OT - Question for former DV Studio owners

PeterWright wrote on 11/18/2003, 7:42 AM

A relative has, against my advice, bought Pinnacle DVStudio 8 - to use on her laptop.

It comes with its own PCI card, but will the software still work with a PCMCIA Firewire card in a laptop?

I'm hoping the answer's no - because if so, the retailer mislead her and she should be able to take it back.

Thanks for any information.

Comments

jester700 wrote on 11/18/2003, 8:24 AM

DV Studio USED to be limited to only working with its own card, but they stopped that about the time they started selling software-only versions; around version 7, I think.

Actually, I think Studio is a fine app, if you only need one video track and don't want to get too fancy. The interface is intuitive. But I do recommend getting the LATEST patch of whatever version you get; early revisions of new versions have been buggy.

johnmeyer wrote on 11/18/2003, 10:15 AM

I agree that it is a very fine application, although all versions of Studio have been buggy. It is far simpler to learn than anything else on the market, and for someone that just wants to do simple cuts, a few transitions, titles, and background music or narration, it is just the ticket. It should work with the laptop firewire.

hugoharris wrote on 11/18/2003, 10:23 AM

Unfortunately, even with simple projects, it's unpredictably buggy (speaking from experience). Furthermore, if you compare side-by-side projects encoded with Vegas to projects encoded with Studio, the difference is striking - the Studio output really looks awful on DVD. By the way, it's not just on this forum that you'll hear from disgruntled former Studio users. Visit Pinnacle's forum and see how stable it's latest version is...

I not familiar with Screenblast, but if the underlying video and encoding engine is the same as Vegas, it seems like a no-brainer for an entry level choice.

Kevin.

jester700 wrote on 11/18/2003, 1:28 PM

True about the output. I know through Studio 7 the MPEG sucked. It is supposedly better in 8, but I've not used that one.

I didn't have the issued others did. The original worked fine for me, and I did some goofy stuff, like capping low res to edit on my then-wimpy laptop, then porting project files to my desktop to recap in full res and render. Pretty hip! FWIW, I wrote to AVI and encoded with TMPGEnc.

But the original already had a bunch of patches when I got it, and I didn't use the early revisions of 7.

PeterWright wrote on 11/18/2003, 6:48 PM

Thanks guys - I'll pass that on. I suspect that the PCMCIA firewire card is not OHCI, and that's why she can't get it going.

My advice to her was to make sure the card was OHCI and to buy Screenblast (or Video Explosion) The retailer must have spun a few yarns ...