best and easiest software to use

[john510]

Which is the best and easiest software to use?

I see so many of them. Looking to capture from my panasonic dv camera and burn to cd or dvd.

There are so many like Pinnacle Studio and pro show and sure many more?

[yoda313]

Hello,

There is NO BEST - just a subjective term there and will start flame wars.

https://www.videohelp.com/capture

That has many guides in it and many programs that are used for it. Do some more research and download some trial software

Kevin

[northcat_8]

Best and easiest...well those are 2 different things.

The BEST is definitely not the easiest.

Pinnacle's programs suck IMO, I have Studio 8, I hate it, there is no support from Pinnacle and their only suggestion any time anyone has any question or problem is to uninstall, regdelete, re-install.

If I were building a system I would use an ATI video card to capture the video, Adobe Premiere to edit the video, TMPGenc Plus to convert the video and TMPGenc DVD Author to author the DVD.

The best thing you can do is start reading and find the software that best suits your needs, your wallet and your system.

[john510]

I dont want to start a flaming war so if you want please pm me your thoughts so that no war occurs.

Thanks

[bugster]

Which is the best and easiest software to use?

Thats a contradiction right there!

Capture DV, via firewire I assume.

WinDv or DVIO. (capture as type 2 BTW)

Edit, get the free panasonic DV codec, the use virtualdub for simple cuts and splices.

Convert to DVD compliant mpeg-2. Try TmpGenc, CCE, Mainconcept or Canopus Procoder.

Author to DVD-Video. TmpGenc DVD Author is easy to use, DVD-Lab is more powerful. Plenty of others to choose from. Most authoring programs will burn also.

[tmh]

Pinnacle Studio 8/9 IS very easy to use and is quite adequate feature-wise for us beginners. I think those ripping this program need to be more specific about which PART they have problems with. NO DOUBT, if you read enough here and elsewhere you'll see Pinnacle is a major crash program for many, but typically I think theis is during the encoding process. For editing and "creating" (transitions, effects, add sound track, etc.) I have found it to be excellent.

I normally encode with TMPGenc or Procoder then author with TDA and burn with TDA or Nero. After you do a few, it's quite easy.

Again, I can't speek to the bugginess of Pinnacle, but I've had no problems with ver.9 - but remember, I limit what I use it for. I've done a few tests with the encoding to mpeg2 in Pinnacle and it has actually done a nice job. These were only a few min. AVIs I had made so not a true test of stability to do a long movie.

[northcat_8]

Then I guess I should detail my experiences with Pinnacle...

You can see my system specs above.

I use Pinnacle's AV/DV capture card with breakout box.
I capture everything to DV-AVI (720x480, 29.97 fps).
I also never read and write to the same IDE channel.

I have never had any problems capturing, no dropped frames, no audio problems, nothing.

If the video I am making is one long video that just needs cropped or clipped at the ends or just some titles put in front then Studio 8 handles it like a champ.

However...if the video I am making is a bunch of clips, say 80 or so clips each lasting between 5 and 10 seconds then Studio has some trouble. Studio comes with Hollywood FX and while the transitions are nice, if you have too many Studio 8 does not like that and will hang and eventually crash. If you have been editing video longer than 5 minutes you should know that in the world of transitions...less is more...so that is really not a problem.

Studio 8 has no problem or limited problems as long as the output I choose is DV-AVI at the same specs. Studio 8 has major issues when I take 18 GB or so of video and still pics put them all together and output to DVD compliant MPEG-2.

The system will freeze, become unresponsive, will get stuck encoding the same part of the film for extended periods of time. It will also crash on occasion but generally just freezes. Now that wouldn't be so bad except the freezing rarely takes place early in the video, it's usually somewhere past the middle of the video. Studio 8 takes so long to encode from AVI to MPEG-2 if your video has any length to it at all that you won't be sitting there watching it.

Adding music to video clips is also an adventure sometimes. Sometimes the program will crash if you use the mouse to scroll to quickly from left to right while in the track view...that's always fun. Sometimes when adding music to the video the program will crash as the program is importing the mp3 file.

Also on occasion as you adding music the video clips and transitions will develop a gap between them. It's usually only a couple though, but of course you won't notice this until after you think the video is done and encode the final video and then you discover it while watching it.

Titles are also an adventure. If you make the first title, then create a second title somewhere else in the video, if you spend too long in the title program the title will suddenly revert back to the first one you made and any changes you make and then click "OK" will be saved as the first title and you still won't have the 2nd title.

Making a DVD, first it won't let you make oversized DVDs, this is a problem since Pinnacle seems to use 1000 MB = 1 GB Going through the painstaking tasks of setting chapter points isn't too bad and adding the menus and such in front is not too bad until your links suddenly go haywire and assign themselves to other markers.

I would also like to bitch about when opening a folder of video files, it will only show the thumbnail of one video file at a time, rather than showing a thumb for all the video files in the folder at the same time...which really sucks if your video is going to be made up 80 or more clips

There is also a memory leak in the program.

My system is setup, hacked and streamlined soley for video. I have 1 GB of RAM and 3 GB manually set page file with over 400 GB of unfragmented drive space.

Studio 8 is one of the buggiest programs I've ever used, I am no computer newbie and I know my way around, I call Pinnacle for tech support, I go to their website for tech support, I post on their worthless ass BB for tech support and the only response I got was "have to tried uninstall, regdelete, re-install? That usually fixes most problems." Give me a ******* break, I've never ran into any problem that required me to reformat and reinstall windows and I need to reinstall their program???

I use Studio 8 to capture, to clip and to encode to DV-AVI and that's it. I do all my menu or titles in Adobe Photoshop and just drop the picture on the timeline in S8.

I use TMPGenc Plus 2.5 to take the DV-AVI files out of Studio 8 and to convert them to MPEG-2 and then I use TMPGenc DVD Author to author the DVD. I use to just use Ulead's DVD Workshop and drop the AVI files in there and let it convert them and author the DVD all by it's self.

There is nothing wrong with my system...it's in the program.

Oh and by the way, their newest "tech support" problem solving method is for me to upgrade to Studio 9 and well why wouldn't I? after all the success and lack of problems I've had with version 8.

Studio tries to do too many things all under one hood. Great idea in concept but Studio 8 wise...not reality.

[tmh]

northcat - now THAT is how to SPECIFICALLY rip Pinnacle Studio products! Great job. It seems that it isn't such a big surprise then that I'm enjoying Studio 9 to edit/create my videos. Again, because of all the bad stuff I've heard I haven't tried to use it as an encoder except for a very short video to test the QUALITY of the encoding on my DV Camcorder footage. The more I hear the less I expect it to do well in that capacity. I must say though that for the short piece I did the video looked as good or better than with TMPGenc Plus with no audio problems at all.

It's too bad that it is such a buggie program because it is soooo easy and intuitive to use. Oh well, then what fun would this all be.

Thanks again for explaining where yu've had troubles with this program.

[xxiangg]

The BEST software is the one which works for you.

The BEST one I used is Studio 8. I do not want to spend $$$ on Vegas
or Premier. I have tried Ulead VideoStudio8. But I choose to use Pinnacle.
I know there are tons of unhappy Pinnacle users. But I believe there are
also tons of happy users. I have used Studio 7/8 for over 2 years. It
works for me, so I even don't consider to upgrade to 9. Studio 8 is good
enough for me and it was cheap.

Give different software a try and find which one you like the best.

[lordsmurf]

WinDV to transfer DV to PC

Then I like Premiere, MainConcept, Ulead DVD Workshop2 ... in that order to make the DVD

[northcat_8]

northcat - now THAT is how to SPECIFICALLY rip Pinnacle Studio products! Great job. It seems that it isn't such a big surprise then that I'm enjoying Studio 9 to edit/create my videos. Again, because of all the bad stuff I've heard I haven't tried to use it as an encoder except for a very short video to test the QUALITY of the encoding on my DV Camcorder footage. The more I hear the less I expect it to do well in that capacity. I must say though that for the short piece I did the video looked as good or better than with TMPGenc Plus with no audio problems at all.

It's too bad that it is such a buggie program because it is soooo easy and intuitive to use. Oh well, then what fun would this all be.

Thanks again for explaining where yu've had troubles with this program.

as xxiangg says, there are also some users that Studio 8 works very well for, you may be one of those. Although talking to several users it doesn't seem to matter what kind of set up you have or what kind of box you have, it's kind of a "luck of the draw" situation.

The one thing I do like about the Studio 8 product is the variety of output options. If I want to output a video to the web (.wmv) or (.rm) then I use S8.

I like the concept of S8, but I also think there is a reason, other than money, that companies like Adobe and Ulead have entirely different programs for video capture/editing and DVD authoring.