Rating: 
Summary: horror movies???
Review: as a performance artist interested in being able to create my own multi-media projects i enthusiastically bought this rubbish software. the installation seemed fine, but very soon after it crashed so often that i got to where i was saving my project after every change just so i wouldn't lose my work. the texts and fonts don't work, it jumps around trying to guess your intentions (almost as badly as microsoft word's auto-correct), it only burns to dvd about 1 time in 10, and the rendering process can exceed 12 hours for only 25 minutes of material. expect to be on hold from 30-60 minutes for technical support (not a toll-free number), and don't expect the menu options to be saved properly. the one time it created a dvd properly it was absolutely beautiful; however, i worked much too hard to get so little out of the program. i also had to rebuild my entire system FOUR times after the computer stopped booting (note: i have a 2.6 ghz processor, 512 meg ram, and 120 gig, with windows xp media edition -- don't try to blame these problems on my system!)... i'm going to try the sony product: it averages about 4 stars from other users and costs the same or less.
Rating:
Summary: horror movies???
Review: as a performance artist interested in being able to create my own multi-media projects i enthusiastically bought this rubbish software. the installation seemed fine, but very soon after it crashed so often that i got to where i was saving my project after every change just so i wouldn't lose my work. the texts and fonts don't work, it jumps around trying to guess your intentions (almost as badly as microsoft word's auto-correct), it only burns to dvd about 1 time in 10, and the rendering process can exceed 12 hours for only 25 minutes of material. expect to be on hold from 30-60 minutes for technical support (not a toll-free number), and don't expect the menu options to be saved properly. the one time it created a dvd properly it was absolutely beautiful; however, i worked much too hard to get so little out of the program. i also had to rebuild my entire system FOUR times after the computer stopped booting (note: i have a 2.6 ghz processor, 512 meg ram, and 120 gig, with windows xp media edition -- don't try to blame these problems on my system!)... i'm going to try the sony product: it averages about 4 stars from other users and costs the same or less.
Rating:
Summary: This product is great for masochists with lots of free time
Review: Buy this product if you like making old Godzilla movies with really bad audio that doesn't sync with the video. Or if you like rebooting your PC every minute because the program freezes for no apparent reason. Not to mention the 5 hrs it takes to compile a DVD per hour of video when every other program takes less than 2 hrs. And good luck trying to contact customer support or even returning since there is no warranty. If the salespeople say there is a manufacturer's warranty, make sure they put it in writing. I've been trying to return mine with no luck.
Rating: 
Summary: Patience and diligence required
Review: Direct and to the point. You MUST significantly have more horsepower than the product specifications state. I have attempted this product on a 2.6 GHZ, 1024 MB RAM, Pentium 4 processor, with over 120 GB of free disk space. These specifications vastly exceed Pinnacle's stated requirements.My findings:
Expect to spend 6 hours for every 1 hour of DVD generated.
Expect to only be successful writing to DVD about 10% of the time.
Expect to lose your captured data, or for your data to become corrupt on a regular basis.
Expect to wait 30-60 minutes on hold for technical support.
Expect technical support (once you get someone) to be of very litte help.
Expect your frustration level to significantly increase. I have thus far spent over 70 hours attempting to convert my home VHS tapes to DVD. Thus far I have been successful on one 24 minute DVD (even that one is inferior in appearance than the original VHS tape). I have researched over 1000 of the postings on the Pinnacle user forum web site to find any information that would assist me in my endeavor. While I have found a lot of useful information I have also found that that essentially the product is unreliable and should have never been released to the public (even if it were free). I am technically qualified (on the PC/software level). This product has great promise but simply cannot deliver. Check out the user forums on the www.pinnaclesys.com site BEFORE you buy this product. Granted, someone will always complain about the best of products; however, in this case the sheer volume of complaints should tell you something. Finally, DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. I cannot offer any other suggestions for alternative products as I am still searching for one which will professionally and reliably perform as advertised.
Rating:
Summary: Please do not buy
Review: Direct and to the point. You MUST significantly have more horsepower than the product specifications state. I have attempted this product on a 2.6 GHZ, 1024 MB RAM, Pentium 4 processor, with over 120 GB of free disk space. These specifications vastly exceed Pinnacle's stated requirements. My findings:
Expect to spend 6 hours for every 1 hour of DVD generated.
Expect to only be successful writing to DVD about 10% of the time.
Expect to lose your captured data, or for your data to become corrupt on a regular basis.
Expect to wait 30-60 minutes on hold for technical support.
Expect technical support (once you get someone) to be of very litte help.
Expect your frustration level to significantly increase. I have thus far spent over 70 hours attempting to convert my home VHS tapes to DVD. Thus far I have been successful on one 24 minute DVD (even that one is inferior in appearance than the original VHS tape). I have researched over 1000 of the postings on the Pinnacle user forum web site to find any information that would assist me in my endeavor. While I have found a lot of useful information I have also found that that essentially the product is unreliable and should have never been released to the public (even if it were free). I am technically qualified (on the PC/software level). This product has great promise but simply cannot deliver. Check out the user forums on the www.pinnaclesys.com site BEFORE you buy this product. Granted, someone will always complain about the best of products; however, in this case the sheer volume of complaints should tell you something. Finally, DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. I cannot offer any other suggestions for alternative products as I am still searching for one which will professionally and reliably perform as advertised.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy to use, CAN capture analog video
Review: Dropped the card into a PCI slot. Followed the instructions in the manual to the letter, including not allowing Windows 2000 to install drivers on hardware auto detect. Captured analog video from a Hi8 tape playing in an ancient video camera: RCA ProView V712 circa 1996. My system: Windows 2000 on a home-built box, P4 with 512MB RDRAM, two 20GB IDE disks. Two hours after I opened the box, I had a two minute clip posted on my web site, in both Windows Media and Real Player formats. Rarely have I had so positive an experience from an end-user product. My only complaint is that my *very first* video capture had a one second blip where the sound cut out. Whatever! If you are a non-professional who wants to rip video from your old tapes and get them into digital format, then this is the product for you.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely pleased after starting out frustrated
Review: First off, I have to say that this product works very well but only if your computer is very good. It's better if your computer is a newer model so that it can handle the memory hogging of the software. Also, make sure that you have a second hard drive to store all your video files. I didn't have a second hard drive and thought it would be no problem. I was wrong. I couldn't upload anything until my second hard drive was put in. Now I have a 120 GB harddrive and my problems are over. The unit works really well and my friends and family have been amazed at the results this system can do. I can spend hours on it because it is so much fun. So in all, I would say this is awesome product that works really well if the computer it's put on can handle it.
Rating:
Summary: Not too bad for the price
Review: Had trouble getting it to work, initially my whole computer froze. My recommendation: First, get ALL the patches from Microsoft that are available and in any way relevant to audio/ video/ security/ performance. Consider updating the BIOS. TUrn off background processes such as virus check etc. Could not get my integrated soundcard to work, deactivated it in bios and put in a thirtysome dollar soundblaster card. that helped.
Initially I also experienced the sound synchronization problem experienced by others, but changing the settings of the sound card (advanced audio settings, hardware accelleration) to standard I was able to capture 20min videos without problems.
I have a AthlonXP1800 w/ 512MB RAM and two 80GB 7200RPM harddrives, not too shabby, but to it still takes about an hour to "create" the raw file for video output.
I was able to create both an analog VHS video tape as well as a digital VCD (using my old 16x CD-R burner). My DVD player chocked a little, but was able to play it after a few attempts.
Software is easy to use, at the end of the first day I had assembled my first "MTV style" video (about 20 clips taken from various videos mapped to a soundfile that one can rip from CD).
Bug here - had to frequently re-rip the soundfile when changes to video size were made (takes about 2 min).
Very few crashes - overall once it was running it was not bad at all. Love the results, my friends were deeply impressed, too.
Rating:
Summary: Pinnacle Studio 8
Review: I am not pleased with the product at all. It worked like advertised twice, The third time I could not change/update titles nor could I add their supplied sound. Attempting to add sound would create a major problem and athe status would flicker and quit responding. After a number of uninstalls and reinstalls I avoided the above problems and it would not render at all, just sit there. I have checked the Q&A sections without fnding any resolution. I have e-mailed and have not received even a hello. I do not believe thay are customer orientated AT ALL. I would not recommed this product unless you are very good at debugging commerical software.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, when it works
Review: I bought this software over a year ago to edit video from my Sony Digital 8 camera. Installation:
It took me close to 3 months to setup because of issues between Windows ME and the included FireWire card. I actually had to hack the Microsoft drivers .INF file to get the card to work properly on my system. User Interface
The software is amazing easy to use. The user interface is very intuitive. To capture, hookup your Digital camcorder to the Firewire card with the included cable. You just say you want to record and up to 15 minutes of video is transfered at a time. This is due to a limit in the size of AVI files. The system is capable of automatically sensing scene breaks, so when it captures, it automatically organizes scenes. For editing, it just have to arrange the scenes. You can also shorten the scenes through again a very good UI. The software has 3 voice tracks. You can easily add music from MP3s or CDs to your video. You can also do voiceovers ( I haven't tried this yet ). If you are making DVDs, you can add chapters and menus. The UI for doing this is pretty good as well. You can also add stills. I've made many videos which are combination of video and stills pictues from a digital camera The software comes with many transitions. You can do fads and other cool effects. You can output your movie to DVD, S-VCD, VCD, RealNetworks, Microsoft Media Player Format, or MPEG ( No Quicktime support ). Now the bad: The software has been very unreliable, at times, I lost hours of work. Anyone who looks at the message boards will see that the user base of this software is generally unhappy. I seem to finally have a patch that has made the software reasonable reliable. I can honestly say that I love the software but have never been so frustrated with the qauality of a piece of software before. When it works its really good, but it doesn't always work. Because of the unreliability of the software, I would not recommend it to a computer novice.
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