video editing

I'm very stingy with 5 star ratings, but this product deserves it. First the hardware: the board and its driver were a snap to install. You'll only have a problem if you're uncomfortable opening up the computer to put the card in a PCI slot. Otherwise, you're home free. The board itself has digital and analog (both RCA and S-VHS) inputs. As for the Studio 9 software, it is very easy to use; I was able to able to start doing basic stuff within 15 minutes of finishing the install, and have been able to easily pick up more advanced techniques as I've gone along. The finished DVDs look pretty sharp, with menus and various types of transitions. As a result, I've been able to combine my pile of VHS-C tapes into edited DVDs. The program doesn't have the power and controls of Adobe Premiere, but Premiere is aimed at professional videographers and lists at $699. Studio 9 is for non-professionals. The closest thing I can compare it to for ease of use is Easy CD Creator 5, before Roxio tried to make it a media swiss army knife. Creator 5 was brilliantly designed for ease of use, but Media Creator 7 tries to do too many things and ends up a mess (I've uninstalled it and gone back to 5). Like Creator 5, Studio 9 has a good, clear manual included if you have any questions (and you won't have many). As a book of tips for advanced uses of the program and shooting video, Visual Quickstart Guide to Studi 9 by Jan Ozer is pretty good, but for the basics, the manual included with this product does the trick. Here's the proof: I bought this three months ago, and I have yet to call tech support.

As I write this review, I've spent about 10 hours total fiddling with my computer (which is an HP AMD XP 1800+ based system with an NVidia GeForce 2 grahpics card) trying to install this product. I spent about 2 hours installing and re-installing the product. The software would not start up and would throw an Windows XP exception error.

Upon reading the support forums on the Pinnacle website, I came upon several users with the exact same problem. I tried solutions suggested such as cleaning the registry, defragmenting the hard drive, installing patches, several re-boots, switching the PCI card, IRQ settings, upgrading drivers etc. None of this will work, this software is plain poorly designed. Don't waste your time on this product since I am a programmer by trade and know exactly what I am doing with my computer.

Avoid this product at all cost. One example of poor product design is that the Studio 9 software does not come with an Uninstaller - so you cannot do a clean uninstall. The patches you download from the Pinnacle site will install but do nothing to improve the situation. And guess what? No uninstall facility for them too.

I think this product could use a 'Zero' star rating if there was one.

Been using the product since almost first inception. This version installed much more easily. Best advice: Find other users in your neighborhood/church/workplace. ASK! There are many of us around! Having a mini-forum locally is dynamite for solving those little buggers of problems that crop up.
I videotape and burn onto 2-6 DVDs a week and love to do WMVs with it!