Make sure you are running the latest version. If that does not help then try stepping back versions, strange but true some version work well with particular hardware some do not.
The Pinnacle site has a web forum, they may be able to help you.
On the compression side, the best compression is probably with an MPEG 4 codec, pinnacle however does not support (although you can make it use them) third party codecs.
My advise would be setup the movie the way you want it in studio then make the movie to an uncompressed avi file (which will be very big) and then use divx to encode the film to MPEG 4. This ensures maximum output quality from the MPEG 4 codec, also if you want to resize the movie, do the downsizing in the MPEG 4 pass.
Studio is a entry level product, and as such is not as stable as it could be, if you are serious then get Pinnacle edition, it is so much better.
Studio can be quite stable if you do your editing in a particular way;
Don't capture to MPEG 2, it is very poor quality compression because it is done in real time.
Setup the time line with the clips in order and trimmed to your liking.
Do not use auto save, it will screw up your project.
Save to different project files so if you have done somthing that messes it up you can revert. BTW undo doesn't work very well.
Apply transitions only after all clip editing is done.
Try not to alter transition length once they are on the timeline, this often screws up the edit and the only option is to revert to an earlier copy.
When you make the movie do it from the timeline view, don't ask me why but it often works better in timeline view.
