Pinnacle Systems Studio AV/DV 9

Rating:
Summary: Worth Every Penny
Review: I'm very stingy with 5 star ratings, but this product deserves it. First the hardware: the board and its driver were a snap to install. You'll only have a problem if you're uncomfortable opening up the computer to put the card in a PCI slot. Otherwise, you're home free. The board itself has digital and analog (both RCA and S-VHS) inputs. As for the Studio 9 software, it is very easy to use; I was able to able to start doing basic stuff within 15 minutes of finishing the install, and have been able to easily pick up more advanced techniques as I've gone along. The finished DVDs look pretty sharp, with menus and various types of transitions. As a result, I've been able to combine my pile of VHS-C tapes into edited DVDs. The program doesn't have the power and controls of Adobe Premiere, but Premiere is aimed at professional videographers and lists at $699. Studio 9 is for non-professionals. The closest thing I can compare it to for ease of use is Easy CD Creator 5, before Roxio tried to make it a media swiss army knife. Creator 5 was brilliantly designed for ease of use, but Media Creator 7 tries to do too many things and ends up a mess (I've uninstalled it and gone back to 5). Like Creator 5, Studio 9 has a good, clear manual included if you have any questions (and you won't have many). As a book of tips for advanced uses of the program and shooting video, Visual Quickstart Guide to Studi 9 by Jan Ozer is pretty good, but for the basics, the manual included with this product does the trick. Here's the proof: I bought this three months ago, and I have yet to call tech support.

Rating:
Summary: Generally very happy with this product
Review: It seems like this is a "love it or hate it" product, based on a lot of what I've read on the internet. Well, I supposed I'm one of the Pinnacle Studio AV/DV users who loves the product. The hardware is fine for my uses; I'm capturing analog video from a Hi8 camera to my hard drive and editing home movies to burn to DVD. I've done a couple of movies on DVD since I got this product and I have to say that the finished product looks as good as my original Hi8 tapes. Plus, the software is GREAT! I'd call myself a sophomore level user of audio/video editing software and Pinnacle Studio lets me do everything I had hoped it would and more. Fancy edits, fades, jump-cuts, a few fun special effects, basically more than I'll ever use is included. I understand that many people have problems using the software, but it works great on my Windows XP 2ghz Dell Dimension. I capture and edit my movies with this software and burn the DVDs with another program, and I consider this product to be a steal, so consider this a rave review.

Rating:
Summary: Generally very happy with this product
Review: It seems like this is a "love it or hate it" product, based on a lot of what I've read on the internet. Well, I supposed I'm one of the Pinnacle Studio AV/DV users who loves the product. The hardware is fine for my uses; I'm capturing analog video from a Hi8 camera to my hard drive and editing home movies to burn to DVD. I've done a couple of movies on DVD since I got this product and I have to say that the finished product looks as good as my original Hi8 tapes. Plus, the software is GREAT! I'd call myself a sophomore level user of audio/video editing software and Pinnacle Studio lets me do everything I had hoped it would and more. Fancy edits, fades, jump-cuts, a few fun special effects, basically more than I'll ever use is included. I understand that many people have problems using the software, but it works great on my Windows XP 2ghz Dell Dimension. I capture and edit my movies with this software and burn the DVDs with another program, and I consider this product to be a steal, so consider this a rave review.

Rating:
Summary: Video Editing Newbie
Review: My first impression of the Pinnacle AV/DV is that it is well designed and user-friendly.
Installation was quite straightforward and I didn't experience any difficulty. I was able to capture my video from my mini-dv camcorder with ease. It is a nice feature to be able to control the camcorder through the Pinnacle software. I haven't used any
editing functions yet, but from what I've seen so far, Pinnacle
has a winning product.
This is a GREAT product, and at a very reasonable price!

9/14/04 : I just burned my first DVD and it was so simple!!! I tried the DVD on a laptap and also my home DVD player and everything works great!!! The Pinnacle AV/DV is a grea product and so easy to install/use!!! Thanks!!!


Rating:
Summary: Nice Product
Review: Once I got the software, and installed the card, I was importing and editing video in a short time. This is a very nice product in that I can import video/sound from both my "old" analog 8mm camcorder and my new Mini DV format camcorder. The only reason that I didn't give this 5 stars is that it takes a great deal of time to convert the imported video to a format for DVD burning. An hours worth of imported video takes about 3 additional hours to get onto DVD. This is on a new P4 @ 2.8. For less than $100 it is worth it just for the firewire card and firewire cable.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Product
Review: Once I got the software, and installed the card, I was importing and editing video in a short time. This is a very nice product in that I can import video/sound from both my "old" analog 8mm camcorder and my new Mini DV format camcorder. The only reason that I didn't give this 5 stars is that it takes a great deal of time to convert the imported video to a format for DVD burning. An hours worth of imported video takes about 3 additional hours to get onto DVD. This is on a new P4 @ 2.8. For less than $100 it is worth it just for the firewire card and firewire cable.

Rating:
Summary: Do you keep XP updated? Forget about buying this if you do!
Review: Pinnacle demands you use XP Service Pack 1 before it even installs itself. If you've been updating your XP regularly like you should, you'll be using Service Pack 2. You would think that wouldn't be a problem, but with Pinnacle it is! As stated on their customer service site, they don't "support" the current version. I had to DOWNGRADE my XP to use this, and I bought this off the store just today! What kind of tech company is this? I have to make my system vulnerable by using an obsolete security update just to record a video!

Rating:
Summary: Captures great but then you can't do anything with it.
Review: The capture card works fine but this has to be some of the most poorly designed editing software I've ever seen (and I've seen a few packages). SAVE OFTEN!
My most recent project was tranferring home movies I had originally on Super 8 into the computer (Dell 1.8 G, 512K RAM). The music used by the video house that did the transfer was Kenny G. Awful. So I wanted to add my own music to my edit movies (the reels were out of sequence so I was using 9 to reorganize them chronologically. Editing went well in fact everything went well up until I wanted to add my own music. You have three choices for sound: 1) Voice over via microphone. 2) CD 3) corny cheesy MIDI music that comes with 9. Awful!
I tried several times to add CD tracks, the program would dutifully go off for several minutes "adding" the track then promptly crash and close out. I gave up after four or five tries. Why can't you add MP3? Why can't you add WAV files? This program in trying to be all things to all people has removed any ability to tinker with files. I know its the third time I said it but 'Awful'
Thank goodness I had Ulead software to finally pull it all together.
In addition to the above problem, Pinnacle nickels and dimes its customers. I was told that if I registered online, I'd get some Hollywood FX filters, which I did. I received the filters but you can't use them. They are locked out and you have to purchase them in addition to the $99 you just spent. You also have to register online to get any MPEG 2 functionality but it doesn't say that on the box.
Don't expect much help at the website either.

Rating:
Summary: You Are Better Off Investing in a DVD Recorder!
Review: This software is STILL buggy. By that, I mean the DVDs you produce will have audio which trails the video by a few seconds. In other words, you'll see people's mouthes move, and you'll hear what they say a few seconds later. Incredibly, this still hasn't been fixed from Version 8, but I did read recently that they FINALLY acknowledged that it is a problem with their software and may have a fix in a month or so. Before that, for over a year, and for anyone who bought Studio 8, they just said to the 90% of the owners that they could not replicate the problem. I still think that because DVD Recorder prices have come down so much (as cheap as $300 now), that it is well worth it to buy one instead of this buggy software. Even if you have the latest, fastest, powerhouse PC (fast and VERY BIG hard drive, USB 2, tons of RAM) which you will definitely need, it takes Studio about 4-5 hours just to convert per 1 hour of video. This does not include editing time! And the quality is really poor unless you capture in AVI format which requires at least 10-12GB per hour of video. With a DVD recorder, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and you can always edit your DVD later with programs like ImTOO DVD Ripper. The biggest regret I have was to ever waste my time with Studio 8 (but DVD recorders were $800+ last year). What a waste of time and money. BTW, did I mention the system crashes every 5 minutes?