Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8

[Redd]

I found this web site "after" I had already bought Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8. Then I started reading all kinds of posts here and some other web sites about how Pinnacle was so buggie. Out of all the posts I'd read only about 30% were positive and some of those were so-so positive. I was really getting nervous about my choice to buy Pinnacle.

Over the last 3 days I started my first project using Pinnacle. I gotta say that I'm really freakin' stoked. Everything worked right the first time, from capturing, editing, rendering a mpeg2, then burning to DVD, all done via Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8.

I must be one of the lucky ones, but I'm surely not going to question my success and good fortune. I did load the latest drivers and updates via the Pinnacle web site.

Win XP Professional W/SP1
Pent 4 2.8 gig processor
1 gig RAM
120 gig WD HD
Visiontek Nivida Ti 4 4600
Sony DRU500AX

[Bob W]

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Myself I gave up on Studio8. I couldn't do capture because it didn't recognize my capture card which four other programs did. Rendering to mpeg locked up usually after after hours at 90% of the task done and making a DVD produced a file that played on my computer but not in any stand alone player.

[ASB]

Its good to hear of your success.

[Paul_W]

I gave up on Pinnacle Studio 8 after many frustrating tries to get a finished DVD. It seems like it would be a great program with some wonderful features but I just got totally frustrated after wasting a ton of time. I switched to Adobe Premier and have been extremely pleased.

What I did learn from the experience was to expect a chance to try any software before I spend money on it in the future. Adobe gave me this chance. I'm evaluating DVDWS the same way and am pretty sure that I'll invest in it. Pinnacle gives you no chance to try before you buy and I felt badly burned.

[Redd]

Does Adobe Premier come with a capture card or did you still need to buy one separately? If you did have to buy a copture card which one did you get and hows it working and what was the price?

Redd

[Bob W]

Anything from Adobe is going to be overpriced IMO. If you just want to capture/edit/add chapters/add menus/author/burn then NeoDVD Plus is a bargain and it actually works and is not full of bugs.
http://www.mediostream.com/products/neodvdplus/index.html

[xxiangg]

I do not have too much trouble to install the card and software. But I still
think there are much better alternatives. One problem with the card is that
this card requires good quality video source. If your video source is stable
and clean, it is very likely that you will be fine. If your video source is
poor, there will be many problems, like a/v out of sync. For example, I have
many home video tapes. Each tape has many video segments. Each segment probably
last from 2 to 10 minutes. Then, there is a gap between each segment with bad
video signal. I like to capture the tape to a single AVI file. Then, I would
like to use an editor to cut the bad video signal out. Well, my Studio AV card
with Studio8 simply will not produce a result with a/v in sync. But if I feed
the same video signal to an AV->DV converter (like CanonZ40 pass through), then
use the same editor to cut the bad spot out, I get a result where a/v is in
perfect sync. If this card works for you, it is great. But this card definitly
is not a card for every situation.

[Redd]

Fortunatly for me the only difficulity I'm having is not due to Pinnacle Studio 8. I'm capturing from VHS-C and the tapes appear to wind too tight at times. So the VCR I'm using for the transfers thinks it's reached the end of the tape due to too much tension/restriction on the tape and turns the play mode off.
I have to end capture, restart the VHS, find the right spot and start the capture process again. On one VHS-C tape (60 minutes) I have 22 different avi files. I need to figure a way to loosen these tapes a little.

[Paul_W]

Does Adobe Premier come with a capture card or did you still need to buy one separately? If you did have to buy a copture card which one did you get and hows it working and what was the price?

Redd

Premier is bundled with several capture cards but I bought my software without a card. My needs are fairly simple... just capturing from my Sony digital camcorder into the fire wire port that came with my computer. Works great. Renders fast. I'm happy.

Adobe offers some price breaks to students. If you have a son/daughter that is still in school, you might be able to take advantage of the perk to help pay for the food they eat.

[ktnwin]

Question for Redd:
I have been also very lucky with PS8. However, after creating a few home DVD (using nothing but PS8), one day, it creates the disc content but refuses to burn (I tried but it made a few coasters). I use Nero to burn the disc content and it worked fine.
Q1: have you seen this problem yet ?

Any movie that is longer than 70 mins or so seems to have audio problem. There are some kind of static noise on top of the audio.
Q2: have you tried movie longer than 70 mins ? If yes, do you have this issue ?

Thanks

[xxiangg]

Fortunatly for me the only difficulity I'm having is not due to Pinnacle Studio 8. I'm capturing from VHS-C and the tapes appear to wind too tight at times. So the VCR I'm using for the transfers thinks it's reached the end of the tape due to too much tension/restriction on the tape and turns the play mode off.
I have to end capture, restart the VHS, find the right spot and start the capture process again. On one VHS-C tape (60 minutes) I have 22 different avi files. I need to figure a way to loosen these tapes a little.

I believe this is where a good capture device and a so so capture
device differs. A good capture device will insert blank frame or
will temperarily stop capture both a/v if the video signal is
missing or if the video signal is too bad for capture. It will
resume capture automatically when the video signal is back. The
result is still in perfect a/v sync. So even if your player stops,
you do not need to stop the capture program. You only need to
restart the player, resulting to a single AVI file. Then, you can
cut unwant portion out in an editor.

[Redd]

Ktnwin-
No I haven't had that or any other problems as of yet...except the one with my cheap VCR I'm using for capture.

My older Fisher VHS (1988) plays fine compaired to this new one (2003). Go figure.

[Bob W]

I have two Sony VCR players that are only one perhaps two years old but I was never happy with playback. So last week I went out and biught a JVC S2901U VCR which is the only one I have ever found that has a s-video output. The playback on this player is absolutly supperior to the Sony players and now I had to go back and convert several VHS movies to DVD that I had done before.