Five Ways to Produce a Picture in Picture
in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate
in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate
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by John Allen
This page is a companion to my page reviewing Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and its predecessor, Avid Studio Ultimate video editing software. I examined Pinnacle Studio 16 Ultimate, but the new version 17 appears not to have changed the effects available in the Effects Editor.
These applications have five different modules which produce picture-in-picture effects, all under the 2D-3D heading in the Effects Editor. The five modules have many features in common, but also important differences. Some are easier to use, and others provide a wealth of options. It is important to know about all of these modules in order not to be caught up with one of them which lacks a desired feature. Another may have it. Be careful in choosing which module you will use. There is no way to convert among these modules.
There is an additional Multi-Shape PIP module, which can produce a polygonal or star-shaped PiP, but it is different enough that I'm not covering it here.
(Message to marketeers: "Ultimate" means the last, greatest, most spectacular, ever, but a new, even more Ultimate version of Pinnacle Studio comes out about once a year...)
A lower-cost version, Pinnacle Studio Plus appears to have the same picture in picture effects, while the entry-level plain Pinnacle Studio lacks the ability to use keyframes to change an effect over time.
Avid Studio (no longer sold) is very similar to Pinnacle Studio 16. Pinnacle Studio 15 and earlier are a very different product.
The table below lists the parameters of each of each of the five modules. Some parameters have different ranges and work in opposite directions in different modules. I suspect that this results from the need to achieve compatibility when converting data from different legacy applications.
Some general comments about each of the modules:
Some parameters of these modules are available as other independent modules; for example, Pan and Zoom and Rotate, both available under the Camera heading in the Effects Editor.
Pinnacle Studio allows cascading of effects, but generally it is best to use only a single module to perform as many functions as possible, especially when changing the shape, rotation or size of an image -- requiring resampling the image, and with each resampling, there is a loss of image quality. To what extent Pinnacle Studio minimizes the number of resamplings, I don't know. Determining this would require either detailed research, or a knowledge of the inner workings of the software.
So that comparable parameters are seen side by side in the table below, they are not always listed in the same order as in the Effects Editor, Also, parameters may not occur at the same outline level in different modules.
The pairs of numbers in parentheses in the table give the maximum and minimum values of parameters. For linear changes, most are percentages, and for rotations, most are degrees. When there is a row of three numbers, the middle one indicates a default value.
| 2D Editor Advanced | 2D Editor CPU | 3D Editor CPU | 3D Editor GPU | Studio PiP |
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Position (±200)
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Position (±400)
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Position
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Position
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Position (±100)
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Size (linkable) (0 200)
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Size (linkable, 0 400)
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Size (linkable, 0 400)
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Size (linkable, 0 200)
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Size (not linkable, 0 200)
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Shear (±360)
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Rotation (±720) |
Rotation (±360)
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Mirror
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Rotation (±720)
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Rotation
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Camera (perspective effects, like swings and tilts of a view camera, complicated interactions!)
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Border
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Inner Border
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Inner Border
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Border
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Border
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Outer Border
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Outer Border
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Transparency
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Transparency
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Transparency
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Transparency
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Video
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Shadow
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Shadow
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Shadow
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Shadow
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Shadow
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Cropping (0 100)
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Cropping (0 100)
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Cropping (0 100)
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Cropping (0 100)
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Cropping (0 100)
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Corner Curve (0 100) |
Corner Curve (0 100) |
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Quality
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Quality
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Last Updated: 05/05/2025 09:11:13 by John Allen