gnips - seriously, uninstall Pinnacle and throw it away. Don't give someone else unless they are an enemy.


Several other posts about how Pinnacle is "easier"... well, I must say that the first few days of using Vegas Studio I was a little overwhelmed, but that's just because it has so many more features.

If you want REALLY SIMPLE, use XP Movie Maker, that is very easy to use. Not powerful, but it is stable, but doesn't compare to Vegas Studio.

One last comment: I wish Sony would change the name (again) of Vegas Studio to something that doesn't have the word STUDIO in it so that it wouldn't at all be confusing to someone thinking about Pinnacle STUDIO.

Where did I say I wanted REALLY SIMPLE?

However some projects are really simple, and the thing is getting it to a DVD with least effort, and the Studio concept is good at that. If it worked. But so far not a single version have, all have had stability problems, with current version S10 it is not even possible.

For more advanced projects I see many powerful features in VMS, and it really does work, so it was not meant as a negative comment. So far I am very impressed with VMS.


/Olle

gnips - sorry, I just meant the "throw away Pinnacle" comment to you, the rest of my post was just general comments.

Its not about being simple, its about being intuitive. With Pinnacle's Studio you just start the project, move through the project, move to DVD creation, it flows intuitively. When it works that is. Vegas with DVD Architect is way more powerful, I agree. But all it can do is not always necessary. Sometimes you want a straight forward intuitive process.

The best example is not Pinnacle's Studio however when it comes to DVD creation. TMPG DVD Authoring however is. No its not as powerful as DVD Architect. Thank goodness too.

I have several customers for whom I am converting VHS to DVD. They do not want nor do they need fancy menues. In fact fancy menu systems would confuse them. They want to do two things, have a play all button AND have buttons that take them to particular clips of events-time periods. I can do those menues in TMPG with my eyes closed. Customized and all. I'm still figuring it out in DVD Architect.

Simple does not mean simpleton. Sometimes simple is exactly what we need and exactly what customers need.

And in that arena, DVD Architect does not do so well.

To me I don't care how "simple" it is if it crashes and burns all the time; and, that is EXACTLY what Pinnacle Studio does. Thus, rather than continue to beat my head against a wall and hold my breath, I made the switch to VMS.

Once you spend some time with the product and get to know it, you will come to appreciate the rock solidness of it and you won't even be thinking about "simple" anymore.

One of the things that's amazed me for a long time is that when you read reviews of video editing apps in the computer mags (Computer Shopper, PC World...), they consistantly rave about Pinnacle and Adobe. I can't imagine that these programs (especially Pinnacle) work any better, or are any more stable, on the test beds that they use for their testing. I've made a few poor purchases (translated to "waste of good money to my wife!) by relying on these reviews.

Hi jsmiddleton4,

you might want to look at the 'show me how' in DVD Architect Studio 3.

To create the Play All button: you can look at the 'How To Create Playlist' tutorial there.


HTH

Thanks and I certainly will look at it. The point is in TMPG DVD-A you don't have to learn anything. And I know and understand how that sounds. The template is already in place. If you don't want the play all button, you just delete it. Its that simple. And that is the point. If I'm going to tackle a learning curve, I'm going to go the whole way and get the high end package whether it be Vegas or Liquid Edition, etc. If I'm going to invest in a learning curve, I want to come out the other side with being able to really do some stuff.

But I'm not trying to become Stephen Speilberg. I just want to capture some video, clean it up, burn a DVD. Something a lot of other folks want to do too. Vegas is a great program no doubt. It is not "capture some video, clean it up, burn a DVD" however. I've played with it for a couple of days now. It does have a learning curve and the screen gets way too busy. My focus is on the video, not all the various tools. And with Vegas the video seems to take a back seat to all the other tools. It makes you focus on it, not the video. They are powerful tools, stable tools, wonderful tools most certainly. But they all distract from what I want to see and that is my video, what is happening to it, what does it look like. It should be front and center and easy to watch, not stuck in some little window, stuck in a time line view, etc.

Vegas is obviously stable and a powerful tool. Its got a way to go before I could say its user friendly.

Jim

My progression:

Studio 8 w/Windows 98SE --> frequent crashes, freezes, many wasted hours, newly-coined cusswords, nervous breakdown and receding hairline

--> new homebuilt computer still with Windows 98SE (I know, I know....) and similar, but different problems with Studio 8

--> New O/S (Windows XP Pro) and a release of Studio 8 that was reasonably stable. Occasional crashes, frequent unexplained A/V sync problems after rendering/burning DVDs

--> Sony Screenblast, mainly for editing, as the reports I read about MyDVD for DVD authoring left me so unimpressed that I never loaded the latter. Rock solid, never a crash or error message

--> Studio 9 - improved performance with A/V sync, and, eventually, a version that reliably could take the entire path from capture to DVD without failure, frustration or ridiculous workarounds.

--> Vegas 5/DVD Architect 2

--> Vegas 6/DVD Architect 3

I still have my "working" version of Studio 9 installed, and use it occasionally to generate a Smart Sound track for a clip. It also -- miraculously -- is able to capture usable files in MPEG-2, which I do once in a great while. I am afraid to update to the current release of Studio 9 or Studio 9 Plus, for fear that something will stop working, which is almost guaranteed with any Studio release.

And, by the way -- you'll NEVER see a thread like this on the Pinnacle boards, with users telling horror story after horror story about their refugee status from Sony software. You'll may see the occasional post about trying Vegas Movie Studio and thinking Pinnacle is easier, or has more features, but that's about it.

Well, I don't know if I can call it "switched", but I used my father's Pinnacle 8 for a while. I never actually had any issues with it, so it's not a question of the bugs that a lot of people talk about... but once I tried the demo for VMS I really preferred that for a lot of reasons so I bought it and now have the Platinum version.

I switched from Pinnacle Studio last year, and have never been happier. Pinnacle Studio is the crappiest piece of software I have ever made the mistake of using. It never worked the same way twice (really!), crashed all the time, and lost features when upgrading. I'm a software engineer by profession, and if my company's software were as low quality as Pinnacle Studio, we'd be out of business.

Vegas Studio is, by comparison, easy to use, better-featured, much more robust, and a lot of fun to use.

I'm not trying to defend Studio by the way. In fact I've gotten in trouble on the Pinnacle Studio forum for being so brutally honest about its bugs and the way Pinnacle treats its user base as unpaid beta testers. I'm very unhappy with it all.

The comments about Pinnacle's forum are not exactly accurate. There are several threads right now about comparing Vegas+DVD to Studio 9 and Studio 10. Its more open than the comments here imply.

My evaluation is focused simply on Vegas.

I have a Canopus AVDC 300 and capturing with it solved alot of my problems with lockups in Studio. Studio still has its inexcusable bugs mind you. But once I started using the AVDC to capture, the lockups, dropped frames, corrupt frames, etc., that caused problems, all those problems dissappeared. Studio does not capture well.

And forget Studio as an illustration for what I am talking about cause I'm really not and have no intention of defending Studio. Look at Final Cut Pro or Liquid Edition as examples of the video being the focus and the software tools being secondary.

> One of the things that's amazed me for a long time is that when you read reviews of video editing apps in the computer mags (Computer Shopper, PC World...), they consistantly rave about Pinnacle and Adobe.

That’s because you have mistaken a “review” for what is the textual equivalent of an “infomercial”. Check the advertising in those magazines. Look at the big full page adds from Pinnacle and Adobe. Reviewers are not allowed to say anything bad about their advertisers.

One of those on-line magazines (PC World I think) has a user comment section on the reviews. They did a review of Studio 8 and gave it a 9 out of 10. There were so many negative comments with horror stories that they actually had to print a retraction and lower their review to a 5 due to readers demanding they come clean. It was pretty funny to see.

Most of those reviews are a reprint of the marketing rubbish that’s on the box. They make a 10 minute project and wax poetic about how great the software is. They don’t even scratch the surface and many times the reviewer isn’t even qualified to judge software in that particular category (having no experience to compare it to anything else)

Never trust a review in a magazine where the product being reviewed is a major advertiser.

> The comments about Pinnacle's forum are not exactly accurate. There are several threads right now about comparing Vegas+DVD to Studio 9 and Studio 10. Its more open than the comments here imply.

I just went back to look and almost peed my pants laughing so hard. Nothing has changed. The fanboys are still telling the people who are jumping ship that they should wait for the next update to make things right. LOL. I’ve been waiting for the next update since 2001 and I can safely say it ain’t coming!

Maura is still touting how her version of Studio has no bugs and never crashes. Jim, You even called her on it in the "When, fix for S9+ ?" thread. She uses tons of workarounds don’t let her kid you. I loved your comment, "So... if a surgeon cut off your leg by mistake you'd be okay with it because you could learn to limp as a work around?". It’s nice to see some things never change. Who say’s you can never go home again. ;-)

Jim, unlike Studio and Liquid Edition, the GUI for Vegas Movie Studio and Vegas 6+DVD is identical. You don’t have to buy Vegas if you don’t need it right now. You can buy VMS (which has more tutorials to guide you along) and upgrade to the full Vegas later (at a discount so no money lost) and not have to relearn a single thing. I would seriously consider that as your plan of action. I think you’ll be happier that way.

~jr

From Jim

They are powerful tools, stable tools, wonderful tools most certainly. But they all distract from what I want to see and that is my video, what is happening to it, what does it look like. It should be front and center and easy to watch, not stuck in some little window, stuck in a time line view, etc.

It's been a while since I gave up on Studio, but at the time I'd have said that it was the opposite way round. All I was doing with Studio was putting the raw footage into some sort of order on the storyboard, adding a few transitions and then hitting the go button. It was very simple and intuitive, but the results were rubbish because I was focused on the work flow rather than the video - I never did any real editing! With VMS I was forced to pay attention to the video because it was the only way of telling what was going on! Now that I'm more proficient with the VMS toolset I can easily "capture some video, clean it up, burn a DVD", but I've got the option of fixing the cracks and giving it a good polish with only a little more effort! The tools are no longer distracting, they're just available.

Ian G.

JR is right about the mag reviews.
The same is true in the gaming industry...you get the review you pay for. The more you pay for advertising, the better review your game(s) will get.

(And whatever you do, DON'T let your marketing guy p.o. the editors. )

Ed: I also switched to Vegas Studio (aka Screenblast) from Pinnacle Studio 8 a couple years ago. Best software decision I ever made. I upgraded to Vegas 5 last year. hoo-ah!

Hi, I'm a longtime Pinnacle guy and just bought VMS+DVD. I have them on separate computers and actually have a little time to experiment. So this should be interesting. BTW, Pinnacle Studio always worked for me, but only after I completely dedicated a desktop computer. Studio was literally the only program on it (other than Windows XP), and it wasn't even connected to the internet. And I only output to DV tape, never tried to DVD.

Like some of the others here, I started with Pinnacle DC10, a fairly reliable product that was a breeze to use. I stuck with them through later versions, even when Studio DV never worked at all... and finally woke up and smelled the coffee two weeks ago.

and yes, SmartSound and auto scene detect (based on content change, not time code) are the two features I miss the most. I recaptured a wedding tape shot 7 years ago, and wound up with a two-hour clip. The thumbnails throughout still give an indication of what's happening on the smaller scale, though.

After buying SVMS6+DVD, I immediately upgraded old software to get Acid Music Studio and Audio Studio. They seem to all play very nicely together.

Some people, like myself, only keep pinnacle loaded to generate the occasional SmartSound music.

I converted from the various versions, patches and incantations of pinnacle to Vegas6 + DVD about 3 months ago. I'm sure glad I didn't throw a bunch more money away on Liquid Edition in hopes of better performance!

Re making a simple DVD as you described... I bought the VMS+DVD Plat 6.0 box yesterday late afternoon, copied some home Hi-8 stuff off DVD (created in DVD Recorder), ran it through simple editing in VMS, and had produced two iterations of a complete "home movie" DVD by early morning. I have never produced video of any kind before.

Besides rendering and burning, I did spend most of that time struggling with how to make the simple menu interface. The key is to use the Single Movie project type, insert the movie, and then before doing anything else, create the chapter markers. Then when you right-click on the mpg file, you can choose "Insert Scene Selection Menu", and the menu page will be created with all the buttons already labelled.

That's the absolute simplest way, though I ended up re-creating the buttons manually anyway for aesthetic reasons. Having completed the chapter markers, it was very easy to add/modify link targets to the buttons from the pull-downs.

This software package is an UNBELIEVABLE value, not just compared to others in the same category, but ANY software that I have used. Maybe Photoshop compares, and I haven't tried any Adobe video software for many years. In fact, I gave up trying to capture Hi-8 and work with it in Premiere about 10 years ago.

I am completely amazed and happy that with this software, I can just "do" and not be always fighting the tools.

I am in the process of switching from Studio 8 to Movie Studio - DVD and have a question or many. The biggest one I have is, can I use my Pinnacle AVDV capture card with Vegas? If the answer is no, then I guess my next question is, what would be a good card or external box to purchase if I want to be able to import AV now and DV/HDV later?

In general -- there may be exceptions -- Pinnacle hardware uses proprietary drivers, and probably can't be used with VMS. If someone has specific information about your particular device, perhaps they'll chime in and correct me.

One option you have would be to continue to capture with your Pinnacle card in S8, if you're capturing to DV AVI and achieve acceptible results. VMS would be able to read and use your files.

I have the Studio AV/DV card and I can capture using the Vegas capture utility but it only recognizes the resolution as 320x240 or something similar. By changing the capture pin settings to anything higher causes VegasCap to crash with an error. It will capture for a few seconds but anything more than about 1 minute causes it to crash and capture file to be corrupt.

For the time being, I still use Studio 9 to capture but, in standard pinnacle style, it refuses randomly. I'm starting to run out of sacrificial cats... :-)