We've met previous versions of Pinnacle Studio more than once on our review bench, and often had to send them home with the same words: a super piece of software, but with worrying stability issues.

And stability is at the core of what version 11 seemingly tries to fix. Not that it's an easy job: thanks to an abundance of new features, Studio 11 is as elaborate a home video editing application as you can imagine, albeit one grounded by its ethic of working via a very accessible interface.

It's the Plus version that we've been looking at (the non-Plus edition removes high definition support, and there's a premium Ultimate Edition too), and first and foremost it's pleasing to see that its processes have remained straightforward and clutter-free. Studio 11 is happy, as always, to hold you by the hand if that's what you want, and to walk through the process of capturing video footage, banging it into shape and outputting the final production to a format or location of your choice. In many ways, it's never been easier.

It breaks the process down, for those who want to get a little more involved, into a series of tabbed screens. So there's one for capture, one for edit and one for making the final movie. And visually, not much appears to have changed since we met the program last. On the capture screen, for instance, the graphic of a camcorder still popped into place when we hooked up our Canon DV camera via a Firewire connection, and it was simple to click a button or two and get our footage onto our testbed PC's hard disk.

Automatic scene detection gave us a little more trouble than we've been used to with Studio (although we did overcome this in the end), but that aside, so far so good. Incidentally, through the Capture screen, Studio 11 now supports high-definition footage (AVCHD included), assuming your PC has the considerable - and don't take that word lightly - grunt required to handle it.

The edit screen, meanwhile, also appears barely unchanged, although some welcome maximisation was available for the widescreen TFT on our test system, which did help relax an already uncluttered working environment. You still have the very welcome option to switch between a simplified storyboard view, where you drag your scenes and clips in the order you want them to appear, and the more traditional timeline.

We enjoyed using a combination of them both, thanks to the program's dexterity in allowing you to switch between the two via a quick press. Thus we used the storyboard for the broad strokes of our edit, and the timeline for the fine-tuning. And it worked a treat.

Aside from tools to add a musical score, not much is different in the Edit window (notwithstanding a cracking collection of scene transitions and an increasingly competent title editor - the bonus DVD of added material really comes in useful), although we're pleased to report that our test machine didn't crash once through the duration of our project. That's genuine progress, although - on past form for Studio - no long-term guarantee.

Finally, there's the movie making screen, and while the traditional options are there for DVD et al, it's good to see support for various portable formats and the ability to send your work straight to a Web-based video service too. Even if it isn't YouTube that's supported, strangely.

We're still not sure how many people will take advantage of the high definition support that's now part and parcel of Studio 11 from top to bottom, but we're more confident that beginner to intermediate video editors will struggle to find anything as intuitive, welcoming and powerful as Studio 11 Plus. It's a terrific piece of software, and while we'll only really discover over the coming months just how it handles the rigours and demands of the footage we'll be throwing at it, for now it's a strong title, and good value too.

Studio 11 Plus is a splendid video editing application that covers pretty much all the conceivable bases that a home enthusiast is likely to need. It seems to be considerably more stable than previous versions, too.