I'm also a Cakewalk fan - I have several of their products. The new technology available to us really is amazing. I shot some video of the grandkids this weekend while we were at a rain forest visit. It should be fun putting music to that. I gather you play guitar - so do I. Mostly folk and church music.
Jim

Yeah, I play guitar, bass, keyboards, Theremin -- with varying degrees of proficiency. (mostly little) But it keeps me out of trouble. I play in a little trio called The Unpleasants. (truth in advertising) We play a wide variety of music on a wide variety of instruments. And the styles sound different to us, but probably all sounds the same to the audience: mediocre.

My first video project was DVD of a show we played in a coffee house 4 years ago. That's where I learned about OOS & mpeg vs avi edting. (and about finishing things a month late because of Studio 8 -- it was supposed to be a Christmas present for my bandmates)

There's a 'bleeding edge' in music, too, and I was in on that, having bought a Line 6 Variax modeling guitar just as soon as they became available early last year. I hung on a discussion forum about that for almost 5 months before the first one even shipped. (and continue to this day) For an entirely new technology, Line 6 did wonders with it. There's always some grousing on the forum, but nothing -- I've never seen anything -- like there is on the Pinnacle boards. Gawd, if Pinnacle built a Variax, the strings would probably fall off... And if they didn't, you'd hear the sound 1/2 second after you picked a string.

MAN!
Why didnt I start here first. I've just spent 5 weeks struggling with studio8 only to realize my efforts were futile and having to abandon it. I've just received ms3 not a couple days ago. I too started out on the Amiga doing music and I too remember the days of the Altaire computer, toggle switches and leds. How 'bout the zx sinclair, with a wopping 1K RAM :) Im a drummer, and the video stuff kicked in when I realized my music videos were degrading. I had some old band videos and I wanted to transfer them to dvd. You know, I think I might like it here :) I dont see too many people complaining.

Gizmo Gorilla

Hi Giz -- saw your "exit interview" at Pinnacle. Boy, does that place ever have some delusional users. "Yeah, works great for me with only a few workarounds. Don't have MAJOR problems." To me, the definition of success doesn't include the word "problems."

I'm still using Studio -- version 9 now -- but have purchased Screenblast for use where Studio doesn't have the required features or doesn't work. I think the two will be a good combination.

One thing to keep in mind is that Screenblast is an edit-only environment. And I haven't seen too many good reviews about MyDVD. So my initial experiments have involved some editing here, then taking a rendered file for burning to DVD in Studio. That may change.

ZX81 -- built one in 1982, added a Byte-Back modem, (300 baud) and had my first experiences with computer bulletin boards... Also have had, in rough chronological order: 1802 COSMAC Elf, Commodore KIM-1, Apple II+ w/PCPI Z-80 card, Morrow MD-3, TRS-80, Kaypro IV, Timex-Sinclair 2048, etc... Fun stuff, but it's more fun these days with recording music & editing video vs tinkering together hardware & the programs to run 'em that I fiddled with back then...

Welcome aboard, by the way!

Hey Thanks!
Good to be here. Im still recovering from the studio8 "incident" but the therapy and medication are helping me alot :) Im still doing a lot of tinkering and deciding right now, maybe I can get an opinion & clarification. Im checking out the DVDlab demo and want to purchase but not sure if I should also go for the bundle of DVDlab & TMPGenc source creator. Im not sure if I need that though. I havent yet made a dvd but I see the "make dvd" option in dvdlab. Do I need to get tmpgenc (or something else) or can I go ms3->dvdlab->dvd?

Norm
aka Gizmo Gorilla