Since SoFo won't do anything to market Vegas, pirating is pretty much the most viral way the word about Vegas will spread.

How many times have to told someone you use Vegas and their look turns to scorn because they think you're using a toy? They immediatly jump to the conclusion that you can't do what the final cut or avid folks can do.

When I'm courting a prospective client and they ask me what I use to edit with, I say "Oh, everything's done on the Avid". I don't even have Avid. When all is said and done, I shock and amaze them by telling them it was done on Vegas. But you can't get your foot in the door with a name like "Vegas".

There's two things hurting Vegas professionals:

1. Nobody has ever heard of it.
2. It has a stupid name. How can you take a name like "Vegas" seriously?

Matt.

PS. I own a legal copy of V4 and DVDA. I don't want this thread turning into an insane anti-piracy free-for all like that one a few months ago. Piracy is bad. Piraters should go to jail.

PPS.
If a software company doesn't make a bulletproof keygenerator, they are basically setting themselves up for failure. The pirates will take advantage.

Yes, Piracy is bad. I say that every time some friends of mine ask me why I pay for software.

Sheesh...

Craig

I am a long time subscriber to Videomaker Mag. I sent them a email this month asking why the do not go out and get or ask for vegas and review it. If you measured by the labor hour Pinnacle must have cost me $10000.00 Not to mention the costs of the products. I don't see anything wrong with the name just personal. I sincerely deeply resent Pinnacle esp. ver 8 deluxe. I just ripped the card out of my machine and will be selling everything on ebay tomorrow.

Hi Bear,

Are you saying that you had to 'throw away' your Pinnacle Firewire card to get Vegas working? I too have walked away from Pinnacle in frustration - literally stumbling upon Vegas by accident. However I cannot 'capture' or 'print to tape' and am starting to wonder if my Pinnacle firewire card is the culprit.

I got it as part of the Studio7 package. Funny thing is I can capture using Scenanalyzer, and at the moment am using Studio7 to make my DV tape.

I have been using my Pinnacle Studio Seven 1394 card for about a year, now. First with VV3.0B, all the way up to and now including V4. Never had a problem that I can trace to the card. I threw the software away. Trash has its place. My card, at least, is fine.

I have a Pinnnacle card that came with Studio 6. No problems with capture or print to tape except when I had the wrong driver installed. I works fine with VV4 + DVD.

Look at the properties and let me know which driver you have installed.

Pinnacle SUCKS! A few years ago I installed it into my new DELL and it screwed up everything! I was Pissed!

Thanks all - that's comforting!

Vern, I'll have a look at the driver issue at home tonight (slaving away over a hot keyboard in the office at the moment!)

Wayne

try using canupos card.... it works well.

Hi Vern,

I had a look at the drivers and found the following:

C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS\1394bus.sys
C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS\arp1394.sys
C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS\enum1394.sys
C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS\nic1394.sys
C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS\ohci1394.sys

Provider is Microsoft.

Cheers,
Wayne

I have the Pinnacle studio 8 deluxe with the firewire/analog card that came with it and had no problem capturing into Vegas with it. I pulled the card and put in a SIIG fireire card so I cold sell the Pinnacle package to someone else. I am going to put the DC10 card back in today to see if I can analog out to vcrs, right now I make SVHS and VHS Tapes by going through my Sony digital 8 camera I am going to see if I can get the output through the DC 10 card, if not I will sell that anchor as well. I still get agitated thinkg about Pinnacle I went through Studio 400, DC 10, Studio7 and studio 8 deluxe always having faith and thinking it would get better. It never did and now I realize what a idiot I was to keep on plugging. I am 55 and have been around computer since the first PC's came down the line, considered well versed in software yet like PT Barnum said this sucker kept on coming back.

Bear, unless you are running Studio software, you won't be able to output through the DC10plus. It needs Studio.

I have been one of the lucky ones with Pinnacle. I have two computers running STudio software and the DC10plus card (and a generic firewire card). Never had any problems other than the know bugs that were fixed in Studio 7.

I use Vegas as well. They each have their place.

Dave T2

Dave I was thinking of putting the DC 10 card back in and use it to send my video out to svhs and vhs vtr's I can render in avi in vv4 and thought if I put in the pinnacle dc 10 software just to send the avi's out to tape. Do you think I cannot do that? I was going to dig the manual out tomorrow and see. I do a lot of video editing and the majority of my customers still want vhs copies and I just hate to run everything through my Sony camera.

rllagas:

Are you by any chance Singapore or you from elsewhere?
Im Norwegian student in Singapore, well my wife is currently Singaporen of course.

How long have you been using Vegas?
Since im student i got the greate bundle offer from Treassure Production at Funan, wher ei only paid S$699 for the academic bundle, oh man i really like Vegas, i have been using Vegas 4 - Beta for some time, but now i finally got the full version but in v3 tho.

Frankie
Singapore
frank_jarle@hotmail.com (mark the email Vegas Video)

Bear, the problem you will run into is that the DC10 will only output MJPEG format to VHS so your DV video will need to be converted before you can output to tape. Since the DV is 720x480 (NTSC) and the DC10’s highest resolution is 640x480 it will also be resized. This means long rendering times. You’re better off using your camera to print to tape or keep the Pinnacle Deluxe board for printing to tape. I have both the Pinnacle Deluxe and the DC10+ so I feel your pain.

An alternate plan would be to sell the Pinnacle Deluxe board (as you suggested) and buy a Canopus ADVC100 (around the same price) and a firewire card. This will allow you to capture and playback DV video to VHS tape the same as the Pinnacle board, but it doesn’t require proprietary software and works with any application that supports firewire. This is what I’d buy if I had to do it over. Then I could print to VHS tape from the Vegas timeline without using my camcorder.

~jr

Thanks Johnny your saved me work. I started out with Studio 400 then got sucked into the Avio system, the system is decent but it costs about two grand a year to keep it upgraded. I bought the DC 10 card and program then the Studio 7 and the studio 8 Honestly after the problems with 7 and 8 I am soured on anything Pinnacle and would not buy from them again. I tried Premiere and it is a bit confusing unless you use it all the time. I bought Video Factory whick I liked and just upgraded to VV4+DVD I cannot believe how nice they are to work with and how friendly everyone is here on the boards. The Pinnicale boards have turned into a nightmare of complaints. I am going to put the Pinnacle stuff on ebay tomorrow and let some one else work with it. I am disabled (legs) and I hate to admit how much of my limited income I have wasted with these people. I do however love video editing and look forward to doing it for a long time.
Thanks again.

Hi Bear,

I feel (and share your pain). I actually started with 200, then 'graduated' to 400. About then I got so disillusioned I put the magic blue box in a cupboard and tried to forget the whole sorry episode.

Then early last year bought a DV camcorder and Studio7. I think I came back into it at the time Studio7 actually started to stabilize but then made the huge mistake of upgrading to Studio8.

I've just discovered Vegas and what a revelation!!!!

Wayne

Actually, I found Studio Director 200 to be a quite stable program. As anyone who has worked with the program knows, it is a linear editor, and works by allowing you to capture lo-res thumbnails of scene detection points. You then work up your EDL using these thumbnails as a guide - you can edit these timings or create new edit points of your own.

The program then merely controls your source and destination machines to assemble a 2nd generation copy. I always thought it quite fun to watch the thing work . . . there was an external box that could generate fades and text and mix them into that final copy.

It was really an ingenious bit of work, if you ask me, and amazingly accurate when properly set up and used with a timecode capable camcorder.. I think Pinnacle purchased rather than developed Studio Director 200. Studio 400 was their upgrade which never worked right in my setup. I would work up a program in s400, and, invariably, it would skip a title overlay or two (never the same title, either . . . totally unpredictable).

S400's user interface was almost identical to that found in their Studio DV and S7 products - and, although final assembly was still based on Studio Director 200's linear, 2nd generation concept, it was somewhat a hybrid in that you could preview a lo-res version of your video in "real" time.

Unfortunately, the product suffered from inherent and unpredictable timing inaccuracies.

The advangate of those two old programs was that you could handle an unending amount of footage because you weren't loading any of it onto your computer, and, if you started with a DV source, second generation copies weren't all that bad (obviously no match for 1st generation DV footage, though).

Sometimes, for fun, I still pull out that stuff and fire it up. Hard to believe it was cutting edge in its time . . . also hard to comprehend how far editing has come in such a short time. I think I paid $199 for Studio Director 200 (you can now download the program for free from Pinnacle, but it's useless without the mixer box).

Now, you can own Vegas for a similar sum. Truly amazing.

Caruso

frankie,
am just new at vegas, i got it during the last sitex2002 show and instantly bought it even though i got no passion in video editing..... i then loved it and now addicted to it....i am now a hobbyist of vegas.... and thinking sometimes to share the samples with my friends so they would buy it as well instead of any other video editing software.... i had also ordered the V4+DVD upgrade recently and i really can't wait recieving it.... oh men!!!

rllagas:

My first meeting with Vegas was sometime ago when a swedish friend of me said that he was using video Factory, he also mention Avid to me, but that was way out of my budget. so when i moved to Singapore i saw they were selling Vegas in an Academic bundleSo i just decided to buy it, of course my wife had to pay for me lah :)

So now im working on a small project, that i gonna send to my parents and family, i hope they will enjoy it :)

Frankie
Singapore

I own Steinberg's Cubase SX and am pissed off because people who own a pirated version don't have to use the infamous dongle (which causes a lot of problems in many systems).
I like companies like SO FO that don't treat customers as suspected criminals.
But push those companies too much and we will all end up with 10 or 20 dongles attached to our computers, and will spend much of our creative time troubleshooting.

I purchased software that required a dongle once... just once. Most of my software gets installed on my desktop and laptop. After getting to work and forgetting the dongle at home and having to drive back to get it, I vowed never to buy any software that required a dongle again. In fact, I make sure I write the manufacturer a letter explaining that I selected their competition over them because of their insulting copy protection policy. The Cubase dongle is the #1 reason to buy Cakewalk Sonar instead.

Any law officer will tell you that locks keep honest people out. They have little effect on a criminal that really wants to get in. Thank you SoFo for not insulting us with a dongle.

~jr