I put away Studio last year (after following it for two versions) when I discovered MS3 and I've never looked back!

Not only is MS3 much less problematic, but it functions more like high-end editors. Also, features like pan/crop and chromakey are awesome!

Search for Pinnacle or Studio in this forum and see how many people prefer it to MS - from memory I don't think there are any! Studio has its good points - Hollywood fx for example, but MS is way ahead in its overall power and flexibility - you can do so much more in MS. Add to that Studio's legendary instability and the fact that MS is rock solid and it's realy no contest.

As allyn has already said, MyDVD is lame, but that's probably the worst thing you can say about the package.

Ian G.

I've used MS heavily for over a year now, and I cannot remember a single crash. Previously I had struggled with Studio 8. And I mean "struggled." You won't regret the switch.

Although, in fairness, I do miss the built-in DVD authoring capabilities of Studio 8. Still, it never worked reliably, anyway.

From my experience with both Studio 8 & 9, here's an opinion:

1) A perfectly-reliable Studio 9 would be my favorite editor. In fact, I use it for relatively unsophisticated projects all the way from capture to burn, and usually don't have any problems. But many, many others do, and Pinnacle forums are filled with reports from users having trouble with every portion of the program.

2) Screenblast has some very nice features tthat are not available in Studio 8, and only as optional plug-ins in Studio 9. "Optional" often means at additional cost, whether obtained from Pinnacle or a 3rd party vendor. Given the nightmares that Studio can induce, imagine paying for a plugin from a different company, and it doesn't work on your system. Think Pinnacle is going to help you fix it? Given the tech support I've seen in daily visits to their forum for, literally, months, there's no chance. They will send you to the company that sold you the plugin, and you'll find yourself in the middle of an unproductive finger-pointing contest.

3) I only used Screenblast for a short time, primarily because of the reports of dissatisfaction with MyDVD. What good is a DVD authoring application that doesn't permit adding chapter points? Because of this, and the release of Vegas 5/DVD Architect 2, this is what I now use, despite not really needing the additional sophistication of Vegas. Screenblast and Vegas are both exceptionally reliable and crash-free on my system. They work - period. No crashes, hangs, freezes, cryptic error messages after 5 hours of rendering, etc. As a Studio user, the original poster should appreciate what I'm talking about here.

4) I like the option of having a storyboard, which is one of the reasons I like Studio. Neither Screenblast nor Vegas offers this. If you like this option, you might look at a demo version of Ulead Videostudio, which I've had some success with in limited experiments. (I got version 7 with a TV tuner card.)

IMO, an upgraded DVD burning component would make Screenblast a very reliable and competent player - a great value for the money. Be prepared to spend another $50 to $100 for a DVD authoring application if your DVD-burning needs outstrip MyDVD's capabilities. I've read that the newest version of MyDVD, which is not the version supplied with Screenblast, is quite good.

Thanks for the input all. I too have read unbeleivable horrors on the Pinnacle site. I've also demo'd (sp?) Ulead's app and hated the big cartoony interface. I'll demo Movie Studio over the weekend, but it sounds like My DVD is a joke on these boards. No chapter points?? That's awful. I'd hate to spend $99 + another $50-100 just to make DVDs as they're meant to be made (with menus, chapters, etc.).

Thanks again for the input!
Michael

The latest version of My DVD allows chapters. Go to their website. I upgraded the version that came with my burner at a special upgrade price. It is great for quick and dirty DVDs. The only thing that I didn't like was the inablity to locate buttons any where I wanted them. When I upgraded my Vegas 3, I went to Vegas5 + DVDA2.

I love the 3 video and 3 audio timelines. I have done things that would havebeen impossible on any other $99 editor. Personally I find effects and transitions pretty useless. I stick to simple cuts and fades. Things start to look cheesey with too many effects.

Like others have said, it just works. No cringing whenever you push a button wondering if it will crash

One potential downside is that you can only capture in AVI. I know this is the way you are supposed to work in an editing program but sometimes you just want to do a quickie.

For that and DVD authoring I bought Ulead DVD Moviefactory 3. I little too "wizardy looking" for my taste but it hase some powerful features if you drill down deeper into options. It can do chapters and AC3 encding for audio. It's a good compliment for ScreenBlast

Grisetti, could you explain more about chromakey? I haven't used it yet, and am not sure how to activate

...but I'm confused.

I was drawn into this thread because I am also looking to avoid another bad experience with Pinnacle Studio 8. Their surprise "Out-of-sync" feature (that only shows up during Make Movie) nearly wrecked last year's marching band season video and I don't want to deal with that again. That's how I got to this thread. Now.. I ended up at this forum by following a link in a tutorial for NovaDevelopment's Video Explosion Deluxe (version 1.5, Build 26). But I notice you all are talking about ScreenBlast Movie Studio.

What's the tie-in? Are Video Explosion Deluxe and ScreenBlast Movie Studio the same product under different names? Or is MS a totally different critter? I feel a little silly even asking, but if a link in product A sends me to a site for product B, I get a little lost. I like what I'm reading on this forum but I don't know which product folks are talking about.

Sorry if this post is a little off topic..

hello, well, most of us are talking about Screenblast MovieStudio 3.0.
from what i heard, VideoExplosion was VideoFactory 2.0.
so.....it's kindof like the same product but earlier version.
sounds confusing.

The story so far - Sonic Foundry produced a program called Video Factory. Video factory was also sold by Sony as Movie Studio and by Nova Development as Video Explosion. Sony then took over Sonic Foundry, so the Video Factory name has gone, though the program itself is still going as Movie Studio.

Ian G.

So the Video Explosion I have is the same as Movie Studio, except possibly an earlier version. Kind of depends on how the version numbers match up between products, right? But at least I know now that what I read about Movie Studio applies to Video Explosion.

I'm sure glad you knew the background, IanG!

Thanks a ton, folks!
Bill

Out-of-sync issues are not exclusive to Studio products. There are several types and causes for this condition, and one major type is the unpleasant surprise about which you write -- everything appears well until the project is rendered to MPEG for burning to DVD. In many cases, this is the result of "hidden" defects in the captured files. They play without problem in Media Player and in the edit window, yet go out-of-sync later when converted to MPEG. Most of my work is done in Vegas 5 & DVDA2 these days, and the same problems show up in them. Although Studio appears to be built upon a cobbled code base and has numerous issues, this particular type of sync problem isn't unique to it.

I've done a lot of work on this, and can immediately recognize a file that will cause it by running it through a freeware program called PVASTrumento, which analyzes defects and attempts to fix them.

How generaly useful is PVASTrumento? I thought it could only handle PVA files?

Ian G.

In addition to whatever other uses it may have, PVASTrumento is a tool for examination and evaluation of MPEG files, which is exactly what I needed for figuring out why I had A/V sync problems.

It will scan the file and create a log of the problems found and/or separate it into individual mpa & mp2 (or is it mpv? -- I'm away from my editing machine at tht moment...) fiiles. It will also attempt to re-sync the audio and video, and write the result as a new file. In the interest of full-disclosure, the few attempts I made at doing that were unsuccessful, but I didn't pursue it. My interest was in finding a way of capturing to MPEG which writes files correctly, not in fixing them after-the-fact.

I wasn't sure how close the Video Explosion 1.5 was to Video Studio version 3.0b, so I went to BestBuy yesterday and found Movie Studio. I had them check the SKU number to make sure it wasn't an old version. It came up as version 3.0. When I got home to install, it said it was the 3.0b installation. So, I still have a feeling I might have just purchased the same program I had only under another name, but at least I know where I am now in case something shows up and I need to find a solution in these forums.

The real good part is... I was able to save someone the grief I had with Pinnacle Studio's OOS feature. I just told him of my experience last year and suggested he read the forums at Pinnacle before purchasing. He put it back on the shelf.

Thanks to everyone in this thread and others. I believe moving to MS will be a good thing.