IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

A friend in the video club has got a new PC and had the dealer installed Pinnacle 12 for him. He has a very limited experience with Windows Movie Maker. From there he bought a new Canon Legria HFR106 camcorder. I must mention that I have no experience of these items at all. He told me that he was unable to capture the video from his camera. I paid a visit.

The first thing I discover is that the camcorder is Hi-def and that it records onto a card. Therefore my basic thoughts were to take the card from the camera and place into his card reader and then by following my nose I copied the files onto his PC. He was chuffed. We then opened Pinnacle and even more joy for him discovered that he could import the files onto the time line. He managed a little editing then.

My question is that his camera is HI-Def and I understand that only Pinnacle 12 PLUS will handle HI-Def files and NOT Pinnacle 12. Can anyone explain this please?
Pete

Hi Pete,

A quick look at the Pinnacle Studio 12 specifications will tell you that Studio 12 is the BASIC version and does not handle HD.
It is the enry level version of the software, and one needs to buy Studio 12 Plus or Studio 12 Ultimate in order to be able to work with HD content. I would say that this is a 'marketing thing' for Pinnacle.

In your friends case the Canon HFR106 outputs AVCHD in either 1050i or 1050 25p to SD card, so would require the HD handling abilities of the Plus or Ultimate version of the Pinnacle software. It would appear that your friend may have had the Plus version of Pinnacle 12 installed ?

Best regards,
Fred D.

Thanks for your reply Fred. I know for certain that my friends version of Pinnacle 12 is just the basic version and not the PLUS that's why I raised the query.

The next time I visit him I will look into how we managed to import the files into Pinnacle and just how we managed to do a little bit of editing. All very strange at the moment. Will wait to see what happens when I see him next.

Cheers. Pete