Yes, Welcome to the family.

It’s nice to see that some people refuse to put up with the incredible amount of bugs and instability in the Pinnacle software and are deciding to switch. I’m always amazed at how many people spend years trying to get Studio to work instead of just dropping it and getting VideoFactory/MovieStudio. I only lost two projects before I switch 2 1/2 years ago. Pinnacle support told me they couldn’t fix the problem with my project file and I had to start over. So I started over in VideoFactory and never looked back. ;-)

~jr

what amazes me even more is the handful of users that want to tell you how great Pinnacle is when you voice your concern on their forums.

I guess they just have not seen MS 3.0 .... it must stink only having one video track <grin> oh... and no picture in picture!

... or no chroma key, or no ulcers, or no system crashes, or no support, or no coasters ...

Well, all of you (soon to be -- us) disgruntled Pinnacle users ought to go the their forum and tell 'em you've removed their software from your system. The like to beat their chests and drone on and on about their 7 million installed user base, which is meaningless, because it doesn't address people who ran away screaming after dealing with Studio's instability and inability for so long.

I have lots of programs that I've "installed" but never use, and I don't want to be counted as a satisfied customer just because I loaded a program at one time.

I’m not sure posting to the Pinnacle forum will have any effect. There are lots of “whiners” over there and you might just be shrugged off as one of them. If you write a real truthful append that is level-headed and clearly articulates why Screenblast is better, Pinnacle will just delete it so why bother.

If you want to make an impact, you might want to go to amazon.com, pricegrabber.com, epinions.com, etc. and write a review against Studio and for Screenblast. Amazon even lets you suggest products “instead” of another. You might wan to add support for recommending Screenblast instead of Studio. Those are the things I look for (in addition to visiting a product’s forums) when I go to buy.

You want to influence people before they buy otherwise people will spend an unbelievable amount of time trying to justify their purchase rather than admitting that they made a bad one. It’s just human nature.

~jr

epinons and amazon are great consumer resources.

I use epinions for pretty much everything I buy now. Since we've throw a few consumer resources out here, I'd like to offer another that gives you excellent opportunties to take advantage of rebates and sales at Staples, Office Max, Circuit City, etc.. pretty much most retailers and online shops - this isnt a sales post- just a link to a price engineering website:

www.spoofee.com

for bargains i check these sites:

http://www.techbargains.com/
http://www.salescircular.com/

also the hot deals forum at http://www.fatwallet.com/ is an obvious one.

JohnnyRoy.

My suggestion to write Pinnacle was borderline wistful. The point was that they consider every installation to be a lifetime satisfied customer and put another notch in the bedpost for every one. Personally, I want my notch filled in with plastic wood.

They have their heads in the sand or up their tushes. When their forum moderator suggests that the majority of their customer base is happy with Studio 8 and the only reason that there are a lot of negative posts in the forum is because it's a support forum, it flies in the face of what I see here. This is a support forum, too, and I see only a fraction of frustrated, angry and digusted posts criticizing this product. The Pinnacle boards are filled with 'em, and new ones come in every day.

When he looks at the negative reviews -- "9" is the number he acknowledged last week -- on amazon.com, he says that people who are satisfied with a product don't write reviews. It's only the complainers who write reviews. Well, look at the Screenblast reviews on amazon. They're overwhelmingly positive, with an average of 4 out of 5 stars versus Studio's 2. So there's another argument out the window.

There's no point in writing something reasoned to post on their site. I may or may not write anything at all if & when I break with S8. If I do, it will be along the lines of "I'm voting with my feet." It will be clear that I'm not to be counted in their user base, and I wish everybody who has abandoned Pinnacle could be recognized by them.

I hear ya. I agree their excuse that this is a support form is ridiculous. For it to be a support forum, people would actually have to be getting some kind of support! ;-) All they get is excuses or unanswered questions. So that tells ya’ right there that a product is in trouble when most requests go unanswered. I only use Studio for Hollywood FX and SmartSound. I wish that Screenblast could have this capability. It’s too bad that it doesn’t. Then I wouldn’t need Studio at all.

Actually, if Sony wanted to go head-to-head with Studio 8, they could include SmartSound Quicktracks (like Studio), A lite version of Pixelan Spices (like Studio’s Alpha Magic) and a lite version of Boris FX. (i.e., Boris made a lite version called Factory that you can plug into Ulead Video Studio). I’m not sure Boris Factory is as good as Hollywood FX basic (I know it isn’t as good as the Hollywood FX Pro that I have) but it would be a start.

Even if they fixed all the bugs in Studio I couldn’t go back to it as an editor because I’m too spoiled with multiple video tracks and could never work with just one again. I also think the workflow in Screenblast is better and being able to just drag and drop from the windows explorer is also something I love about Screenblast but Studio is sorely missing.

~jr

I'm glad that at least I didn't pay for Studio 8 (free with rebate). I would have been very upset if I did. What was surprising that Studio 8 actually worked for me a little while, then for the life of me I could not get to work again.

I was going crazy trying to get to work, then I decided to read user's comments on cnet and amazon. To my surprise, users confirmed my fustration. I found Video Factory from one of the user's comment. Thank Goodness!


Now if I can only solve this next issue, no more Studio 8.

I still have Studio 8 on my computer because (this is weird) it allows me to bring in my digital camera avi files into VideoFactory (old ScreenBlast).
What would happen is when I open avi files from digital camera (no problem with camcorder) only the sound part of the files came through. Would appreciate any suggestion as to why this could happen.

Great forum
Tom

You might have a missing codec. Have a play with GSpot and see if that tells you anything useful.

Ian G.

I prefer to be amongst the silent majority...quietly enjoying MS3, getting the job done, learning and teaching others about it. This forum is a great place.

You might be missing a DV codec. I had the same problem when I uninstalled Studio 8. I think Studio replaces the Microsoft DV codec with its own but forgets to put things back the way they were when it uninstalls. I don’t know how to get the Microsoft DV codec back (perhaps someone else here does) but there is a freely available Panasonic DV codec that you can use instead. Just do a search for it on Google.com.

~jr