I too am a Studio 9 Plus user who was very happy with the quality of the menus

and after 5 or so years decided to take the plunge and get Studio 12 ultimate

for X-mas.  I did the usual install and then did not patch up to current.  I made my first disc

and I was happy with how the program handled.  When I put the disc in a set-top

DVD player...........WTF....Why do those menus look so crappy?!?

I quickly patched up to 12.1.3.6605 and edited another file and burned another

disc and guess what happened.............Another crappy menu!!!!!!

Why does it take Pinnacle until patch ".4" or ".5" to actually get the program

running properly?!?  I see thanks haven't changed in 5 or 6 years.  Tech supports still

assumes we are morons and their only response is to a) not believe what we are saying,

b) assume that what we are describing is not true and that we couldn't possible be right

and c) tell us to either re-install or un-install and re-install.

The reason I am MAD is because I really want this product to work and really like some

other parts of the program and because after buying another version (I guess I should

be thankful I didn't buy 10 and/or 11) it seems that absolutely NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

I guess I'll just keep using NERO until this problem is fixed (if ever!).  Any pools going on this?

 

I am burning a DVD. I am aware of the preview monitor quality being less than the actual burn. As I stated before, I have installed the software on 2 different machines.. XP and Vista. My XP machine has Nero and is working perfectly and the dvds look like professional photos when playing on the dvd that I burn... so I know it is not the equipment or the photos or the OS. Nero is very limited in its effects and I love the capabilities of Pinnacle 12. The end product is simply sub-standard.

I've been using Studio since StudioDV, upgraded to 7, then 8, bought 9 and upgraded to 10, 11, and just a few months ago bought the retail version of 12.

 When 10 came out, menus were totally broken on my machine and the only way I could keep producing was to build my own from JPEG images.  I think about 10.5 menus got fixed.  

In 11 menus didn't work right for me again.  And again I made my own, then a few patches later they started working again.  I never had the pixellated or soft menu image problem and titles whether full screen or overlays never looked bad.  For most the time I had 11 running and now I've worked mainly in HD and that may be why but I've never had a bad looking menu in 11 or 12.  

Now I know it doesn't help those of you who ARE seeing pixellated menus for me to say I don't, but it would seem to me that it doesn't necessarily have to be a program bug.  

On using progressive scan encoding, I did use that for awhile until I realized that "jagged" looking titles and some jagged looking interlacing artifacts began to look like the way Studio was doing the "progressive" might have been dropping one field and only displaying the other (this was on SD burning).  Once I unchecked that box, overall sharpness got better and titles looked MUCH better.

Bruce Foreman:

I've been using Studio since StudioDV, upgraded to 7, then 8, bought 9 and upgraded to 10, 11, and just a few months ago bought the retail version of 12.

 When 10 came out, menus were totally broken on my machine and the only way I could keep producing was to build my own from JPEG images.  I think about 10.5 menus got fixed.  

In 11 menus didn't work right for me again.  And again I made my own, then a few patches later they started working again.  I never had the pixellated or soft menu image problem and titles whether full screen or overlays never looked bad.  For most the time I had 11 running and now I've worked mainly in HD and that may be why but I've never had a bad looking menu in 11 or 12.  

Now I know it doesn't help those of you who ARE seeing pixellated menus for me to say I don't, but it would seem to me that it doesn't necessarily have to be a program bug.  

On using progressive scan encoding, I did use that for awhile until I realized that "jagged" looking titles and some jagged looking interlacing artifacts began to look like the way Studio was doing the "progressive" might have been dropping one field and only displaying the other (this was on SD burning).  Once I unchecked that box, overall sharpness got better and titles looked MUCH better.

 When I uncheck Use Progressive Encoding my video quality goes way down, many more jagged lines and such. And if the picture has motion in it looks even worse. However my menu quality does go way up. It becomes very sharp like it used to be back on Studio 9.

Has anyone done any slide shows with Studio 12? How do the photos look? On Studio 9 they were very sharp. I haven't done any on Studio 12 yet but I'm getting ready to.

Reproduced in QA.  Defect entered and under investigation.  Thanks for the details.

glus:

Reproduced in QA.  Defect entered and under investigation.  Thanks for the details.

 

That's great! Looking forward to a solution soon.

glus:

Reproduced in QA.  Defect entered and under investigation.  Thanks for the details.

 

We've been complaining about "poor quality output compared to S9" since Studio 10, and all through S11, and here we are with S12 and S9 still produces superior output.

I'm glad you finally noticed it too.  Hopefully it'll get fixed.

I don't know if this will help Pinnacle to patch this or not, but I just noticed something else with my menus in Studio 12.  Usually my dvds are under an hour and I can render at 100% quality.  The menus, while not nearly as sharp as in Studio 9, have been acceptable enough since I applied the first 12 patch.  BUT, just today, I rendered a dvd that was 2 hours long, and the bitrate was somewhere around 4300.  The menus look horrible.  Does this have something to do with the fact that we don't have an option of variable bitrate?  It seems that no matter how long my dvds were in Studio 9, the menus still looked like 100% quality, but in 12, the quality matches the overall quality of the video.  I was transferring from a vhs tape, so didn't notice the video quality being any worse than my original, but I would like it if the menu wasn't degraded just because my video was too long to render at 100% quality.  Is there a patch in the works to render menus at 100% quality even if the overall project bitrate is lower?

Have there been any updates to solve these issues?  Or are we being ignored?

I recently upgraded to Studio 12 Plus.  I have the same problem with menu's!  They look awfully pixellated with blurry fonts.  I contacted Cust. Serv. several times via chat.  We tried several things but nothing helped.  I ended up editing my video in Studio 12 but creating menus in other programs.   It's very disappointing.

 

 

 

I'm New her and to Studio. Studio 12 is where I came in. I have never had the pleasure / displeasure to use any of the older versions. However, I can and do agree that there is a bug or for lack of a better term a malaise on Pinnacle's part over this. I want to pull my hair out over it. I would think the resolution could and should be better. I keep trying different approaches. If I find a work around I'll post it. But, If it has been around this long, it seems it will be around until the new version or replacement comes to market.

Most software companies are like that. Why come out with a patch when it can be addressed in the new version. Patch it only when it has to be patched.

I'm hoping a fix comes soon for this. Luckily my paying customers haven't wanted any fancy menus recently. It's really erks me that my previous Studio 9 did so much better on the menus than 12. What makes it even worse, I upgraded to Studio 12 thinkning I would take advantage of all the latest features but in reality never use them. So what I got with Studio 12 Ultimate was a larger hole in my wallet and reduced functionality.

I'm willing to hang out a little longer but I'm tiring of all the workarounds I have to do just to get a project completed. 

 

 

Just bumping this......Still unresolved?

Thanks for the follow up. No new updates unfortunately.

mmmh when will it be available? I have to make a decidion between Pinnacle and Magix. So far Pinnacle def. has the noise in front, but a proper menu is a crutial feature.

 "Thanks for the follow up. No new updates unfortunately."

 This is not really a satisfying answer. And for me it sounds more like: Just wait till Studio 13 is available :-(

Lagrange:

 

 This is not really a satisfying answer. And for me it sounds more like: Just wait till Studio 13 is available :-(

And what will we get then?

S9 - Crisp, clear menus
S10 - Fuzzy menus
S11 - Fuzzy menus
S12 - Fuzzy menus (maybe some improvement for HD work, I'm not sure)
S13 - Based on the track record so far, your guess is as good as mine...

@justavicing

Ok, thx for your post! In this case my decidion is made. Although Pinnacle seems to have the better package, I will go for video deluxe. If they had problems for 3 versions now, I do not believe that it will ever change. It also tells s.th. about the support you get. It bothers a lot of customers, but pinnacle is not able/ does not want to fix it.

My first post here although I've been a member for 6 months!

I bought Studio 12 Ultimate back in Nov. of 2008 and it was my first jump into the Pinnacle studio world. I have a hard-disk/flash based Sony SR-11 true 1080i (1920x1080) camcorder I bought over a year ago. My computer is a 2.2GHz Phenom 9500 quad-core, 3GB ram, an ATI 2400HD video card w/256MB and a 500GB hard drive.

 My camera saves in AVCHD format and I was gonna get Sony;'s VEGAS Pro since it saves n AVCHD format while the version below it only load AVCHD files and doesn't save in it. But after doing some research I found that Studio Ultimate 12 saves in AVCHD format at only a fraction of the price of Vegas Pro. And after it getting editor's choice at PC mag I believe it was PLUS the fact they say they are the #1 selling video editing software. So I jumped in.

 My feeling about it now?!?!? As much as I like the program for the most part....I see now that the Pinnacle quality control department does not exist!!!

 Why would I say something so harsh?!?! Because this thread and this problem PROVES they don't.

 Let's look at my evidence for such a conclusion based on long time user comments in this thread.....

 

Studio 9 -menus look good

Studio 10 -ugly menus...... no fix

Studio 11 -ugly menus..... no fix

Studio 12 -ugly menus..... no fix

 

When quality control misses a glaring problem for 3 full version numbers that it's customer base noticed right away back in version 10 when they didn't....... that's PROOF that a company has a quality control department ONLY IN NAME. That a noob video editor like myself noticed it right away and a company with people that live and breathe this stuff all year long (it is their job after all) didn't ....that's not just sad... it's embarrassing!

 It seems people are right on here. Pinnacle seems more concerned with developing and selling the bells and whistles plug-ins then fixing the core problems with this program. I know they want to make extra money with those new plug-ins and I'm all for it. But when their core program is broken for 3 versions and we just NOW get an acknowledgment they are looking into this problem.... why would I want to buy a plug-in or the next version from a company that does this to us that shelled out $130 like myself!?!?

I welcome ANY Pinnacle employee on here to try and defend this gross oversight!

 

I made a 20-year high school reunion DVD using this software and it's pretty sad when I had to send preface letters to my classmates apologizing for the blocky...mid-1990s looking DVD menus and the minor video glitches the software introduced to the video.

 

Other then a couple things, I'm very happy with this software otherwise. BUT.... if I have to wait until version 13 for a possible fix, I may have to move on to Sony Vegas I'm afraid and it pains me to say that. But I'm not gonna support this company if it's gonna miss glaring problems (that users notice instantly) with the core program like this for 3 FULL VERSIONS!!!

Hi all,

 I am new to the forums as of today but have been using Pinnacle for a while.  I am currently using S12 and I find my menus look fine.  Make sure that progressive encoding is turned off.  For some reason when you render with that on it makes the menus look terrible. 

 I am sure there is more to it than that but it certainly made a difference on mine. 

We have to be clear what it is we are talking about.

Some people complain about the quality of the STYLE of Pinnacle's menus, saying they look outdated and amaturish.

Then there' the quality of the image ("rendering" - which is what I, and I belive the thread in general have been discussing).

To some people, the lack of image quality is very noticable, and other's don't notice anything amiss.

To me, S9 had very crisp and clear images.  S10-12 have somewhat blurry images.  It is especially noticable if you put them side-by-side, but I can tell that it's not quite right even without the side-by-side test.

I become most aware of the low (modest?) image quality when I participate in the Pinhead activities.  Some people have such beautiful renderings, and the text (not just menus, but any text overlay) looks so beautiful, and I feel like mine leave something to be desired.  Some people render (in Studio) to Full DV-AVI files, and then use another application to convert it to a Windows Media File (WMV - the standard Pinhead format) files in order to keep the quality high.

It dissappoints me that we've never returned to the quality S9 produced.  We know it's possible......

A few posts back I noticed a tie in between ticking on and off the "Use Progressive Encoding". In my case when it's "off", the video itself gets pretty jagged. There also seems to be some link between the length of the video being encoded and the menu. It's almost as if the menu is being encoded with the same compression ratio as the video. In Studio 9, which I believe everyone agrees with, had the best menu clarity regardless of how much compression was used in the video. Whether this or something else it the root of the problem is yet to be seen. 

Either way, I'm hoping for a fix like everyone else. I think we're getting close to a year waiting for a fix. 

Hey all - Just read this long thread as I am having the same issue.  If I could figure out how to insert a link in a post, I would do so - but for now I'll just say it's thread 242860 ("Menu Quality when DVD burned", originally posted by AllBill on 10/13/2008, and resurrected by Marc P and myself.

What is the deal?  Has anybody found a solution, or, has there been any comment by Pinnacle patchers?

I have read about recent patches resolving the poor standard menu quality - but I'm running 12.1.3.6605 (which I believe is the latest and greatest) - and I still have horrible menu quality.

How can this be?  In this thread I think I saw posts from Pinnacle folks who isolated the problem and were working on it - but that was almost a year ago?  Any update???

Thanks much

The problem as reported in the opening post here, was reproduced here in QA during the S14 test cycle.  Fixes were made, and menu quality is much improved in Studio 14 - menu background image and menu text is sharper, the fuzziness problem is improved overall (we also used S9 quality as the benchmark).  Unfortunately this doesn't help you folks using S12, so I can only apologize about that, because another patch for S12 is unlikely.  For those of you willing to move to, or already using S14, I think you'll find that the quality there is on par with S9. 

Thanks - sorry I waited so long to reply. 

glus:

The problem as reported in the opening post here, was reproduced here in QA during the S14 test cycle.  Fixes were made, and menu quality is much improved in Studio 14 - menu background image and menu text is sharper, the fuzziness problem is improved overall (we also used S9 quality as the benchmark). 

Nick,

Thank you for the excellent response.

It (the fix) is 3 versions late.  It should have been addressed in a patch for S10.  But I am glad that Pinnacle has FINALLY acknowledged that there was indeed a problem in S10, S11, and S12, and that S9 had been doing it right.  It's tragic that it took this long.

Thanks again for posting your reply.

I echo the thoughts from justaviking:  Nick - thank you very much for your prompt reply, responding to my private message, and providing this highly sought information!

With that, I want to pre-emptively state that the following diatribe is not directed at any individual (namely Nick!):

I JUST purchased S12.  You've got to be kidding me!?! 

I bought Studio to make DVDs - including menus.   I'm not even seeking high-end functionality or fancy features - just simple slideshows or videos with a simple navigation menu.  I spent my hard-earned money on something that I thought would provide this BASIC functionality.  Now, if I understand correctly - it's completely useless?!?

I would not even mind if there was a workaround. Although severely annoying, at this point I would be happy if I could tolerate some way to trick the system and have it render a menu that was even remotely acceptable.  But as far as I can tell - there isn't!

This is unacceptable to me.  I hardly think I'm being unreasonable to ask for such BASIC functionality in the software I just purchased.

It's like purchasing a word processor application, only to find out that the ONLY way it will display or print the vowels is severely fuzzy and pixelated - and there is NO workaround.  What good is it??  The program would essentially be worthless.

How is this different than my purchase of S12?

I would be happy to return my copy of S12 PLUS for a copy of S14 PLUS.  Given the circumstances - I don't think this would be an unreasonable request.

I do want to reiterate - this is not directed at the "messenger", Nick.  Thanks again for helping to provide the information we have been so desparately seeking.