Introduction Pinnacle is a California based firm which creates a lot of digital video hardware and software products. Pinnacle is a subsidiary of Avid Technology which is a worldwide leader in manufacturing editing tools for film, video, audio, etc. Pinnacle’s most famous tool is Pinnacle Studio, premier video editing software used by professional video editors all over the world. VideoSpin is a more basic video editing tool but it gets its roots from Pinnacle Studio. Most Windows users use Windows Movie Maker for basic video editing because it’s free. But it’s not that easy to learn and it doesn’t have a huge number of features. If you want a refreshing change VideoSpin is a free alternative which is not only easy to use but has a wider range of video and audio effects. These effects can add transitions, titles and music to your video projects. Overview VideoSpin is very easy to use and learn. You can easily create your video by dragging and dropping video clips, snaps and music files into the VideoSpin Timeline and then adding a few 2D transitions and sound effects. 
You can download VideoSpin from Pinnacle’s website. The setup file is 148MB. Although it’s free, you will get reminded that you can get more if you throw some money at Pinnacle. There are options for activating advanced features, better codecs, improved effects or an upgrade to a fuller version of Pinnacle Studio. VideoSpin has a simple interface and it comes with a thorough tutorial. This helps beginners to navigate through videos, music and picture folders to find appropriate media on their PC. VideoSpin is capable of editing both high definition and standard definition videos. The minimum system requirements for VideoSpin are: - Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon 1.4GHz processors (or higher). A dual core version of a 1.6GHz processor (or higher) is required for Windows Vista;
- 512MB of RAM (1GB for Vista);
- Windows XP with SP2 or Vista;
- Direct X 9 or higher compatible 64GB graphics card and;
- 150MB of free disk space.
Interface The interface is divided among four parts. First, the Album, where you can find pictures, transitions, sound effects (etc). The Album is like a filing system which has a set of thumbnail images of the pictures and effects that you can choose from. Second is the movie Timeline where sound and image sequences can be created by clicking on a thumbnail in the Album and then dragging the element from there and onto the Timeline. Third is the Video Player where you can preview the movie you’re creating. The fourth part is nothing but an advertisement to purchase the Advanced Codec Pack and an upgrade to Pinnacle Studio 12 video editing software. 
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