Rating: 
Summary: Product works fine, but you'd better not need any support
Review: I've had my Studio DV card for over a year now, and, as a basic video capture & editing suite, the product is satisfactory. But, when you need ANY kind of support, Pinnacle comes up short. I spent 4 weeks sending emails, leaving voicemails, etc., trying to get some support out of Pinnacle to solve a Windows 2000 issue, and I never got a response. Still haven't today, although I did get the card working on Win2K with the help of another user of the product.Long story short - buy a different card unless you're comfortable with registry hacks and a lack of product support.
Rating: 
Summary: Beginners beware
Review: i've read all of the reviews here and the consistent messages are that a)the card works well, b)if you have the right kind of PC, c)there's no good way to tell if you have the right PC and d)Pinnacle as a company isn't going to help you if you have problems Boiled down, the product description and information on the box are severly misleading, resulting in a *lot* of (rightfully) angry customers My personal experience - i'm a computer pro with a firewire/ilink Digital8 camera (sony dcr-trv320) and an average computer (P2-400, 160MB memory, 2 Western Digital 40GB hard drives, Windows98, all latest drivers). i capture via firewire to a dedicated, defragmented hard drive with all background processes shut down, at least 50MB physical (non-virtual) RAM free. The capture claims to drop about 25% of the frames for a 15s capture (ditto for longer captures). Playback looks like it stutters between 10fps and 2 seconds per frame (*lots* of hiccups). Audio is botched as well as being unsynchronized. Resulting AVIs are unwatchable Question: what do i change to fix this? Pinnacle won't tell you, and the software and its online help are useless. Should i upgrade the CPU, memory or HD? To what? There's no way for the average person to know. The software is also confusing. i can't figure out how to turn off Capture Audio. When you pick a project, you have to specify things like MPEG/AVI, PAL/NTSC and 320x240/640x480, but those options appear to have no effect on the capture. The capture-as-MPEG option always fails. Clicking on Add Voiceover/Music always crashes my PC. Don't expect progress bars, even though simply pressing a button can lock up the application for 120 seconds or more This is *not* a good product for beginners. i'm no film expert, but i know PCs and i'm frustrated. No way i'd want someone else in my family to attempt this. i spent a month trying to get it to work. It spent the next year untouched Assuming the card actually works the way some people here say it does, this product *majorly* needs better support - better help files, system check/compatibility tools, an upgrade guide, better/more honest info on the box, dummies' guide to PC movies, etc.
Rating:
Summary: PROBLEMS WITH ATHLON!
Review: If you have an Athlon computer, especially with a VIA chipset forget about it. You can't send your final video back to your camcorder... It simply doenst work well. There is a good Studio DV forum, where many people reported the same exact problem... So I am not satisfied... It works fine when you send from the cam to the computer (capture), but when you want to send something back to the camcorder, problem. It works for *some* so if you have a 100% intel computer you may love this package...
Rating: 
Summary: Llights! Camera! Action!
Review: Interface card, cables, software all in one box! What a deal! Installation was simple, but did need a driver download to make it see my Sony Digital Camcorder. After that, no problem. I think I looked at the manual once or twice, but I just went throught the included tutorial and it was very informative. Very intuitive to use. I particularly like how it automatically adjusts the length of music to sync with the length of the scenes. Very nice. I completed my first movie of a family Christmas Eve party. Made it mpeg and burned it to CD. Sent copies to everyone from the party. One thing to consider, as duley noted by others, is disk space. There is no such thing as enough free space. Get a BIG drive. That's a particularly key feature to note about the included software. You can capture an entire DV tape in about 150MB because it uses a preview quality resolution while you do your editing. Even the preview looks good. Once you got everything the way you want it the software re-captures just the scenes you need at full resolution with no degragation (remember, digital to digital). Your music, their music, video, stills, graphics, fades and transitions, cut out scenes, repeat scenes, and more! Obviously you got to have a good system for any A/V work, but that doesn't mean you need to be an engineer to use the software. Basically, if you can use a mouse you can make a movie with Pinnacle's StudioDv.
Rating: 
Summary: StudioDV Works Wonders
Review: It's unfortunate the review from the gentleman from Mill Valley, CA is listed first (I write this August 12, 2001). If readers take his review seriously, many individuals new to DV (digital video) editing will turn away and miss out on using the greatest beginner DV editing product available. Studio DV is so easy to use. It add high-quality titles and dozens of fun transitions to your home videos. It automatically detects where a scene begins and ends, letting you quickly manipulate individual clips from your video. It has won CNet's Editor's Choice award twice, and VideoMaker Magazine's Best Products of the Year 1999 award. Notice what Mr. Mann, the gentleman from CA, stated: "Studio DV doesn't readily accept capture from Studio DC10+ as I hoped." He was trying to use Pinnacle Systems' *analog* capture product with Pinnacle's *digital* product, Studio DV. So skip his review and check out the others. Good luck using this powerful, easy-to-use, inexpensive digital video editing package (complete with FireWire card!).
Rating:
Summary: Nice product!
Review: Ok.....when i opened my computer to install the card, i had a few problems getting the card to fit in the slot right. After getting past that problem, i had no other problems after downloading the patches from pinnacle like the other reviewers said to do. This product is awesome! Im glad i stuck with it after the inital problem because it really is a good product for the price. I would give it five stars, but i had the inital problem, and i did have to download a patch. Otherwise, it is a great product for editing dv tapes.
Rating:
Summary: BE SURE TO RESEARCH OTHER OPTIONS
Review: Pinnacle Systems has an EXCELLENT name in the business of DV. HOWEVER, there are many different solutions out there. (Even though Amazon only offers three products by Pinnacle at this time, check out Pinnacle Systems's site for more information. Also check out Adobe's page for links to other solutions.) Be sure you are getting what you need. In short, be sure to research the different packages that are out there. Firewire is pretty much firewire, since it has to conform to IEEE-1394, but the software packages differ greatly. Myself, I'm gunning for something that has Adobe Premiere bundled with it.
Rating:
Summary: Great hardware.
Review: Plugged the card into my Dell XPS-B 1000r, started it up, loaded my Win98SE disk and hardware was ready to go. Simple. Can't comment on the included software as I use MGI Videowave III, but setup works great with my Sony DC TRV-310 digital 8mm camera. You do need a lot of disk space. I downloaded a total of about 70 minutes of video for processing and it ate up 17GB of disk space. CPU speed will also make a lot of difference in how fast you can process the video. With a 1GHz processor, mpeg2 save was at about 1/3 speed while mpeg1 save was slightly faster than realtime.
Rating:
Summary: Maddening Program with amazing possibilities
Review: Since installing Studio DV I've had to install the newest patch, correct several filename errors (the patch changed them to DOS fomrat), moved the capture card to several different slots, tried to free IRQs, and written/called tech support too many times. I still have not been able to complete a single project. This product has great possibility -- being able to capture and edit home videos for under $100 is, perhaps, too good to be true. I know some have had luck with the program but I recommend anyone who wants to purchase this first go to the Pinnacle Support Pages first and see what others who have purchased the package have gone through.
Rating: 
Summary: Studio DV is great once you get it to work.
Review: Studio DV is easy to use once you get it to work. Win 98 SE is bare minimum Operating System. Windows 2000 is much better as it support larger hard drives and more memory. With FAT32 file size is limited to about 20 min of video but I've done 1.5 hr of video with NTFS formated drive. For Win 2000 if the hard drive(s) don't go into DMA try turning off DMA in the BIOS. Also, programs like NERO CD ROM burning software interfere with outputing video to tape (it took me 6 months to figure this out) and require a complete unistall (beyond what Windows does).
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