video factory stability?

moron wrote on 6/24/2003, 10:15 PM
Howdy. I recently picked up a copy of Pinnacle Studio 8 AV which happens to come with the DC10+ analog capture card. I've been playing around with it and so far have a rather low opinion of some of the functionality and especially stability (completely sucks comes to mind) and thought I would take another boo around for comparable options. I just noticed VideoFactory while seeing if I could even remotely afford Vegas and was very impressed by the demo (markers, intelligent clip placement behaviour, YES!!!).

=)

Now what I am curious about is how folks are finding stability and performance issues under 98SE and XP (which I plan to upgrade to soon to get around the 4 gig filesize limit). Is this software solid? Any crash or file corruption issues I should know about? How about performance - I have an Asus A7V333 with 512 megs RAM and an Athlon XP1800 in it. Currently everything is on a single 80 gig drive but I will be trying to add a second 120gig for data in the next month or so. Does this sound adequate for Video Factory?

How does Video Factory handle large / complicated projects - i.e. can you edit an hour or two of video on the same timeline without things going crash boom?

Any limitations I need to know up front?

For anyone who has used Studio 8, how do you think these two apps compare?

Oh, and last question, are there any bundled analog capture card offerings from Sonic Foundry that are comparable to Studio AV?

Cheers!

http://industrial.org
http://deterrent.net
http://ampfea.org
http://codegrunt.com

whomever dies with the most URLs wins!

Comments

DCS wrote on 6/25/2003, 12:38 AM
I've used a half dozen different editors and Sonic foundry is the best over all hands down. I do however use Studio 8 for title graphics and hollywood fx. Get the Video Factory. You'll be big time happy with it.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/25/2003, 1:35 AM
You can read my comparison of Studio 8 vs. VideoFactory 2 here. I found VideoFactory after I got into the “rendering loop of death” scenario in Studio 7 where it just keeps rendering, and re-rendering, and re-rendering. I had to recreate the entire project and I did it in Videofactory in only a few nights. It didn’t freeze once and it rendered the very first time. I’ve never used Studio for editing again. I just use it for Hollywood FX and SmartSound now. I’ve since upgraded to Vegas 4+DVD but you can’t go wrong with VideoFactory. It's the most stable software I've ever used. Take a look at the Canopus ADVC-50 or ADVC-100 for a solid analog capture solution.

~jr
IanG wrote on 6/25/2003, 2:13 AM
I'm another convert from Studio, pushed over the edge by its instability and narrow O/S and platform support. So far the worst problem I've had was what I can only describe as weird behaviour after I installed an old demo version of Vegas. Reregistering the dlls took about 5 mins and fixed it for good. Other than that it's been rock solid on 98SE, Win2k Pro and XP Pro.

As for functionality, I tried redoing my first VF project in Studio and didn't get close!

Cheers

Ian G.

discdude wrote on 6/25/2003, 8:44 AM
I'll also vouch for Video Factory's stability. I've gotten it to crash on me but it crashes much less than Adobe Premiere (which I was using before Video Factory). Your proposed system specs sound fine as well.
dand9959 wrote on 6/25/2003, 10:23 AM
I'm a recent Studio 8 refugee. I wrestled with that software for 8 months before finally throwing my hands up (No, I'm not a French soldier) and walking/stomping away. After some research I found VideoFactory and now I kick myself for all the hours wasted with S8 when I could have been using VF. This sw is rock solid. I've never made it crash...it has always performed solidly even during continuous 5-6 hour editing sessions.

Watch out for the MPEG-2 gotcha, though. VF does not come enabled to render to mpeg2, you have to buy it separately ($30). I usually render to AVI and let other DVD authoring tools do the mpeg conversions.
briggins wrote on 6/25/2003, 10:30 AM
I'll throw in my vote for the quality and functionality of this code. FYI, I use Sony's Screenblast, which from what I can tell is VF 2.0c, and it is not only highly stable, the functionality it provides when compared to other packages in its price range is untouchable - it easily competes with S/W costing several times more. I'm running XP Pro on a 1GHz machine and VF has performed almost flawlessly.

Buy it - you won't be disappointed.

clouds wrote on 6/25/2003, 12:53 PM
I've been working for tens of hours on a video with VF on both an 800MHz AMD W98SE machine, 640MB, 60MB HDD, and a 1.6GHz P4 XP Home machine, 768MB, 120 + 20 HDD, machine and have (don't court bad luck) never had it crash. Truly exceptional stability!
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/27/2003, 7:37 AM
> Watch out for the MPEG-2 gotcha, though. VF does not come enabled to render to mpeg2, you have to buy it separately ($30). I usually render to AVI and let other DVD authoring tools do the mpeg conversions.

I’ve commented on this before. VF $69 + MPEG-2 $30 = $99. Studio is $99, VideoStudio is $99, VideoWave is $99, etc. So VF costs the same as its competitors after you add the MPEG-2 encoder. As you pointed out, what’s nice about this is that your DVD authoring software probably already has an MPEG-2 encoder that you paid for (and perhaps the same one since everyone is using MainConcept these days) so VF gives you the option of saving a few bucks.

~jr