Testimonial:

Pinnacle Real User: David Henry

Ask David Henry what he does for a living and he'll proudly reply that he is a PE Specialist at Sunrise Elementary School in the Kent School District of Kent Washington where he teaches 576 Kindergarten through 6th graders. Then he'll go on to tell you that he is also the school's official photographer; that he's been known to teach a few digital video classes both at school and for the district; that in his "spare" time on the weekends, he's the media coordinator at his church; and, he has a small wedding photography/video business on the side.

David began photographing weddings in the early 70s, and although he saw a need and was getting requests to offer video, his perfectionist nature made him reluctant to transition too quickly to wedding videographer.

"I knew it took a little more equipment and I knew I was going to want it to look just right," admitted David. "I didn't want to just throw anything together, so I kept putting it off until finally I found a decent camcorder, a big Sony half-inch bicep builder. Then I found Pinnacle Studio™ 7 in an advertisement about five years ago, and I haven't regretted it since. I like the overlay feature of Studio where you can take clips from here and there and transition them in so it looks like you have two or three cameras going at the same time. Studio also allows me to integrate my still photos into the video."

For David, editing is a very important part of the final project. It gives him the freedom to move from one place to capture an important wedding moment, and then to spontaneously shoot someplace else to capture something unrelated, but equally important to the overall memory of the day.

"When I do a wedding, I like to tell the entire story from the beginning of the day with the bride and groom all the way to the end," explained David. "That's my definition of perfection, one seamless story."

After the Sony, David moved up to a JVC digital camcorder, and before long, it was a Sony 30GB high-definitionvideo camera that had his attention. For David, the idea of going tapeless was, in itself, perfection. The move to high-definition also meant moving up to Pinnacle Studio 11, where he learned something else about digital video editing.

"The high-definitioncamcorder goes along beautifully with the Studio 11 software, but I had a problem at first because my computer would crash on me," said David. "My computer at the time just wasn't fast enough and it didn't have enough RAM memory. I've gone beyond that, and now I have a decent Toshiba laptop computer with the Vista operating system and I have an external hard drive to store all my work. That makes life a lot easier for me. I now have 4GB of RAM and I have a much faster processor so now, Studio 11, with all the new features that have been added, allows me to create something that looks really professional. The last two weddings I shot with my Sony HDD camera and edited with Studio, and both clients were very pleased with the professional quality and look the DVD had. "

As the house photographer and videographer at the school where he teaches, David videotapes all the assemblies. He also travels with the school's Steel Band, recording every performance, editing and converting all that content into 40- to 60-minute souvenir DVDs for the kids and their families. "I've been told it's professionally done, and the reason it is, is because of the program I use."

Two years ago, David and another teacher also gained approval to teach a class called, Digital Storytellingto Sunrise Elementary's 6th graders using the school's computer lab and Studio 9.

"The students learned how to be producers and scriptwriters, how to use a storyboard to illustrate what their movie was going to be like, how to use a digital camera, how to edit their footage, how to include special audio effects and music in their project and how to use transitions, create titles and credits," David explained. "At the end of the course, the kids had a three-minute movie. All of this was taught to them using Pinnacle Studio because it was so user-friendly."

David also shares his editing skills serving as the media coordinator at his church. Each weekend, the service is captured in a three-camera shoot and then the multiple simutaneous feeds are edited into a single, rough edit feed which is burned to a DVD.

"Then I take that home and edit it down with Studio 11.1 to be aired on the local public access TV channel," David explained, "I use Pinnacle for the final editing because it's so user-friendly. I like the audio effects in Studio 11 too. For example, at my church, if the speaker's voice was distorted or too loud, I'm able to fine-tune or enhance the audio in editing, and I like that feature. Pinnacle also enables me to quickly produce the video file any way I need to so that it will fit the broadcaster's requirements and upload directly, or just as easily produce for internet broadcast." According to David, his high-tech skills are self-taught and a combination of spending hours at his laptop, a patience for reading user manuals, and the occasional bit of tech advice he has received from others over the years.

"I'm not a professional computer user, but I'm no amateur either," noted David. "But I'd say it took me less than a week's time to really get the program flow of Studio 7."

David had first tried Premiere, a professional editing tool, but soon found it was more than what he really needed and required a greater understanding of editing than he wanted.

"Premiere was a little more intense than what I needed, so when I picked up Studio, I said, ‘Whoa, this is sweet! I can deal with this.' With Premiere, if you don't understand what a tool is or what it's supposed to do for you, you'll get frustrated and won't use it. And that's what happened to me. Studio allowed me to be myself, it removed the frustration. It just wasn't there, it was very straight-forward, and I really liked that. I find making movies with Studio is easy and the program offers both basic and advanced capabilities, so I was able to grow with it. It allowed me to enhance my projects with fun effects in seconds and then effortlessly preserve and share them on DVD."

According to David, the greatest satisfaction for him is seeing the final video when it's all edited and produced, especially when he has tried out a new feature for the first time.

"For example, just the other day I used Video Effects to make my windows fly in and fly out and turn around using Studio 11," said David. "I couldn't do that before. I am really pleased when I see a product that I've created turn out so well. It also makes me feel really good when others enjoy what I've done. In fact, the school even said, ‘why don't you go into that as a second business?' and I had to laugh and say, ‘Well, that's what I'm doing.'"

View David Henry's work with Pinnacle Studio 11 here:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1955394

About Pinnacle Studio Software version 11

To meet the video authoring and budget needs of consumers, ranging from beginners to experienced users, the award-winning Pinnacle Studio version 11 family of products includes Pinnacle Studio, Pinnacle Studio Plus and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate. Equipped with powerful personal video creation and sharing capabilities, Pinnacle Studio can be used to create Hollywood-style DVDs that can be played on any set-top DVD player or PC. Movies can even be enjoyed on a Sony® PSP™, Apple® iPod® and other portable devices. The Pinnacle Studio version 11 family of products is available now through e-tail and retail stores.