I cannot believe that after being bounced from sales through tech support and back that they refused to sell me a replacement breakout box for only $10 max. They insisted that I have to purchase the entire set with card $70 for me to get the piece I need. What a rip! If anything should happen to your breakout box component you’re gonna be ripped off trying to replace it. Good-bye Pinnacle.
Rating: 1 / 5
Do not buy anything from Pinnacle. Their software deceptively leads you to believe that you need to purchase further programs to burn DVDs. I did so and got incorrect activation codes twice before requesting a refund which they have refused to give even though the product does not work and meets their advertised return policy. I have filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive trade policies and knowingly offering defective products.
Rating: 1 / 5
First off, the software, after installation, takes over 9 minutes to full load. On a P4 3.4MHZ system with 2gigs of fast RAM. (As a comparison, Vegas Video takes about 30 seconds)
I thought to myself, oh well, so I’ll use the software I like, Vegas or Premiere. NOPE! The analog inputs on this thing only work with Pinnacle software. So I’ve got a useless piece of junk unless I want to use their garbage bloatware.
Sure, I tried to use it, but after seeing how many skipped frames I got in just the first minute of capture, I uninstalled everything.
I am a longtime Studio user. I owned and used Pinnacle Studio 8 and was looking to buy the MovieBox product because I wanted to convert some VHS tapes. I figured I’d try version 10 since it was just being released and didn’t want to buy version 9 and then pay another upgrade to 10. The USB 700 is the new package name for what used to be Studio Moviebox.
In between my two studio purchases, I bought/users Adobe Priemere Elements version 1.0. I did this because Studio 8 has been extremely unstable. The Adobe software had no bugs or issues other than the version 1.0 release was fairly limited. In addition, I could not find a USB product that would work with it and digitized video and got good reviews for quality.
As the saying goes, Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I should have known better after spending a year waiting for a stable release of the Studio version 8 product, but I dived right in a purchased Studio 10 just after it was released. The software is not ready yet. It should never have been released, it is far to buggy and even simple editing projects will fail. For instance, I was just trying to add a menu to a project. If I set the chapters myself, the project will not render into a DVD. Should the company fix this and the many basic problems, there is lots of potential.
If it is fixed, here is what you have to look forward too. A very easy to use, very powerful tool to capture, edit and render videos. The first process you will do is capture video. This is done very easy to do through the capture menu. When capturing, scene are created for use during editing.
After capture, you edit. The system provides several tracks, 1 video, 1 title, 1 sound, 1 voice over, and 1 music track. For the basic user, you are just going to grab your scenes and drop them into the timeline window. Then, you can clip you scenes to remove unwanted items. You can add transitions that come with the product ( they will also sell you others ).
After creating your video, you can add menus and titles. The system provides tools to do this and again they are very simple. Again, Pinnacle seems to be trying to sell much of this stuff as add-ons. They include about 20-30 pre-built menus, which I typically use by changing the background to a photo or a clip from the video, and then using the title editor to modify the text associated with it. As you can see, very easy to create menus.
Finally, you render the video into the final form. You can do VCD, SVCD, DVD, Real Player, Microsoft Media, or MPEG2. Pinnacle claims DivX and MPEG4 support, but this requires another activiation code and additonal $$$. After spending $140, I really don’t think I should be asked for more money for MPEG4 or DivX support.
Overall, a product with great potential whose quality is disapointing. I would recommend before purchasing the product that you read the user forms at [...] and get a sense for what you are up against.
I wrote a review of Studio 8 sometime ago and that might give you a sense of why I said “Shame on me for buying it”.
I have not yet tried to Capture product and its ability to turn a VHS tape into a digital recording. I’ll provide an update when I do.
I cannot believe that after being bounced from sales through tech support and back that they refused to sell me a replacement breakout box for only $10 max. They insisted that I have to purchase the entire set with card $70 for me to get the piece I need. What a rip! If anything should happen to your breakout box component you’re gonna be ripped off trying to replace it. Good-bye Pinnacle.
Rating: 1 / 5
Do not buy anything from Pinnacle. Their software deceptively leads you to believe that you need to purchase further programs to burn DVDs. I did so and got incorrect activation codes twice before requesting a refund which they have refused to give even though the product does not work and meets their advertised return policy. I have filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive trade policies and knowingly offering defective products.
Rating: 1 / 5
I should have read the Amazon reviews before I bought this piece of garbage. It kept on crashing forcing me to reboot the computer
Rating: 1 / 5
First off, the software, after installation, takes over 9 minutes to full load. On a P4 3.4MHZ system with 2gigs of fast RAM. (As a comparison, Vegas Video takes about 30 seconds)
I thought to myself, oh well, so I’ll use the software I like, Vegas or Premiere. NOPE! The analog inputs on this thing only work with Pinnacle software. So I’ve got a useless piece of junk unless I want to use their garbage bloatware.
Sure, I tried to use it, but after seeing how many skipped frames I got in just the first minute of capture, I uninstalled everything.
I’m returning it tomorrow.
Rating: 1 / 5
I am a longtime Studio user. I owned and used Pinnacle Studio 8 and was looking to buy the MovieBox product because I wanted to convert some VHS tapes. I figured I’d try version 10 since it was just being released and didn’t want to buy version 9 and then pay another upgrade to 10. The USB 700 is the new package name for what used to be Studio Moviebox.
In between my two studio purchases, I bought/users Adobe Priemere Elements version 1.0. I did this because Studio 8 has been extremely unstable. The Adobe software had no bugs or issues other than the version 1.0 release was fairly limited. In addition, I could not find a USB product that would work with it and digitized video and got good reviews for quality.
As the saying goes, Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I should have known better after spending a year waiting for a stable release of the Studio version 8 product, but I dived right in a purchased Studio 10 just after it was released. The software is not ready yet. It should never have been released, it is far to buggy and even simple editing projects will fail. For instance, I was just trying to add a menu to a project. If I set the chapters myself, the project will not render into a DVD. Should the company fix this and the many basic problems, there is lots of potential.
If it is fixed, here is what you have to look forward too. A very easy to use, very powerful tool to capture, edit and render videos. The first process you will do is capture video. This is done very easy to do through the capture menu. When capturing, scene are created for use during editing.
After capture, you edit. The system provides several tracks, 1 video, 1 title, 1 sound, 1 voice over, and 1 music track. For the basic user, you are just going to grab your scenes and drop them into the timeline window. Then, you can clip you scenes to remove unwanted items. You can add transitions that come with the product ( they will also sell you others ).
After creating your video, you can add menus and titles. The system provides tools to do this and again they are very simple. Again, Pinnacle seems to be trying to sell much of this stuff as add-ons. They include about 20-30 pre-built menus, which I typically use by changing the background to a photo or a clip from the video, and then using the title editor to modify the text associated with it. As you can see, very easy to create menus.
Finally, you render the video into the final form. You can do VCD, SVCD, DVD, Real Player, Microsoft Media, or MPEG2. Pinnacle claims DivX and MPEG4 support, but this requires another activiation code and additonal $$$. After spending $140, I really don’t think I should be asked for more money for MPEG4 or DivX support.
Overall, a product with great potential whose quality is disapointing. I would recommend before purchasing the product that you read the user forms at [...] and get a sense for what you are up against.
I wrote a review of Studio 8 sometime ago and that might give you a sense of why I said “Shame on me for buying it”.
I have not yet tried to Capture product and its ability to turn a VHS tape into a digital recording. I’ll provide an update when I do.
Rating: 2 / 5