No matter how they, Pinnacle, brand their products, their offerings have a history of unparalleled bugginess, and seemingly little or no ability to fix them.

Just ask any former users of Studio 8...of which I am one.

When you have to use $33 Scenalyzer just to get an in-synch capture when the $300 Studio 8 can't get an in-synch capture, well, that is indicative of deeper issues.

Never in my life have I ever experienced such frustration in a program. That is why I came to Vegas and have never been happier with any software. (I learned of Vegas in a Pinnacle forum by other frustrated users.)

Search the Sonic Foundry forums for "Pinnacle" and/or "Studio" and see what you get.

Side note: Also, compare the temperature of the forums:

1.) Here, at Sonic Foundry, if you ask a question, you often get prompt, helpful assistance.
2.) In the Pinnacle forums, if you have issues, you are often chided for not filling out your computer profile...and then the help never arrives.

I, with my filled out computer profile, detailed issues in their forums with their program and was not once ever refuted as to my facts. I work in Research & Development for a fortune 50 company, so I am accustomed to detailing issues as well as accompanying circumstances. I also was not offered solutions. Blaming the quality of the video tapes was a popular scapegoat. I have never had a problem in Vegas whatsoever...same video tapes.

I spent months trying Pinnacle betas, restoring/reconfiguring partitions; I even installed Pinnacle products on multiple (different) motherboard/cpu boxes, with completely stripped, but updated, WinXP systems, only to see the same bugs. I would have to do one part of a project in one version of Studio 8, then boot to another partition to accomplish the rest of my work in a beta version of Studio 8...completely ridiculous. It was *always* considered a problem with *your* system.

Summary: Pinnacle has the worst software I have ever used...and I am not alone... I will never, ever buy anything Pinnacle ever again. Never.

I am sure I have told you more than you wanted to know... Sorry.

Thank you.

Word to the wise kentwolf. there is such a thing as product disparagement, that makes the fangs of certain corporate lawyers come out. Better to talk in indirect third-party language, i.e., 'what some people seem to say,' etc. Being a lawyer (ugh) myself (blooming filmmaker), I can say that I probably won't buy another Pinnacle product due to my experiences with one of their hardware products and Studio 7, but that's my own choice. Somebody else wants to buy it, it's your nickel (Although perhaps that's exactly what you meant). Well OK, I did buy Studio 8 (with a $50 rebate, net cost $20), just to see how many bugs had been worked out. Version 8 is a lot better, but by now I'm leaps and bounds beyond other NLE's through, of course--Vegas 4.

Billy Boy and Kentwolf,

Liquid Blue is an extremely powerful editor. It does not play in the same space as Edition and Studio. It is not a direct competitor to Vegas.

Liquid predates Edition. I believe it was called FAST Blue, before Pinnacle bought FAST. Edition is the consumer/prosumer version of Liquid. Liquid comes in four flavors, purple, silver, chrome and blue. Blue is the highest end and is meant for broadcast facilities that require quick turnaround.
A liquid Blue machine is something like $40-50,000 if I remember correctly. It can deal with many formats of video in and out. It shares the same interface with Edition, but comes with hardware that process video much faster. The reason for the many flavours of Liquid is, it is meant to work in a networked environment. Use the proper networked hardware, you can have different editor working on the same media at the same time. I can be editing the show on Blue and I have the my intro sequence done with the right cuts, but it needs color correction. I can ask someone else to color correct it on their Silver machine, while it still plays in my timeline fine. When he is done, he uploads to the network and now I can see the corrected footage. It also comes with Pinnacle's Commotion and TitleDekoPro software which are no slouches.
I was impressed by the demo I saw. You can create some incredibly good looking and sophisticated footage very quickly. I have not worked on Blue, so I am not vouching for its reliability, but it was developed by FAST engineers not regular Pinnacle engineers. FAST enjoys widespread use and a good reputation in Europe.

I would challenge Pinnacle to sue me for anything I say about them. All things I have to say are bad, but true and could be proven in court. In fact, I go out of my way to tell people how bad Pinnacle is and to NOT buy anything they have to sell. Because I would inturn sue them the the piece of SH*T of a Pro-One that they sold me (which still isn't fixed). And by the way folks. The liquid series was purchased from Fast. Just another example of how Pinnacle can't create anything on there own.

>>Liquid Blue is an extremely powerful editor.
>>I was impressed by the demo I saw...
>>...a good reputation in Europe.
>>...A liquid Blue machine is something like $40-50,000

...OK...and Pinnacle products still have widespread problems with failure to do an in-synch video capture, not to mention arbitrary crashes, lockups, and loss of work/time.

Vegas:

1.) Is an extremely powerful editor.
2.) Impressed me, and many others, with the demo; particularily former Pinnacle users.
3.) Has a good reputation in the U.S.A.
4.) Costs hundreds...not tens-of-thousands.

It, Vegas, also never locks up (on me), captures just fine, and I have not lost any work/time due to Vegas.

With regard to Pinnacle: I know, I know, I know...the upgrade/next version works much better than the one I already bought... Right. Got it.

I can't count on Pinnacle to deliver a quality product for a few hundred dollars, BUT if I give them $40-50,000, then they really, really will deliver a quality product. Honest.

He who is faithful in little, is faithful in much......you can take it from there.

Thank you.

Maybe they call it blue because you'd have to be a little ligh headed and turning blue to blow $40-50,000 on a solution.

Kentwolf,

You assume I am bashing Vegas. I am not. I know it's a capable editor. I use it and I love it. Still I stand by what I said. If anyone what to trade their Liquid Blue machine for my Dell 8100 with Vegas, I will do it in a second. Of course, no one who owns a Liquid Blue machine would be stupid enough to do that.

Organism Seven wanted to know if Liquid Blue was an alternative to Vegas. It's not. They are in two totally different markets. Liquid blue does not compete against Avid Xpress like Vegas does, it competes against Avid Media Composer. Perhaps it doesn't do that well, but I leave that to users Liquid and Media Composer to say.

I know that Pinnacle has a bad reputation in the consumer market. I am a former user of one of Pinnacle's prosumer products.

However, I do not buy your experience as Pinnacle Studio user, as a compelling argument against Liquid Blue. Studio is a $199 entry level video editing product. I don't suppose that many users of Pinnacle studio have to edit and output Digital Betacam or uncompressed 601 video. Pinnacle makes most of its money from its broadcast products. You don't buy Liquid Blue at Best Buy. You buy it straight from Pinnacle. They have different sales staff, different support staff and different engineers. It's a completely different customer experience with different expectations.

Mitsubishi make cars, beer and nuclear power plants. To use your argument, it would be like saying, I don't like Mitsubishi's beer, their cars must stink.

I mentioned its reputation in Europe, because that's where most of the users are. That's why it's hard to find out info on Liquid Blue in the US other than from Pinnacle. You would probably have better luck if you could read German.

BillyBoy, why would anyone spend $50K on a solution? I would guess they are probably doing different projects that you are. I think the intended market for Liquid Blue is news facilities, where they have a deadline everday at 5, 6 and 11PM and are many video formats. I know that Vegas is routinely being used professionally, but I doubt if there's one place in the country where it's being used in the above circumstances. If you know of a place, I'd love to hear about it and so would Sonic Foundry. By the way, I like your tutorials.

Sincerely,
Buster

You missed the point. Which is: WHAT is this topic doing in the Vegas forum?

People using Vegas and similar applications aren't using or about to switch to blue, purple or pink anything that costs tens of thousands of dollars.

In the last few days the "noise" level is increasing. Again, WHO CARES about blue, purple or pink HERE, in this fourm? I'm sure blue is just wonderful for what it does, but what it does has little if any bearing on what Vegas and this forum was intended for.

For sure, I and others are guilty of posting off -topic threads once in awhile, but those are meant usually as humor or hopefully deal with some PC related topic some may benefit from and they don't happen that often. I for one don't want to see this forum shift focus and get into too many more generalized video editing topics or its usefulness gets diminished.