Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio MovieBox USB Video Transfer Device (210100251)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

First of all, it works. As advertised.
I connected through USB 1.1 port. Captured a 30-minute
Lizzie McGuire for my kid, edited out commercials,
and made an SVCD. The video editing software is very nice,
intuitive, easy to use. All I can say is, "It works !"
The trouble is though, it takes so much time.
My machine is 2GHz P4 laptop with 1G memory.
First, it takes 30 minute to capture.
Then editing process.
Third, to create VCD. I found that creating VCD actually
takes twice as much time as capture, because it converts to
some file format and then to CD image, and then copying
the SVCD image to CD.
So to record 30 minute, I ended up spending 2 hours.
Not recommended for casual recording from TV, unless you
have patience and a lot of time.
Very good, if you have family video, which requires some
good editing and you are willing to patiently wait
(as a rule of thumb, multiply the original length by four
(that is, if you are recording 1 hour, it will take four hours).
But it works as advertised.

I am sorry but the reviewer below who said the latest version fixes "out of synch" problems is wrong. Please go to the maufacturer's (pinnacle) web forums. you will see hundreds of postings from users who complain that studio almost always causes synch problems, ESPECIALLY the latest version which is even worse than the last.

What does out of synch mean? It means most movies you create will have peoples lips moving and then the corresponding audio ten seconds or so later. This is NOT a problem with original captures or sources. I have a dozen different sources, direct from digital camera, direct from analog, etc, all of which are perfect as they play from my hard drive on media player or other programs without any synch problmes. it is studio that creates the out of synch (and I have a very very fast and advanced pc).

Worse yet the support is nill. nada, forgetaboutit. on pinnacle's web fourmus you will see users asking: "is anyone from pinnacle ever responding?" etc.

This product has a feature list that is good. but it will not work. I have now downloaded many many "beta's" and "fixes". it is as if all the purchasers of this product are essentially product testers for a product that doesn't work.

Don't take my word. go to their forums or any other dvd authoring forums, or even just google +pinnacle +audio +synch...you will se thousands of people complaining.

The latest recommendd fix is converting mpegs to avi's. too funny, you don't have to do this with any competing products and converting a 90 minute mpeg to avi creats about a 50 gigabyte file. yes, gigabyte.

This product has no number to call for the thousands (literally) of people who have experienced problems just capturing from their VCR to their computer. If you want to convert your old VHS movies into DVD, DO NOT BUY THIS. I am not the only person who thinks this; there are forums for this product on the Pinnacle website full of very angry people who have many problems, the most common of which is the audio and video being way out of sync. Hard to believe Pinnacle didn't test it for that problem before they sold it (and even worse if they did and sold it anyway). There's a very high probability that you will not be able to do what the product claims it can do.

If you plan to capture analog video at DVD quality, don't buy it! Don't waste your money! When you record a DVD the video and audio get out of sync. No support is given in their website, forums are full of complains and there are no answers from Pinnacle.

I do not understand why there are so many complants with this product. I used it with no problems at all. I even have it hooked up 16 feet away from my computer via a 16 foot 2.0 USB Cable. I had the box set up behind my TV with the output going into the box via S-VHS connect and RCA for sound. Then drilled a hole in my floor and ran the USB cable under my house and up into my computer. I recorded many times with NO droped frames. I recorded over a hour program without stoping and had no problems. Be aware this machine has to have a very fast computer. I believe this is where most of your problems come from. You HAVE to have a fast hard drive and processer. and at least 512 meg ram. I am running a P4 2.53ghz with 512 Ram and a western digital 7200 rpm 80 gig drive and using windows XP.
Only complaint I have is the time it takes to render the program for playback. I use mine as a PVR (Personal Video Recorder)
All I can say is works great for me! Love it!

I received the MovieBox for Christmas 2003 and have spent about 40 hours with it. First to pros. It is easy to install, captures video flawlessly, and the editing software (Studio 8) is fantastic. Being able to take 3 hours of home videos (which like everyone's included things that in hindsight didn't turn out great) and cut it down to an hour+ of fun scenes, add music and digital photos was worth every penny.

The negatives. MovieBox only imports audio in mpeg format. I didn't even know this mattered until I went to make a DVD and I ran into the out of sync problem where the sound is 1 second behind the video. The product claims to be able to make DVDs from any source, but this audio limitation is a real problem. Second, my video ended up being 75 minutes long. Studio 8 appeared to burn the disc properly, using a lower quality setting to fit it all on the disk, but when the disc is played in a DVD player random sections of video are missing. Pinnacle says you can only put an hour on a DVD, which is a stupid and erroneous claim. Lastly, the support on this product is horrendous.

Luckily there is a fix. Instead of using Studio 8 to burn a DVD, I created an MPEG file of the video on my harddrive. This solved the audio syncing problem. I then used ULead's DVD Moviefactory (which came included with my PC) to turn the MPEG file into a DVD. It worked great. This method does require you to render the video twice, which can degrade the picture, but I didn't notice any difference in my case.

I'd call it an ok product that with some tweaks could be great.

Ive only used this product twice and captured my 2 hour wedding video with no problem. I upgraded from the 8.6 ver. it comes with to 8.10 and there are no sync problems. I'm running a p4 with 2.66ghz. & 768mb ram and only a 40gb 7200rpm hard drive with no problems (knock on wood). I might get a second hard drive though just to keep my video seperate from my files. I would recommend this product only if your pc is fast enough

I've had a project sitting around for about a year; to transfer a VHS tape of a newscast(involving my Mom's retirement) to DVD and send it out to my family members. After reading the reviews here on Amazon, I passed by this product this fall, but received "Pinnacle MovieBox usb" as a Christmas Gift. I love it!
The software is almost completely intuitive. OK, I tried to do my project the night after Christmas and messed it up, probably by not manually setting the software to mpeg2, but the second burn worked great and played on our 2 year old dvd player! This included two VHS tape segments, one of the newscast and one of diving in Bonaire with some 8mm waterskiing video from my old Canon camcorder. Titles were easily added.
Luckily, I saw none of the audio sync problems other people have complained about. My computer is only a year old though and pretty much new. Is a P4 2.4 gig, with 512mg ram, and a Western digital HD with 8mg buffer. MovieBox aparently "renders" projects differently depending somewhat on the speed of your machine. Not being a tech type, I can only be happy that I didn't run into any problems with MovieBox. I love the size (very slim), feel (very sturdy aluminum) and overall simplicity.

I haven't actually used the MovieBox, but came here to read reviews on it.

However, I have been using Studio 8 for a while with another capture device and have also experience the audio out of synch problem.

I have found a work-around that works for me and have been posting it everywhere I see other comments on the problem.

The answer is to NOT allow the hardware to capture the audio. Rather than connecting the RCA audio to the box, connect the audio directly to your PC's line-in jack on the soundcard. I use one of those RCA to headphone jack splitters for connecting a portable CD player to a sound system. Then you set the audio capture source in the Studio program from the breakout box to line-in.

I was pulling my hair out like everyone else until I stumbled upon this solution (by attempting to capture with Adobe Premiere which doesn't recognize my hardware as an audio input). Since I've been doing it this way, I have made about a dozen DVD's, with lengths from 10 min to 1 hour with perfect audio synch.

Maybe it will work for you guys who've already bought the software. If you haven't bought it yet, though, look elsewhere.

I've been using the MovieBox with a Compaq Centrino notebook with a 1.4 GHz Pentium-M and Windows XP. I am using it to transfer VHS tapes to DVD.

Installing the MovieBox went smoothly. It includes a full copy of Pinnacle Studio 8.6. At the end of installation I was prompted to download an upgrade to version 8.8, which also installed without a hitch. The upgrade fixes AV sync problems that some people have experienced. I am able to capture video at 720x480, 30 fps, at bitrates ranging from 4 Mbps to 12 Mbps, and I get no dropped frames. I've done captures up to 2 hours long, and audio/video syncronization remains perfect throughout. Picture quality is very good. My only complaint is the unit gets very hot during captures.

For comparison, I have also used an ATI All-In-Wonder 7500. The MovieBox has slightly better picture quality than the AIW. The AIW appears to have more artifacts when capturing at the same bitrates.