Product Description

Combining power and simplicity, Pinnacle Studio¿ MovieBox Ultimate unlocks the latest HD video technologies, including native Blu-Ray authoring and AVCHD editing. New Pinnacle Montage theme-based editing puts incredible creative power at your fingertips. Simply drag and drop your video and stills to preview your show ¿ complete with Hollywood style multi-layered effects, animated graphics, titles and Hi-Fi audio. Edit and polish to your heart¿s content with the sleek new interface. When you are finished, archive your video memories, publish them on YouTube or enjoy on DVDs and portable devices. Studio MovieBox Ultimate includes a high-speed USB 2.0 capture box with S-Video, Composite Video and Stereo Audio I/O connectors for analog capture. Also included is an on-board firewire port for the latest HDV/DV camcorders. In addition, it comes with a 5x6 foot greenscreen sheet for chromakey editing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #704 in Software
• Brand: Pinnacle Systems
• Model: 82301002871
• Released on: 2008-11-01
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 7.50" h x 7.50" w x 7.50" l, 2.50 pounds

Features

• Take control of your videos with professional strength editing tools valued at over $1000
• Capture, edit and burn: The complete native HD solution
• NEW theme-based editing gives you creative power
• Includes: Boris Graffiti, Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks, proDAD VitaScene + green sheet
• hi-speed USB2 capture box with audio, S-Video, composite video and firewire connector

Customer Reviews

Does the job, but with some problems
It works with Windows Vista 64 as promised, but there were a few problems:

1. During video capture, the video froze while the audio continued to be captured. This happens randomly after approximately 20 - 30 minutes. I had to repeat the video capture 4 times before the whole 2 hours of camcorder Hi8 tape was successfully captured.

2. The menu maker for the DVD did not work well. It created the first menu page correctly, but the second and third menu page was just a green background. I can still navigate to my selected scenes, but there were no images for the scenes, just green boxes and green background.

The version of Pinnacle Studio (version 12) is easy to use and intuitive enough for a video neophyte like me to make a decent DVD.

And here's a tip for the first time user. If you are capturing video from a camcorder and the video looks jumbled in the preview box, go to the settings page and check the "VCR input" checkbox. This is not checked for you by default. That should clear up your video.

Overall, it does the job adequately, but it's far from a polished product. If you're willing to live with the problems mentioned above, then it is good investment for making copies of your videos before the magnetic tapes deteriorate and you lose all the cherished memories of kids and family. Good luck.

Excellent for transferring VHS tapes into digital format
Just plug your VHS machine into the moviebox, and the moviebox into a USB-port on your computer. Then play the tape and push "record" on your screen. The resulting recording format is MPG or AVI, but you can convert this into many popular formats, including MP4 and DVD. You can edit the recorded files according to your wish. The only drawback is that it takes some time to convert the recorded files into other formats, and that it also takes a little time to learn the software. Conversion into other formats can be done overnight, and the software even can shut down your computer down after having finished the job.

The resulting quality is very good indeed. If you use the best quality, a MP4-file takes about one GB per 30 minutes. But it may be overkilling to use the highest quality for old VHS-tapes. I have not tried out the optimal quality level yet.

This combination of hardware and software really works! Previously, I have tried a simpler video capturing device. With that, the picure and the sound got unsynchronized, and the lines in the upper part of the picture got unstable. Not so here. Previous versions of Pinnacle Studio may have had a tendency to crash, but I havn't experienced this (yet!). After having installed the software, you can also upgrade to an updated version (v. 12.1) from Pinnacle's website.

Reliable video editing
If your goal is to edit home videos, this piece of gear will do the trick. I have not yet used the hardware, since I was able to directly transfer recordings from the firewire camera onto the computer, but I am assuming that the resulting quality when digitizing analog video will not suffer much. My review will then focus on the bundled software.

The video editing software is OK for most purposes. It will allow users to create pretty decent videos in no time, and deliver them in a variety of formats that range from DVDs to website-ready videos. It is not professional software by any means, and lacks the precision and workflows found in more expensive video editing programs, but the market targeted by this solution will not miss any of that.

The software is very complete, since it even includes some additional media users might find useful when creating their videos, such as images, backgrounds, and sounds.

The manual is very thorough and well written, clearly aiming to a non-professional crowd, so things are pretty clear there. They even bothered including a small "how-to-shot-decent-videos" section that has nothing to do with the software itself, but that those with little video production experience can find interesting and useful, if they want their loved ones to watch their amazing blockbusters more than once without falling asleep...

In all, it's a pretty good product, and for the price, I doubt there's anything like it out there. There are a few flaws, of course... some workflows with the software (DVD chapter creations and navigation, in particular) are very quirky and fight against the user. The bundled green screen... well, take it as a gift, since you can't really expect anything else at this price point. And the production process at creating web-ready videos is pretty general and a bit restricted. Those who aim at producing lots of videos targeting the web (particularly for a few well-known video websites) should probably get a software specially designed for that (such as Techsmith's Camtasia) to compliment this package.

I definitely recommend this product for those aiming at producing home videos with the intention of sharing them with others.