Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Systems Studio DV

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I love this product and recommend it highly.

Full disclosure: I have had Studio DV for a month. The first days were very frustrating. I experienced many of the problems reported here & at the Pinnaclesys.com Discussion Forum. However, Pinnacle has released three updates since & as of 8/21 has fixed the major bugs. If others come up, I'm confident that they'll hold my hand as they fix those, too.

Studio DV is amazingly intuitive to use. It detects all of the scenes on your footage and makes it extremely simple to manipulate them. Trimming scenes: easy. Adding transitions: easy. Adding titles: easy. Adding sound effects, CD music, or voiceovers: easy. Outputting back to tape, AVIs, MPEGs: easy! It's everything a home user could need to help tell a story on video. You'll be amazed at how easy it is for you, and your friends and family will be amazed by the results. What it can't do (fancy animation, digital effects, split screens) are things that have no business in your home movies anyway.

Shortfalls: The software can't split the audio and video tracks (to make easy cutaway shots), and the hardware can't capture old analog formats.

The hardware requirements are very serious. Windows 98SE is highly recommended. You really do need a lot of RAM (128 will work, more is better) and a large, fast hard drive. SCSI is NOT necessary. An Ultra DMA 7200 RPM EIDE drive is fine (make sure DMA is enabled). A separate hard drive just for video is best, but I have one large drive with 29Gb partitioned just for video and it works very well. Video takes up over 200mb per minute, so unless you're only shooting 3-minute movies, you should have 10, 20, or more gigabits set aside for working on video projects. If you are buying a new PC, call Pinnacle tech support and they will tell you how to optimize your dollars (they'll also tell you which chipsets to avoid).

...Studio DV is one of the greatest values in consumer electronics. Even if you have to spend hundreds to upgrade your PC, Studio DV alone will justify that investment.

If you haven't bought your camera yet and are on a limited budget, then get Studio DV and the cheapest camera, but splurge on the PC for editing. Many users on the Studio DV Discussion Forum rave about the results they get with Digital 8 footage.

I just finished my first 5-minute video using Studio DV. I did not experience any of the unpredictable behavior other reviewers describe. At least, not after I spent a lot of money upgrading my PC. When I got stared, my PC (pre-upgrades) met all of the minimum requirements listed on the box. I had no problems working in preview mode, but my final video was slow and stuttering and then stalled out. Back to the manual... Deep in Appendix B, you will learn that the *recommended* hard drive is an A/V rated SCSI drive--most home PCs have slower IDE/ATA drives. They also advise that you should capture video to a drive other than the one where Windows 98 and Studio DV are installed. None of this information is on the box, and it's not easy to find in the manual. All in all, I spent about $750 to get this $75 firewire card working. I wish I knew what this would really cost before I got started! After the upgrades, I had no problems at all. The software was really easy to use--very intuitive! I'm really happy with the final product from my video editing efforts, and I think in the long run the cost won't bother me as much. If you're considering using this product and you don't have a second hard drive (and a very fast one at that), you should figure the cost of this upgrade in deciding if this product is for you.

You have probably read all the product specifications by the manufacturer and other publications regarding the performance and features of the Studio DV. Based on my experience, I can assure you that Studio DV performs as well if not better that all the claims in the product reviews.

Installation was a snap with no problems. However, you may need to stop all other programs running in the background (Norton anitivirus, monitor power-saver, etc.) to provide maximum system resources to Studio DV. Before doing this, some of the icons on the screen appeared jumbled. This is explained in the troubleshooting portion of the manual.

The video capture in "preview" quality works great - it simply shows what you need to know while you are editing. After capture of your scenes, you can select any scene and scroll through it by moving the scroll bar. Ditto for the transition effects and titles.

You can add your own narration by using your computer's microphone as the preview window plays the scenes. You can then come back and adjust the fade and volume levels of the narration track and the other two audio tracks. This is very powerful (but simple) editing features that I was very amazed to discover in Studio DV

Sound editing capabilities are amazing for a product at this price level! You can see the "wave-form" representation of the audio so its much easier to sync a particular part of the audio to the video (such as an audio "bang" sound effect to the video "explosion").

The titling software that is included is A+. Why would you need anything else? I have used $1000 titling software and although I had some additional "whiz/bang" effects, who needs that all the time. The point is to make a great title, put it where you want it quickly and easily and be able to customize it to some reasonable level. Studio DV lets you do all of that.

In summary, if you need to edit you Digital 8 or DV videos quickly, simply and with minimal learning curve and hassles go with Studio DV. I can see even pros using this on thier home movies! You have everything you need to make great looking movies.

Good Luck

i've read all of the reviews here and the consistent messages are that a)the card works well, b)if you have the right kind of PC, c)there's no good way to tell if you have the right PC and d)Pinnacle as a company isn't going to help you if you have problems

Boiled down, the product description and information on the box are severly misleading, resulting in a *lot* of (rightfully) angry customers

My personal experience - i'm a computer pro with a firewire/ilink Digital8 camera (sony dcr-trv320) and an average computer (P2-400, 160MB memory, 2 Western Digital 40GB hard drives, Windows98, all latest drivers). i capture via firewire to a dedicated, defragmented hard drive with all background processes shut down, at least 50MB physical (non-virtual) RAM free. The capture claims to drop about 25% of the frames for a 15s capture (ditto for longer captures). Playback looks like it stutters between 10fps and 2 seconds per frame (*lots* of hiccups). Audio is botched as well as being unsynchronized. Resulting AVIs are unwatchable

Question: what do i change to fix this? Pinnacle won't tell you, and the software and its online help are useless. Should i upgrade the CPU, memory or HD? To what? There's no way for the average person to know. The software is also confusing. i can't figure out how to turn off Capture Audio. When you pick a project, you have to specify things like MPEG/AVI, PAL/NTSC and 320x240/640x480, but those options appear to have no effect on the capture. The capture-as-MPEG option always fails. Clicking on Add Voiceover/Music always crashes my PC. Don't expect progress bars, even though simply pressing a button can lock up the application for 120 seconds or more

This is *not* a good product for beginners. i'm no film expert, but i know PCs and i'm frustrated. No way i'd want someone else in my family to attempt this. i spent a month trying to get it to work. It spent the next year untouched

Assuming the card actually works the way some people here say it does, this product *majorly* needs better support - better help files, system check/compatibility tools, an upgrade guide, better/more honest info on the box, dummies' guide to PC movies, etc.

Would have been 5 stars if not for the installation problems. 3 stars as a warning to those who are not very PC savy.

I bought this card mostly for the software (no problems with the card) after receiving a digital camcorder for Christmas. I had heard that the software was designed to be easy to use and included titling. It is designed very nicely, very intuitive, without a lot of extras. I will start by saying I was eventually successful in editing a 10 minute video, and putting it back on digital tape. I'm currently working on others...

Getting there:

I started with Windows 98 installed on a dell machine. The installation was only partially successful off the CD. Titling didn't work, and a few other things were broken which I discovered later.

All my problems seem to center around two issues, first, dos file names get created by the installer. I had to manually rename some files which I figured out by using the 'version checker' that comes with the software. This is by far the worst installation of any comercial software I have ever seen. Second, the updates from Pinnacle are as bad as the original installer. I had trouble with rescon800.dll getting deleted and the installer would stop because it couldn't find it. I had to manually restore the file with Norton Utilities.

Creating Mpegs was also broken due to DOS file names.

Tips:

1. I've heard of problems using the 'preview' and then re-capturing at full quality. I skipped that and bought a 40 Gig HD for editing fully captured video.

2. I upgraded to 256MB RAM. I was consistently running low with 128MB, and you don't want your system swapping to disk when you are processing a video stream.

3. I always manually close almost everything by using the task menu (ctrl-alt-delete) before any capturing or rendering. If you can play back a full screen video without any frames jerking, you can skip this step.

4. Don't expect your final output to be longer than 18 minutes. I don't know if more expensive software can break that barrier, but I've decided that I'm more likely to go back and watch a video if it's around 10 minutes or less anyway. So I'm living with it.

5. Resign yourself ahead of time to not be frustrated by the fact that this could be one of the greatest products ever if Pinnacle would use a decent installation package.

6. Realize that editing video takes a lot of time, the more you shoot, the more you will have to watch and re-watch to get the 'highlights' I find that the first edit needs to be performed by the camera operator.

Despite the frustrations, I've had a lot of fun with this product.

This is a easy to use program for us non techies. The price reflects the simpilcity. I do how ever suggest a dedicated (2nd) hard drive for the video production. I installed a 60 gig 7200 rpm drive and this greatly helps recording to vhs for grandmas tape. The average drive spins at 4200 and can make for jerky playback.
Sound effects and transitions are easy to add as is titling. StudioDV does not like to be on the same drive as Windows. Hence,the second drive. The IEEE firewire connection is great for camera control and works well. The more RAM the better (I have 384 megs) Follow the suggestions for better/faster editing. IE: close all programs, stop all "background programs" except the essentials. This is all explained in the manual and is easy to do. I made my first 3 minute movie in about 20 minutes after installation. I made my first 1 hour movie for the family at Thanksgiving. Overall this is easy to and for price it is a great deal. I enjoy it and reccommend it. Just remember the more memory and faster the drive the better the finished product.
I hope this helps. Keith

It's unfortunate the review from the gentleman from Mill Valley, CA is listed first (I write this August 12, 2001). If readers take his review seriously, many individuals new to DV (digital video) editing will turn away and miss out on using the greatest beginner DV editing product available.

Studio DV is so easy to use. It add high-quality titles and dozens of fun transitions to your home videos. It automatically detects where a scene begins and ends, letting you quickly manipulate individual clips from your video. It has won CNet's Editor's Choice award twice, and VideoMaker Magazine's Best Products of the Year 1999 award.

Notice what Mr. Mann, the gentleman from CA, stated: "Studio DV doesn't readily accept capture from Studio DC10+ as I hoped." He was trying to use Pinnacle Systems' *analog* capture product with Pinnacle's *digital* product, Studio DV. So skip his review and check out the others.

Good luck using this powerful, easy-to-use, inexpensive digital video editing package (complete with FireWire card!).

Studio DV is one of the best upgrades I've ever done for any PC I've owned. My wife and I have really enjoy using studio DV to make great home movies of the family. Our first movie took the longest to make, but since that time we have had no problems and can turn out a 15 minute movie in a about an hour. I also enjoy the fact that this software was very intuitive and simple enough for my not so technical wife to pick up and use with just a little coaching. After installing my software and hardware I did go to Pinccacle's web site to apply the latest patches and upgrades before every trying to make a movie. And every thing worked with no problems! After our first movie I did upgrade from 128 MB of RAM to 256 MB of RAM and I haven't had a single problem with Studio DV since. And yes it does run great on Windows 2000! For the record we have a P3 750, ASUS CUSL2 133 Mghz mother board, 64 MB agp video card, 256 MB ram and 40 GB of disk space. I would like to see some additional enhancements added to the product for more advanced moving making in future upgrades. Even in it's present encarnation, I highly recommend this product to any digital camcorder owner who want to really to expand the capabilities of their camcorder.

I just want to remind potential buyers that this program CANNOT run on NT, only on Windows 98. I just received my order from here. But I have to return it. What a hassle!

I had none of the problems described in some of the reviews, although the frame grabbing tool wouldn't work consistently. I am happy to say that Pinnacle fixed this issue and others with release 1.05, which you can download as a patch from their website. With this issue resolved, I can say that this product is quite a bargain and has helped me create simple, high-quality videos very easily. HOWEVER, firewire video editing only works well when you have plenty of RAM (128mb seems about right) and a fast hard disk (most newer UDMA's work just fine).