MGI Videowave 5 Good or Bad?? Anyone Using

[Chuck2002]

Is anyone using MGI Videowave 5. Am considering getting but want to be sure it will fit my neeeds. Have tried Verion 4. 5 is supposed to span large avi files. Anyone have anything good or bad to say about this product.

[mijman]

I am curious as well. It claims to defeat the 2GB windows restriction on AVIs (allowing up to 4GB). Though a lot of the stuff it does can be accomplished through various freeware programs, and even past versions of videowave. The only real improvements I can tell are the DVD authoring stuff.

[ApacheWraith]

SO far from what I can tell VW 5 bypasses the 4 gig limit of Fat32 on capture, but not on production. If the end movie is larger than 4 gigs it will not work. I just bought it today. I have always been a fan of VW ever since 3.0 I love the Chroma Key effect for flying and special F/X. For $100 it is a good program. I have been using it for a year I like it. I was also trying to get past the fat32 limit. I am downloading XP as we speak to hopefully solve this problem.

Hope that helps.,

apache

[alkieman]

Mijman is correct. I bought an upgrade from 4 to 5 and there is no difference at all other than the DVD support. If you can get past VW5s slightly idiosycratic way of doing things it is a great program. It bypasses the AVI 2 or 4GB limit as stated but for me thats not an issue as I use XP and an NTFS drive. The DVD authoring is a welcome bonus but again, is slightly confusing to use at first. You have to create your final movie first, including outputting it to an AVI or MPEG file. When you click the DVD authoring button it does not transfer your current project to the DVD authoring application, you need to manually import the video file you created earlier. The MPEG2 output is actually pretty good, not quite on a par with a seperate encoder but very good nonetheless.

One word of warning however, it does NOT like the Texas Instruments DV drivers under Win2000 or XP. Make sure you are using the Microsoft drivers before trying to capture or the application will crash with an error. You can get a small application that allows you to switch drivers from pinnaclesys.com if you have another application that needs the TI drivers. Pinnacle's own Studio software is one such app that wont recognise my capture card using the MS drivers.

[hilltech]

What kind of system are you using? I upgraded form VW 3 to 5 and get insufficant memory errors when I try to produce and any video files (including the sample avi's that are included). I also get file transcripe errors when I try to create a disk image. I tested VW 5 on three of my systems and got the same errors (an amd k6-2, amd anthon, and a hp p3 all with .5 GB memory), I finally tried a compaq p3 and was able to create a disk image of a vcd and ftp the files to my burning system and burn the image with nero 5.5, however the menus do not work when played on a pc, and the menu screen does not work when apex dvd burner. Any comments or ideas?

Thanks

Mijman is correct. I bought an upgrade from 4 to 5 and there is no difference at all other than the DVD support. If you can get past VW5s slightly idiosycratic way of doing things it is a great program. It bypasses the AVI 2 or 4GB limit as stated but for me thats not an issue as I use XP and an NTFS drive. The DVD authoring is a welcome bonus but again, is slightly confusing to use at first. You have to create your final movie first, including outputting it to an AVI or MPEG file. When you click the DVD authoring button it does not transfer your current project to the DVD authoring application, you need to manually import the video file you created earlier. The MPEG2 output is actually pretty good, not quite on a par with a seperate encoder but very good nonetheless.

One word of warning however, it does NOT like the Texas Instruments DV drivers under Win2000 or XP. Make sure you are using the Microsoft drivers before trying to capture or the application will crash with an error. You can get a small application that allows you to switch drivers from pinnaclesys.com if you have another application that needs the TI drivers. Pinnacle's own Studio software is one such app that wont recognise my capture card using the MS drivers.