Studio does have the slight advantage of being a little more "user friendly."

With Studio, you just grab clips and drag them to the timeline, where they snap in place, up next to the previous clip.

MS3 is a little more challenging from that point of view, and it takes a little time to get used to how to get the clips to the timeline without overlapping something that's already there.

But, in terms of power and performance, it's MS3 hands down! There are so many ways to control and tweak the special effects and transitions, and the outputs are free of the bugs that famously trouble Studio outputs.

In other words, there will be a learning curve, but it's well worth it.

These replys have made my day. I spent a few hours educating myself last night and at this early stage believe I made a wise choice in switching.

> With Studio, you just grab clips and drag them to the timeline, where they snap in place, up next to the previous clip

This is also the main problem with Studio. It has numerous bugs related to this “user friendly” snapping where it actually does this incorrectly the more you work on a project. It actually produces gaps or overlaps to the point where it’s rendering engine can’t understand the time sequence and then you can’t render your project. (i.e., it stops or loops forever when rendering) This has been documented along with a rather painful process to go to the Text View and try and debug the time signatures of the clips to find the offending clip because there is no way to turn off the snapping and move a clip manually. Sometimes you just have to throw your project out and start over. (that’s when I started over... in Video Factory 2!)

So while the idea of snapping is “user friendly”, the implementation in Studio is disastrous and is one of the major reasons why I left Studio. Working for two weeks on a project that plays back perfectly from the timeline, but that you can’t render is no fun at all! That was the last straw for me.

The users on their web board that claim, “Studio works for them” don’t tell you about the list all the “workarounds” they have learned in order to be able to make that (misleading) statement. I have NO workarounds when using Video Factory or Vegas. The software simply works. IMHO, Pinnacle Studio is a mine field of problems.

~jr

I'm actually getting a refund from Pinnacle for Studio 8. I made a real 'squeaky wheel' of myself in their forums and calling them up about all the problems. I just kept insisting on a refund because the software doesn't work. I finally was given an RMA number and sent the discs back. I'm just waiting for the credit to show up on my credit card statement.

For what it's worth, I always thought that this kind of "user friendliness" sort of defeated the purpose of editing the video in the first place!

Who really wants to just drag clips next to each other without controlling the length of the clip (e.g. just show the good 10 seconds out of the minute and a half you shot), controlling the transition type and transition length, etc?

Studio allows full editing of all clips, including transition lengths. It just makes the operation of keeping the video sequenced easier.

I use Version 7 of Studio and it is very stable. I also use VF and VV. They each have their purpose. I did not use Studio 8 because the information on the Studio 8 forums.

I am a Studio 8 user, Pinnacle user for many years, but I've pretty well decided on Vegas Video (yeah, I know, not this forum - but you guys are pretty close to my questions).

The biggest hurdle I am having with Vegas is source management - the auto scene detection of Studio makes it very easy to pick and choose what you want - I have not found similar functionality in Vegas.

Am I just missing it?

If I have a one hour capture of a DV tape is there an easy way to pick and choose what I want to include in the project?

The vegas scene detect is strictly based on the time/date stamp during capture. There is no content detect.

The trimmer is the easiest way to weed out your footage, or you can use Scenalyzer (a third party application) that has more options for capture/scene detect.

Dave T2

Thanks Dave.

Unfortunately, I have hundreds of 8mm and Hi8 tapes that don't have date/time encoding... (I am capturing them using pass-through on my DV cam.
Guess I'll get more familiar with the trimmer before I make my decision.

On a (kinda) related note, how would anyone here compare the DVD authoring capabilities, usability, and compatibility of Studio 8, Movie Studio, DVD Architecht, and Pinnacle Liquid Edition? - (It would be a real long shot for anyone to have actually used all of them, but a light comparison of any two or more would be appreciated.)

I've created dozens of Studio discs, and am very familiar with it, and have no technology problems with an older version, but Pinnacle seems to be headed in the wrong direction with their latest releases.

In authoring DVDs I have used

Studio 8
MyDVD
DVD X Maker from 321 Studios (formerly DVD Complete from Dazzle et al)
DVD Architect (demo)

MyDVD sucks. I only use it for very basic stuff, like burning one chapter (avi file) with default everything, just to see how the video will look on my TV.

DVD X Maker is pretty good, but has a very (VERY) annoying "feature" that causes all of your custom menu stuff to go away every time you add, delete, or change a movie. Extremely frutstrating, but nevetheless always seems to create a stable DVD image that plays in every player I've tried. One feature I really like is that you can change how the up/down/left/right remote control buttons work for each button on your DVD menus.

Studio 8 is by far the most versatile and easy to use DVD authoring environment. (It doesn't have that nifty navigation editor like X Maker, however.) Problem is, you never know if S8 will burn your DVD, or just crash somewhere in the process. I usually only burn an image...I never burn directly to a disc...that hardly ever works.

DVD Architect looks like a great tool, but I haven't used a real version yet.

For the actual burning, I always use Nero, from Ahead software, to burn the DVD images generated by the above tools, if possible.

You might want to add DVDLab to your list of contenders. V1.3's just been released and it's very impressive.

Ian G.

I also bought the Pinnacle Moviebox DV with Studio 8 and let me say that the best place for the software, at least, is the garbage can. It is the most unstable piece of code I've ever worked with. Cheers to Sony.

I agree 100%. Studio8 is terrible. Analog capture is usually out of synch with the audio, the app crashes often during DVD writting... I must have lost over $100 in DVDRs that Studio8 ruined by not finishing the writting.

The app crashes and locks up during normal use.

And support is the worst. Pinnacle never responds to any of my help desk tickets. The forums are "ok"...they seem to think that a work around to a bug means that its ok that the bug is there....not acceptable to me.

MovieStudio3.0 has been rock solid and has not crashed once. MS3.0 also has features Studio8 does not... you cant do chromakeying or picture in picture with Studio8.

Sony has my loyalty!

I'm late to this thread but I'll give you my .02 worth. We started a video trasfer business using Pinnacle 8. We had nothing but problems. After taking 8 hours to render to burn a DVD with Studio 8, the DVD would be come out, though unusable. Not only do have 30 bad DVD's collecting dust, but every time it happened it put our customer's projects back another day. Our support e-mails were left unanswered. Then we bought a new Dell 8300, reasoning that a new computer would fix all. The Dell would crash every time we opened Studio 8!! I called Pinnacle to complain, they told me to buy another NLE software and they would refund my money. We bought Sceenblast and really like it. This forum is way better than Pinnacle's support.