer editing app to the iPad with Pinnacle Studio. Simple, elegant and mobile.

You can make amazing movies, and for the first time you can do it right on your iPad2.

The Usability of Pinnacle Studio For iPad

Like many video editors, Pinnacle is easy to navigate your video content in blocks. Also this app has the nifty possibility to add your voice to your editing instantly with a voice-over function.

While some would complain that the application only supports H264 this does appear to be today’s standard. Certainly some people will miss AVCHD support but then again, you can enjoy full 1080p output support.

Since the iPad2 camera isn’t the greatest camera in the world, the option to import video from another device is fantastic.

Yes it is somewhat constraining having only 2 video tracks. However there are 4 audio tracks which can include sound effects which can be found in abundance within the application. Audio can also be imported from your music library (I am a big fan of Phoo.nl royalty-free music – just to let you know).

Frame-by-frame trimming and flexible audio editing, customizing motion graphics and picture-in-picture effects, unlimited timeline tracks for advanced effects, tons of included content, and more, is what Pinnacle studio is offering.

Designed to take full advantage of your device’s touchscreen, Pinnacle Studio for iPad is bound to provideyou with  the most intuitive editing experience ever.

Double-tap your finger to view the entire timeline. Pinch-open the timeline for frame-by-frame trimming. Or pinch and rotate picture-in-picture effects to resize or customize them. The possibilities are endless.

The clean and feature rich  interface is an absolute delight. Yes it may be a little bit annoying waiting for the rendering to occur to see your work. Keep in mind you’re working on an iPad.

While I do not have any prior knowledge, I am willing to bet very soon we will see some movie or documentary created entirely on iPads and Pinnacle Studio.

I am not going to give up my desktop video editors. I just plan to turn to the Pinnacle Studio app once in a while. Mainly to get used to the idea of video editing on an iPad.

Apple does a lot of great things. But they clearly lost the race in video editing with Pinnacle Studio.

If you are interested in learning the basics of camera techniques and video editing, I would advice you to read my online trainig guide: From Idea To DVD

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