Customer Reviews

Pinnacle Studio Plus 9 AV/DV Deluxe

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

 

 

I,like many others, bought this product to convert my 8mm and DV tape videos to DVD format. After reading specs and reviews I decided to gamble on Pinnacle as being the product to perform this task for me. The Studio Plus 9 AV/DV Deluxe includes a capture card (and cables which I thought was nice) and breakout analogue capture board. Not bad for the relatively low price.

CAPTURE:
The capture card and capture piece of Studio has worked GREAT from day one. I have had no issues with it.

EDIT:
The editing process in studio is not intuitive but is powerful if you are willing to put in the time to learn it. In some earlier versions I noticed several editing bugs, but Pinnacle is fairly good about releasing patches to fix these. Overall I like the editing interface and the numerous features it has.

BURN (i.e. RENDER, MAKE MOVIE):
This aspect of pinnacle is absolutely horrible! I have never been able to render and subsequently burn any project onto DVD using pinnacles software. I have applied all the latest fixes, drivers to my system, fashed firmware, etc. Nothing works and my system always crashes at some point in the render process. The Pinnacle forums are full of postings from users who are having the same problems. It is pointless to spend hours and days on capturing and editing a project if you can't complete it by rendering it and burning to DVD. I know it is not my PC because I have started using Nero to burn all of my captured video to DVD. I have also tested PowerDirector with positvie results.

In a nutshell: If you can't render, you must surrender. Buy something else.

The specs for Pinncale Studio Plus are impresive but despite hours of trying I could never get the software to successfully complete a movie. The program hangs after 5 - 15 min of rendering, regardless of what I am trying to create (DVD, AVI, MPEG, etc.) This is a fatal flaw. The included trouble shooting guide even admints this is a potential problem and basically say to keep reinstalling the program and trying different settings. This should make one nervous. There are any number of other video capture/creating solutions out there to choose from, choose something else.

This product and the stand alone software version have received a lot of flak in these reviews. I have not had any problems and have found the software to be extremely easy to use. I used to use Sonic's MyDVD and I had created about 10 DVDs with it. I was very unhappy with MyDVD as it constantly crashed and spit out error messages that aren't listed in Sonic's Knowledge Base. I bought Studio 9 on the PC World recommendation and it was great.
My first project was to edit and burn over 1 Gig of MPEGs from a trip to Disney World. MyDVD crashed anytime I tried to make a DVD with these files. Studio 9 burned it in about 3 hours, which is far less time than MyDVD takes for a similar size project.
Clearly lots of people have issues with this product based on the reviews, but I just needed to put in my two cents that it is awesome.

I heard the reviews about this product and I still bought it because PC MAGAZINE said it was good. I bought it and it does what it says. The only thing is that when you transfer a VHS tape to DVD it takes forever to render and burn. It must take at least 4 hours for it to render/read and burn. Too long is you ask me!

I got this to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD format before VHS players were no longer sold. The problem is that video recording is computationally intense. You will get jerky video if you overload the processor.

My 1.86 GHz computer was able to capture in best quality MPEG for black and white and best quality avi for color source material after I had done the following things:

There are two things not mentioned in the directions that you have to do. When capturing from tape you have to check the VCR box to prevent the video from wobbling left and right. The other is that you have to have the capture device and your external drive on different interfaces, one on USB and the other on FireWire. Otherwise you will overload the USB or the FireWire buss controller and get jerky recordings. Use the test drive button to find which buss has the higher write speed on your drive. If your external drive has nothing on it you want and if you are technically skilled you can do a quick format on it with different sector sizes to find the highest write speed setting.

With slower computers you have to disable the preview option. You will also have to disconnect from the network and shut down all programs shown in the system tray including Norton Antivirus. It is best to do a virus sweep with the latest definitions before disabling Norton. Then make test recordings from color and black and white tapes. Start with best quality and then watch the results on the edit tab to look for jerky motion. Try both recording options, avi and mpeg. If both cause jerky motions, try the better option. Then go to custom and adjust the quality % to the highest level that does not have jerky motion.

The advantage of mpeg capture is that it takes less room on the hard drive and makes the third tab make movie processing time shorter. The extra storage space is of no real advantage if you do not intend to permanently store the files after you have burnt your DVD. The shortened time in the third tab is no real advantage if you have to do the capture at a lower quality setting.

Then on the make movie tab select make file to be burnt later. Then select the burn from stored file to do the DVD recording. Select the external drive for this option or you will get 10 GB of files left on your internal drive that you will have to manually delete if you need the room.

If you have a 3+ GHz machine you can use preview, best quality capture and burn the disk while making the movie.

Then there was a quirk of my Dell 9300 of its accessing the internal drive several times a minute which caused jerky motion. To overcome this I had to boot the computer with the peripherals disconnected, wait until the boot is finished, and then connect them one at a time. Then I had to wait 30 minutes while the computer did the internal bookkeeping and accessed the internal drive. After the 30 minutes this stopped. Then start the Pinnacle software. One quirk of the software is that it only recognizes devices that are running when the program starts, so you have to have your external DVD burner (if you use one) and external hard drive attached to the computer and powered before starting the Pinnacle software.

I have Pinnacle Studio Plus Ver. 9 and have downloaded the improvement patch from Pinnacle. I did have Ver 8 and was unhappy with the intermittant crashes in the middle of a project.
I have found Ver. 9 (with patch) to be more stable and able to handle detailed editing without any problem. Big feature: you can take a finished DVD project and re-edit directly. No need to save video clips on your hard drive. No problems in rendering and burning, but does take about 3 hours for a 50 min. video. I have been unable to purchase plug-in's directly from Pinnacle. I will not be upgrading to Ver. 10 until all bugs have been corrected.

As a parent of two kids, I became increasingly concerned that my ever expanding collection of videotaped (VHS-C) family movies would erode over time due to oxidation of film surfaces. With that in mind, I recently purchased a Dell XPS 400 (Dual Core Pentium D Processor, 1 GB RAM)PC and had decided on the Pinnacle Studio Plus 9 AV/DV software and PCI card package in which to initiate the VHS-C transfer to DVD project. I have been using the software for nearly a week and am very satisfied with the results.

The Pinnacle package comes with a PCI card (that is mounted in an available slot in the PC), software, a "blueBox" and cables. The blueBox is an interface that allows you to connect a VCR or camera in which to deliver the analog signal to the PC. The software has three primary tabs: Capture, Edit and Make Movie. The first step is to capture the analog source. The capture tab has a "Diskometer" with two fly-out panels so that you can monitor memory usage and adjust the audio and video settings of the captured source. Next, the edit tab allows one to create chapters, albums, special effects, etc. There are so many features in the edit tab that I've still yet to explore all of them. If one desires a straight unedited version of the video, you need only to click and drag the frames into the toolboxes and move on to the Make Movie tab. Once you've selected the desired digital media (i.e. DVD, VCD) and quality of resolution, the tab renders the video into final form (which can take a half hour or more for a high quality DVD on a fast computer)and burns the video onto a disk.

I have made several DVDs at this point and have not experienced any dropped frames in videos or PC system crashes. I think it certainly helps to have a powerful PC that is up to the task of video capturing (be forewarned, however, video capturing is a big time memory hog. I am contemplating on getting a 250 GB external hard drive just for my video clips). The finished DVD quality is really quite astounding. I now have a piece of mind that I am able to preserve valuable video movies on a more permanent and durable media.

I would whole-heartedly recommend the Pinnacle package to anyone that is interested in transfering VHS tapes to DVDs. Just make sure you meet the minimum system requirements outlined on the package (even so, you may want to upgrade PC specifications)and to take the time to learn the software (a 290 page book comes with the package).