Pinnacle studio 9,11,12,14 & 15 not recommended to buy

[lamon77]

I have much experience with working with many PinnacleStudio programs & capture cards. Firstly I must say Pinnacle Studio havesome of the worst out of sync audio problems I have seen.

During the past 10 years I have owned Pinnacle Studio9,11,12,14 & 15. I own a Pinnacle PCI 500 & PCI 700 capture cards will onlynow work with Pinnacle Studio 11 & 12 on Windows 7 64bit.

If you use Pinnacle Studio PCI – 500 or PCI -700 capturecards with studio 14 or Pinnacle latest Studio 15 the capture cards on windows7 64 bit will cause your computer to crash dump every time you try to captureany analogue video signal even when using the latest Widows 7 64 bit capturecard updated drivers from Pinnacle.

Forget buying any video capture device via usb 2 or you mayalso suffer out of sync audio problems regardless of the brand.

My advice to any person wanting to capture any analoguevideo signal in mpeg 2 you must purchase a capture card with built in audio in& mpeg 2 hardware processing within the PCI capture card this will avoidany out of sync audio problems when recording video in mpeg2. There are somecapture cards with inbuilt hardware mpeg 2 processing available from around $199to $399 AU dollars.

When using Pinnacle Studio Programs with Pinnacle hardwarecapture cards you must continually defrag your hard drive & constantlyreboot your computer & it is pot luck when you start to capture if you getout of sync or in sync audio capture when capturing in mpeg 2.

If you want to capture the best possible picture quality youmust only capture in AVI uncompressed video format this will use much harddrive space depending NTSC or PAL 1 hour= 80 to 100 gigabytes of hard drive space but you get the best possible picturequality for editing and you not get the out of sync audio problems when youedit your video from AVI compressed or uncompressed formats.

Unfortunately all Pinnacle Studio programs will only captureanalogue video in mpeg 2 or AVI, DVD compressed formats. Pinnacle capture AVI compressed format reduces thepicture quality so severely it is better to record in mpeg 2 then you have outof sync audio problems with Pinnacle Studio software 9,11,12,14, & 15 & PinnacleStudio capture cards.

Pinnacle Viewcast OSPREY sell other video capture cardshowever in my opinion their video capture cards are ridiculously over priced.

The Pinnacle Viewcast OSPREY 100 is selling for $200 this capture card looks identical to theHauppauge capture card that sells for $49.00 Both capture cards have identicalprinted board layout and P.C. semiconductors are identical too.

It is a shame Pinnacle do not offer within all their studioprograms to capture AVI uncompressed format & with 2tb hard drives ataffordable prices Pinnacle need to update their next Pinnacle Studio softwareprograms to enable full AVI uncompressed capture but I guess Pinnacle productsare mainly made for beginners not high quality video capture or they would haveallowed to capture full AVI uncompressed video format/codec within theirprevious studio software programs & capture cards.

Pinnacle do supply via a little program called AM capture AVIuncompressed. This program is so buggy it will not work correctly on Vista orWindows 7 32 bit or 64 bit. This little program is a piece of crap.

Pinnacle needs to produce more up to date PCI capture cardssuitable to work correctly for Windows 7 32bit & 64it instead of selling inearly 2012 their PCI hardware capture cards are more than 12 years old now& Pinnacle need to allow full AVI uncompressed format while capturing videofrom composite, Super VHS & Wire fire via their capture cards and Studiosoftware programs.

It is my personal opinion I believe Pinnacle is a companythat design software to purely generate huge amounts of profit but offer substandard video capture cards & sub standard Pinnacle Studio softwareprograms.

I would rate Pinnacle products 3 out of 10. In my opinion ifyou buy Pinnacle your just wasting your money if you want high quality videocapture & not have out of sync audio problems while capturing in mpeg 2.

I am now looking at buying a H264 & HDMI capture card. Ihave been told Blackmagic's Intensity Pro is popular however Ihave read on the internet they drop the retail price down to $199 because ofmany issues concerning this card I cannot verify if this is true or falseperhaps readers might like to comment concerning Black magic Intensity pro?

I am also looking at the Hauppauge Colossuswill capture in component giving superior video quality capture compared toSuper VHS video capture might be worth looking at too.

[edDV]

Amen bro. I started with Pinnacle when they acquired the German Miro DC 30 series cards. Those worked. Then they acquired Studio and dropped Adobe Premiere as the front end*. I suffered through Studio updates with none working. Version 8 sorta worked but I quit them for good at version 9.

Sonic Factory's Vegas was better and got better after Sony acquired the products.

As for Black Magic Intensity, it captures to MJPEG much like the 1999 Miro cards**. If H.264 capture is the goal, check out the Hauppauge HD-PVR which has a hardware h.264 encoder.


* Miro drivers continued to work with some later Premiere updates.

** The Miro cards had hardware MJPEG compression. The BM Intensity captures uncompressed but uses software MJPEG compression.

[steveadenuga]

i couldnt get video output from Pinnacle Studio 500-PCI when output to tape or on time line. using pinnacle studio 12 ultimate on windows 7 even after installing update for 500-PCI. What do i do to make it work Please.