Pinnacle Video Transfer Pc/mac Less Video Transfer Device

by Pinnacle

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 9.1 x 2.6 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0015E2PQM
• Item model number: 82301002211
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

Want to watch TV shows and movies on your iPod or PSP? Make a digital copy of precious home movie tapes? Back up holiday videos when away from home? At the touch of a button Pinnacle Video Transfer rapidly records video in MPEG-4 quality onto any USB 2.0 storage device without using a PC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Suitable for Ipod, not for viewing on Tv, July 29, 2008

By 

varasztan "varasztan" (Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pinnacle Video Transfer Pc/mac Less Video Transfer Device (Personal Computers)

The biggest mistake a person can make in purchasing this item is to assume that the converted video will be of any reasonable quality when viewed on a tv. The results were extremely fuzzy, lots of trails. . .plain horrible. On the other hand, the quality on the Ipod itself was great. Viewed on the PC, don't change the window size from anything other than what it was converted to or intended for or you'll be greatly disappointed again. The video loses it's integrity very quickly.

I started by recording at the highest setting onto a hard drive, thinking I could burn a DVD. . .big mistake. Terrible picture. I then sent the video to my 3rd generation nano, plugging that into my tv with the available adapters from Apple. . .still horrible. The adapter allowed for component input to the tv. Tried the s-video input to the tv to see if it might help improve some of the trails and it did to some extent, but the picture was still terrible. By the way, if you own a 5th generation Ipod, don't bother using the highest setting. It's not supported.

If you're planning on making clips available online or just using it to view movies on your Ipod, you won't be disappointed. If your expectations are any great than that, don't waste the money.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Video Transfer for the "Video Challenged", August 7, 2008

By 

C. Clark (Upstate NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pinnacle Video Transfer Pc/mac Less Video Transfer Device (Personal Computers)

Let me start by saying I'm not any kind of expert in video technology - I usually just hand stuff over to my son and he takes it from there. That said, I wanted something to transfer my old family VHS tapes to a digital format. I had read in a local paper that this device was quite easy to use, so I gave it a try.

I had no trouble connecting to the TV or my very old VHS player - the device recognized both quickly. I did have some trouble with the storage drives. It didn't recognize my Toshiba portable or my IOGear USB flash device. Scored with my Iomega portable and the cheapy USB flash drives I picked up at conventions. Once everything was connected and recognized, I turned on the TV/hit play on the VHS and pressed a button on the Pinnacle device and let it record.

First, I tried capturing from both the TV and a 15 year old VHS tape using the "better" setting. Both were painless. The video is converted to MOV format and when I went to play them on my computer, the only trouble I had was that I needed to download an upgrade to QuickTime. They looked very good on the monitor. Later, I burned these to DVD to see how this quality setting would look on a TV - not very good...

Next, I recorded from VHS at "best" quality, which is really a misnomer apparently, since this setting interlaces the video which is supposed to be better for viewing on a TV (but not computer monitors where my movies recorded in "best" setting looked terrible...). And it did look much better than the "better" quality recordings, though we're not talking movie theater quality here.

I should note that the VHS tape was recorded at EP (as in worst quality) and I didn't use an S-video connection - just regular analog cables - so you may get better results.

The only glitch was burning the MOV files to DVD. I had edited one in QuickTime and then saved it. My son tells me that was a big mistake and I should have edited it in Nero (the software I used to burn the DVD). Since I kept getting error messages from Nero, I had to start from scratch and re-edit. I couldn't use the "re-writable" option in Nero either (so I could add more later...but maybe you just can't do that...).

All in all, if you're looking for a relatively easy way to transfer those old VHS tapes to a digital format, this does the job. The captures were very good for monitor viewing (even my son said so!) and considering the quality of my VHS tape, I was pretty happy with the TV quality.

QuickTime and Nero are the only software I used - and I didn't do much with them - just what I needed to view and copy/burn. Expect to tie up a big chunk of computer time converting the files to TV-playable DVDs...which is why I'm sticking with just copying the MOV files to DVD to play on my computer instead.

Only gave it 4 stars because the documentation is pretty meager - I suspect the manufacturer assumes that people who use this device know a little more about video transfer/editing than I do. But even without a lot of guidance, I got the job done!

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Owen Rubin's MyMac.com Review, March 4, 2009

By 

Tim E Robertson "Publisher MyMac" (Battle Creek, Mi United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pinnacle Video Transfer Pc/mac Less Video Transfer Device (Personal Computers)

I have an iPod Touch now, and I am constantly downloading apps from the Apple store. But I have a real problem when it comes to downloading TV shows and movies. Somehow, I just cannot pay again for the same TV or movies I can get on my Dish Network PVR, or DVDs, or old videotapes that are already paid for. But how do I get them from the source onto my iPod?

Typically this is often a complicated process involving a lot of time and money, usually done with some kind of capture card inside of a PC, or maybe an external device that captures and send the files to your computer's hard disk. But then they are often not the right size or format, so you have to convert to the format you need, and maybe to the size for the device as well, and that all takes time and lots of effort. And there are hundreds of settings and options in every program that even a video engineer might not understand, meaning trial and error over and over to get it to look good.



So this is where the Video Transfer unit from Pinnacle comes in. This compact little device (about 5" x 2.5" x .75") will let you convert videos from many different video sources and store them directly onto a USB device like a USB stick, an external USB Hard Drive, or an iPod, has only a few settings, and works without a computer.

Set up can be FAIRLY easy IF you have the necessary cables and destination device ready, but you may need a few extra cables that are not included, and be sure to keep and read the included instruction booklet, you will need it once you get started because not all output devices work here. So lets walk through set-up so you can see the issues.



On one side of the Video Transfer box are the audio/video inputs; on the other side are two USB 2.0 ports and a power input plug. First, the easier part of set up is to plug in the power brick to the wall and connect to the power plug on the device. Then, connect video cables from the output of your video source to the inputs on this device. You can connect either via an analog video and audio cable (Yellow, Red, White tipped RCA cable included in the box) or by an S-VHS video cable and RCA audio cable for better video quality. The S-Video cable is not included, but is recommended for better quality recordings, and is what I used for my tests.



Now, you need to connect a USB destination device of some kind as the output device, and here it can get a little tricky, especially for Mac users. Of the two USB connectors on the side, one is the standard "square" USB connector typically found on the back of most USB drives. Forget about it, this does nothing and is reserved for future use. The other USB connector is a standard rectangular USB socket you would see on the side of most computers, and this is where you will connect the destination device. You have several options here on what to connect, and if necessary, you will need your own USB cable for this.

Now here is where it gets confusing: You can connect several devices here, a USB Flash drive, a USB hard drive, a Sony Playstation Portable, but it must be firmware version 2.81 or later, a Sony Playstation Portable Slim, an Apple iPod Video version 1.21 or later, an iPod Classic, or an iPod Nano, 3rd Gen only, and iPods must have firmware version 1.03 or later. You cannot connect directly to an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch.

OK, now it gets even more complicated. To use an Apple iPod with this device, the internal drive must be formatted FAT32, a WINDOWS file format. For most Mac users, this means you cannot just plug in your iPod. An iPod, iPod nano, and mini can be configured to work with either a Macintosh or Microsoft Windows computer. If configured for a Mac, the iPod will be formatted as Mac OS Extended HFS Plus, which will not work here. If configured for Windows, the iPod will be configured as file format FAT32. You can do a restore on an iPod and change the format if you wish, but it will erase everything. Also note that while a FAT32 formatted iPod will still work with Macs, it is a foreign file format, it will not be optimized for use on the Mac, there will be file name length issues, some sharing and permission problems for sure, and there is a 4 GB file size limit! That is the "cost" of directly recording from this device onto an iPod. And because the iPhone and iPod Touch cannot be formatted FAT ever, they cannot be used here. Confused yet?



The easiest way to handle recordings with this device is to use a USB Flash Drive or a USB hard drive formatted FAT16 or FAT32, so I will continue with that assumption for now. Have a look at this video to see how easily that works...



Better version here.
Now, since no computer is used to program this device, all the options are set on the device itself by pressing the MODE and REC buttons on the top. To change recording quality, use the MODE button on top. The higher the setting, the more HD space the recording will occupy, but the better the recording quality should be But that is also determined by what output device you have connected as well. Confused yet?

Well, to help, here are the settings and what they mean depending on mode setting and device connected:
iPod PSP Other Devise
Good Video: 320x240
512 kbps video rate
96 kbps stereo audio
48 KHz
Video: 320x240
512 kbps video rate
64 kbps stereo audio
48 KHz
Video: 320x240
768 kbps video rate
64 bps stereo audio
48 KHz
Better Video: 320x240
768 kbps video rate
128 kbps stereo audio
48 KHz Video: 320x240
768 kbps video rate
96 kbps stereo audio
48 KHz Video: 640x480
1.2 Mbps video rate
128 bps stereo audio
48 KHz Video: 640x480
Best Video: 640x480
1.5 Mbps video rate
128 kbps stereo audio
48 KHz Video: 320x240
1.0 Mbps video rate
128 kbps stereo audio
48 KHz Video: 720x576 (PAL)
720x480 (NTSC)
1.5 Mbps video rate
192 bps stereo audio
48 KHz

As you can see, the best results are achieved with an external HD (other device) on the BEST setting. If this table confuses you, simply look at the column for what you attach, and then see the three choices you have. With a USB hard drive at Best, it will record 750x480 resolution at 1.5 Mbps data rate for the video, and 192 kbps @ 48 Khz stereo for the audio. Now confused?

So just how much time can you record on your device? Well, again that depends on the size and type of output device and the quality setting desired. Here are some examples of time for quality setting and device type:

iPod 30 GB PSP 2 GB Flash Stick 4GB USB HD, 250GB
Good 85 hours 7.5 hours 11 hours 640 hours
Better 61 hours 5.5 hours 5.5 hours 320 hours
Best 38 hours 2.5 hours 3.0 hours 187 hours

After starting a recording, it will stop if the device becomes full (obviously), or if you briefly press the REC button while recording. After stopping the recoding, you need to wait a short time before removing the USB device. The USB LED will turn RED, the quality LEDs will flash, and then stop. You can now remove the drive.

So, now if you recorded to an HD or Flash stick, when done recording, simply attach that drive to your computer, and then use iTunes to move the MPEG-4 files to your device.

SIGH!

Conceptually, this device is a great idea if it worked like you would expect: Connect video, attach an iPod, start the video, and press record. But as you can see, it is not as simple as all that. As I read through the instructions, I kept feeling more and more confused by all the things that COULD happen when I used this.

But in reality, if you forget everything else, simply attach a FAT formatted USB hard drive, and start making recordings, and then move them to your device using iTunes or file transfer, it actually is simple. Once I got it set up (meaning reformatting a USB external drive with FAT32) I made some sample recordings from my Dish DVR. The video quality on BEST was good viewed on a large screen, and BETTER looked good on the iPod Touch or iPhone. Even GOOD should be acceptable on the even smaller iPod Video screen as well. The audio is a different story, being full of video interference noise and ending up completely out of sync with the video. Not good at all.

Overall, I was disappointed with this device; and there are a couple of things I would have liked to see changed or added on this unit. First, for something that should be so simple, I found it to have a lot of complicated little gotcha points when trying to set it up. Secondly, direct video to an iPhone or iPod Touch would have been welcomed, but maybe that is an Apple problem really. Thirdly, support for file systems other than FAT would also have been appreciated. I think Mac users are an after thought with this device, since they rarely have FAT formatted USB drives sitting around. Next, at around $100, they should at least include a USB cable and maybe even an S-Video cable. Even cheap $15 USB drive enclosures include the USB cable! Lastly, you should be able to use the unused USB connector to attach this device directly to a computer, and then transfer the recording files directly onto the hard disk of your computer. This would be especially great for iPhone and iPod Touch users, as now you have to record to a USB device, then transfer the drive to a computer to move them to an iPhone..

But the killer for me was that all was not even close to perfect with the encoded video files, and I tried all three settings, and both S-Video and Analog video inputs to try and make them work. Most of the audio tracks had buzzing... Read more ›