Rating: 
Summary: Just some advice
Review: Do yourself a favor, google search for +pinnacle +audio +synch (or better yet "oos" for "out of synch"). Do it for either for web pages or (news)groups. You will find expert after expert computer users who all come to same problem. this consistantly creates dvds where the audio and video are not synchornized. Your end product, no matter whether you captured off TV, you video taped home movies, or a state of the art home digital source, like a $1,500 digital movie camera, will all come out like badly dubbed Kung Foo movie.Pinnacle's own web support boards are filled with people having this problem, and many others and stunned by the total lack of technical support, or any Pinnacle response for that matter. If, by hook or by crook, you do get someone from pinnacle support to answer you on audio synch they will tell you the problem is with your capture and not the studio 8 program. You can explain til the cows come home that every media player on your computer results in a perfectly synched playback of your original so it is not the problem. Last you will be steered to their apparently endless set of "beta" fixes...they are on 8.10.4.0 as of today. None of the last dozen or so beta's have fixed this problem, but it will keep you busy installing.
Rating:
Summary: Just some advice
Review: Do yourself a favor, google search for +pinnacle +audio +synch (or better yet "oos" for "out of synch"). Do it for either for web pages or (news)groups. You will find expert after expert computer users who all come to same problem. this consistantly creates dvds where the audio and video are not synchornized. Your end product, no matter whether you captured off TV, you video taped home movies, or a state of the art home digital source, like a $1,500 digital movie camera, will all come out like badly dubbed Kung Foo movie. Pinnacle's own web support boards are filled with people having this problem, and many others and stunned by the total lack of technical support, or any Pinnacle response for that matter. If, by hook or by crook, you do get someone from pinnacle support to answer you on audio synch they will tell you the problem is with your capture and not the studio 8 program. You can explain til the cows come home that every media player on your computer results in a perfectly synched playback of your original so it is not the problem. Last you will be steered to their apparently endless set of "beta" fixes...they are on 8.10.4.0 as of today. None of the last dozen or so beta's have fixed this problem, but it will keep you busy installing.
Rating:
Summary: I'd give it negative stars if I could
Review: Don't buy it. My kids will probably all gratuate from college before I can get a DVD project completed with this software. It is a lemon. It has awesome features, which makes the experience all the more bitter. You think you've created a masterpiece, and then some software bug corrupts your project and makes a DVD unproducable. It'll fail you when you most need it. If Pinnacle ever gets their act together, I'll revise this review. But for now, I'd give it negative stars if I could.
Rating:
Summary: Do Not Buy Any Pinnacle Products!
Review: I bought the Pinnacle MovieBox USB which came with Studio 8. The device has been making grinding noises after only 10 uses, and there are major bugs with Studio 8 which render it useless. And most importantly, Pinnacle DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY SUPPORT! They only have user forums (which I suggest you read first). If you don't believe me, just try finding a technical support phone # or e-mail address! The most blatant problem which has been outstanding since I purchased it is the "OOS" (audio out of sync), which makes the sound of any DVD you create a few seconds ahead or behind of the actual video. There is NOTHING you can do to fix the problem except hope it doesn't happen to you (usually for vids over 1 hour). The second biggest problem is the PC freezing every 30 seconds which even CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't let you close the app. And you lose all your edits! I don't know what else is out there, but this was a $200 bust for me. BTW, I have a top-of-the-line PC. Before you buy any capture devices/software, you should have a fast CPU, lost of RAM, at least firewire or USB 2, and a large and fast hard drive (pref. 2). Otherwise, you'll have choppy video.
Rating:
Summary: Do Not Buy Any Pinnacle Products!
Review: I bought the Pinnacle MovieBox USB which came with Studio 8. The device has been making grinding noises after only 10 uses, and there are major bugs with Studio 8 which render it useless. And most importantly, Pinnacle DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY SUPPORT! They only have user forums (which I suggest you read first). If you don't believe me, just try finding a technical support phone # or e-mail address! The most blatant problem which has been outstanding since I purchased it is the "OOS" (audio out of sync), which makes the sound of any DVD you create a few seconds ahead or behind of the actual video. There is NOTHING you can do to fix the problem except hope it doesn't happen to you (usually for vids over 1 hour). The second biggest problem is the PC freezing every 30 seconds which even CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't let you close the app. And you lose all your edits! I don't know what else is out there, but this was a $200 bust for me. BTW, I have a top-of-the-line PC. Before you buy any capture devices/software, you should have a fast CPU, lost of RAM, at least firewire or USB 2, and a large and fast hard drive (pref. 2). Otherwise, you'll have choppy video.
Rating:
Summary: Should be excellent
Review: I like the features and the control I can get with this product, but there are some major problems. 1. Rendering time is horrible. A 37 minute DVD took so long to render & burn that I went to bed after a couple of hours. I tried a similar length DVD render/burn with ULead VideoStudio 6 SE (came with my firewire card) and it didn't take long at all - less than 45 minutes or so. 2. The software has an annoying habit of corrupting and telling you that either your serial number is bad or that it cannot open and you must reinstall the software. I've downloaded at least 3-4 patches for Pinnacle Studio 8 and it might be working okay now. Time will tell. Summary? If you don't mind the bugs and rendering/burning overnight, Pinnacle is fairly easy to understand. If you want faster times, use ULead.
Rating: 
Summary: Even version 8.8.17 has problems
Review: I purchased a fairly top-of-the-line system just so I could use this product (2.4 GHz Pentium 4, 800 MHz bus, dedicated SATA 120 gig hard drive, 1 gig of 400 MHz DDR RAM), but am disappointed that I still have problems with version 8.8.17. It has a very bad bug where it allows the audio and video to get out of sync when making DVDs (a showstopper in my opinion). DO NOT use this software if you have a deadline to meet. It is not completely realiable. I have spent countless late nights trying to work around and research problems I've had with this product. It's reedeeming quality is an extremely well designed user interface. If everything worked as designed, every time, this product would be a joy to use. But my expereience indicates it's still not ready for prime time. (Read Pinnacle's message boards if you want to see confirmation of this.)
Rating: 
Summary: Complex and a little tempermental, but Good
Review: I purchased Pinnacle Studio 8 to mainly make slide shows from stills, adding music. After I read several reviews, I was a little reluctant about spending this amount of money. But past experience has taught me that the majority of reviews are submitted by "Unhappy" consumers. So I took the chance and bought the program. Upon loading it, I immediately started having problems. Every few minutes, my computer would freeze-up, causing me to start over. I called Pinnacle support, whereas, they helped very little. Sending me an email containing fixes submitted by other consumers about their systems freezing up. So after several hours, trying different approaches, I finally fixed my problem. I have a 2.24 gig processor with 512 meg RDram. I ended up going to my video card manufacturer and downloading the lastest drivers and then I did the same thing for my sound card. Once I updated my driver for my video & sound card, Studio 8 started working flawlessly. The program runs great now. I can make my disks with little effort. In fact, it is a lot of fun producing my slide shows. I would rate the program 5 stars, except for the poor response I got from their telephone support team. So I deducted one (1) star for that. The program is worth the money. However, it has a low tolerance for out-dated drivers. I have a Nvidia 64 mg video card and a Sound Blaster 5.1 SBLive Sound card. The problem was not the program, it was my installed hardware. Reading reviews is good to do, but don't make your decision solely on what you read from consumers.
Rating:
Summary: For the price! Great, but. . . .
Review: I received Studio 8 as a Father's Day gift to go along with a new digital camcorder. I am having so much fun with this product! With 20 years of family analog tapes + new digital tapes, I have a lot of material to play with. Studio 8 does it all. However, it's not for everyone. I have read reports from folks who have a lot of problems with the software. Check out the Pinnacle forum at http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_forums.asp?WebboardID=1&SectionID=143&lng=1
This user forum has provided a lot of friendly help. If I were thinking about this getting this program I would take the time and use the trial program to see how it works on your computer. It seems that your computer's setup, componets and other installed programs are the key in how well it works for you. There are few things that are as complex as video editing that we consumers are going to do. Many serious users have a dedicated second hard drive just for video. Video capture eats up HD space like potato chips. Since Studio 8 is shuffling pixels and sound around in hugh numbers - it renders Very S-L-O-W-L-Y. The editing is fast enough, but once you start to render to disc or tape - better to leave it running overnight. Ulead is OK but has much fewer featues and costs about the same. The more robust video editors (Adobe, etc.) are hundreds of $ more. If you try it AND it works for you - you will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Maddening with no support
Review: This is the most frustrating software I've ever used at home. I've been trying to get it to work since March (7 months), and it's STILL a no go. I've spent countless hours dong everything from building a new high-end system to flashing my BIOS. Each phase fixes one problem only to run into another one. I can capture from 20 seconds to 4 minutes of video before my PC locks up so tight I have to call the power company to shut down our local grid to reboot. If it worked, it would be a AWESOME product. However, after seven months of scouring the Pinnacle web and other sites, and many Pinnacle updates - it still doesn't work. If you want frustration, then this is THE product for you!
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