Pinnacle Studio Deluxe

[CNT]

Well, since I am not seeing any reviews or comments about this capture card in here (and only one in somewhere else and it was all negative). I placed my order for Pinnacle Studio Deluxe today. Is there ANYTHING you want to say about this card or company or even question that would help me do little more research about this product?

The specifications says "Frame Size: 720x480 pixels", is that good or normal? Can I to be ensured of myself it will have 29.97/fps for our U.S. settings?

Basically I want to capture and edit all those VHS and Hi8 tapes. then output into CD (for storage) and some tapes. I have Matrox Marvel G400-TV and I have been getting drop frames (and some weird macrovision thing). I hope this new capture card is beyond what I have had frustrating with. The reason I bought this Marvel for my first capture card was becaise it has been said the MJPEG was the BEST for analog videos. Then the videoguys.com told me the DV in AVI format is BETTER than the MJPEG. I hope I am hearing it correctly.

Lastly, I would like to have the digital input/output too for future (and some of my family have digital camcorders). I might even buy one some day. So, thought to have BOTH analog and digital capture card.

Any comments?

Chuck

[CMP1223]

I too ordered my Pinnacle SDL. I had one, but I think it was fried and my new one comes in 2 days! I have done ALOT of research on this thing, and it is pretty good. One, although I have never used it yet, people agree Pinnacle Support SUCKS BIG TIME. I believe there is only e-mail support, and they usually give you the run-around (reinstall OS, shut down programs, upgrade) instead of blaming their software. But, hopefully you won't need tech support. If you do, ask the guys in the Pinnacle SDL user forum (in SDL product support section) @ pinnaclesys.com. Onto the Hardware. It captures DV AVI. It is the best quality, but it takes a butt-load of space (about 1 hour is 13 gigs I think) Remember, You will need space for the original and the rendered copy if you plan to edit. It only captures 720x480, which is very good, but overkill if you plan to make a VHS or VCD. Plus, you have to convert the DV to MPEG-1 or Mpeg-2 for a VCD/SVCD, which will take some time depending on specs. Some people complain of A/V sync, but a program called Screnanlyzer (sp?) is supposed to work perfectly w/ SDL. It is $33 but there is a trial version. (BTW, programs like Premiere or Vegas Video will NOT capture through the SDL) I have heard good review about Studio 7, but don't use Express to burn. Use Nero. If you only want to make VCD, I recomend a realtime MPEG card. The DV capture is good for editing compatibilty. Also try the Canapus ADVC-100, which many people like but no S/W for the same price. I hope you didn't buy retail for $299, b/c it is available for $240 if you look . All and all, this is a great analog DV capture device.

-Chris

P.S.- It won't disable macrovision

[Chaoji3791]

Support from the company totally sucks, but they at least provide a forum on their website where you can seek help from users all over the world. I have had a Studio DC10+ card for 2 years and I have had a few bugs with it but I have always managed to fix them with help from somebody on the Pinnacle forum. Last year my card inexplicably got stuck on NTSC (it's supposed to be a PAL-compatible card) and nothing I did seemed to fix it - uninstalling, reinstalling, patches, nothing. Pinnacle were no help at all. Eventually a guy from Argentina helped me fix the problem.

In the early days, I used to try to get help from the company. Now I know not to even bother. They don't seem to care less, and when they DO reply to you, they give you suggestions as if you're a 2-year-old and you know absolutely NOTHING about video editing.

Your sales guy was probably trying to tell you that DV is better quality than analogue, which IS true (DV invariably has more lines of resolution), but it is not necessarily true that MJPEG is better than DV compression. It's a case of "horses for courses." DV footage is compressed by the camera using a similar algorithm to MJPEG and then simply transferred to your PC at a fixed data rate of 3.6 MB/sec. Analogue video is compressed only when it is captured into the computer, and usually you can manually set your data rate as high as 6 MB/sec if you want.

If you have DV footage, capture it as DV footage using Firewire (cheap cards are only $50 US these days). If you have to capture analogue footage, capture it using MPJEG compression and an analogue card. When I capture analogue at rates around 6 MB/sec using my DC10+, I swear to God it is absolutely indistinguishable from the original camcorder footage.

C h a o j i

[CMP1223]

BTW, the only reason the buy this thing over the DC10+ or the ADVC-50 is analog OUTPUT, if you don't need it, don;t get this thing. Save some money and get the another card. Also, Screnanlyzer only works with S-Video w/ the SDL for some reason

[CNT]

I am honored that at least some one replies in here. I have post questions in here before and nothing. Anyway, "It won't disable macrovision"??? Ah man! I bought it for $255 (NewEgg) Now, is this Pinn SD (or is it SDL?) capable of captureing MJPEG or it's all DV for both analog and digital?

Thanks for responding.

Chuck

[CMP1223]

The Studio Deluxe capture AV and DV in DV format. In converts the analog in realtime using the DV25 codec (just like any DV camera) and sends it to your computer. It will not capture any other format (MJPEG,MPEG-1/2). Here is your problem then. You mentioned that you wanted to make a VCD or a VHS. For a VCD, you need MPEG-1 format (NOT MJPEG). That is why I suggest a good realtime MPEG-1 capture card for you. I you want to make a VHS, I think it needs to be in AVI (or DV AVI) to work. This is the case with Studio Deluxe. I you want quality, I suggest you keep the SDL. You will get a better quality if you convert the DV to MPEG-1 than use a realtime MPEG-1 capture card, but conversion takes time depending on your CPU speed. Here is your desicion: keep the SDL, have good VHS matrial, but wait for conversion times when you want a VCD. Get a realtime MPEG-1 card, have an instant source of VCD matrial (remember, not as good as what you would get if you converted down). You would have to convert the MPEG-1 to AVI for VHS if you got one of these, which probably would not give good quality. If you plan to edit at all, go for SDL, the captured DV can be edited by all the big guys (Premiere, Vegas, MediaStudio). For my purposes, I chose the SDL, but if you can stand OK quality VCDs, go with a MPEG-1 card b/c is is faster and cheaper.

-Chris

[xiaNaix]

I have the Studio Deluxe and it works well. If you want to downsize the video, it's relatively easy using an AviSynth script when you encode. I've grown tired of the lengthy encode process, though, and am thinking of picking up an MPEG encoder board for quicker VHS to DVD-R captures. Hauppauge just came out with a new board called the WinTV-PVR 250 which uses the same encoder chip as the Navis Pro. I'll probably get that. I'll still use the SDL for anything I want to edit, though, as MPEG editing is next to impossible.

[CMP1223]

xiaNiax, do you think captured MPEG-1/2 from WinTV-PVR 250 is a good as DV converted to MPEG-1/2?

Thanks
Chris

[Greg12]

DV is gonna be better

[xiaNaix]

xiaNiax, do you think captured MPEG-1/2 from WinTV-PVR 250 is a good as DV converted to MPEG-1/2?

Thanks
Chris

No... probably not. I get excellent results using the SDL to capture and frameserving the video to CCE using an avisynth script with minor filtering. It's the time involved that bothers me. I've looked at some sample MPEG2 captures and I'm not all that impressed. The time invested is, apparently, worth it.

[RedWings_rule]

Hi everyone, just joined the discussion board. Anyways, are all firewire capture card the same except for the software package? Is it necessary to me to get the Pinnacle Studio DV 7 if I already have an Audigy soundcard with a firewire port? I also have the Canopus ADVC50 converter for analog capture.

[bshelkey]

CNT (and others),

I'm curious about your thoughts on this Pinnacle SD. Does it do what you were expecting? Recommendations?