Two Words, One Answer.
moviebox
 Pinnacle Studio MovieBox Ultimate $149.99 I just wanted to download a couple dozen VHS tapes before they degraded any further. My last version of Adobe Premiere with a break out box for capturing analog video is 6 years old on a six year old machine - it barely boots anymore much less video editing. Anyway this product seemed like the easy affordable way to go. I should have read the reviews more carefully! DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS PRODUCT! I installed this on a fairly new, fast, loaded Vista machine and it worked right away on my first tape. I then spend some time downloading a bunch of DV tape from an old camera, which is also preparing to expire. I was using a separate dedicated 2TB external hard drive hooked up to ESATA - its just as fast as an internal drive. When I got back to my VHS tapes Pinnacle would no longer capture analog video from my VCR. I tried everything, changing drives, reinstalling with and without current patches, changing USB ports, yelling, etc Nothing worked, still dropping 1000s of frames and out of sync audio. What worked once now makes my machine very unstable, customer support was a complete waste of time as seems to be common with Pinnacle. I finally gave up and purchased a canopus ADVC 110 and Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 (I have a Sony camcorder HDR-SR11 - Great Camera!). If only I could get back that week of my life a wasted with Pinnacle............  Pinnacle Studio Moviebox Ultimate V12 $149.99 I bought the Pinnacle Studio Moviebox about 6 months ago to transfer my video from an older Sony videocamera that still used 8mm tapes. The set up and cables were easy to use. I did encounter the green screen as many others have complained about. However, after restarting the my computer and/or removing and re-attaching the cables, the green screen was gone and my video was being captured. My main gripe with this product was that during the capturing of the video from my Sony videocamera was that several frames are dropped during the process. I would say over a thousand frames were dropped which made my overall video jumpy as several frames were skipped. Maybe I am being too kind, but I attribute this to my video camera and the transfer of 8mm tapes. I believe using a better videocamera with direct transfer through the Pinnacle Studio Moviebox would result in less dropped frames. I love all the options and transitions that one can make while making the video. There are several features that I still have not tried. Overall, I am satisfied with the Moviebox, but you do have to be patient. You cannot expect to make a home movie very quickly, at least not if you want it to look great and transition smoothly from scene to scene. I researched a lot of video transfer products before I purchased this one and this Pinnacle Studio Ultimate V12 was the best on the market. If someone knows of a better product on the market, please let me know.  Pinnacle Studio MovieBox Plus $99.99 I am running Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Premium. This works great. I use it to record television and to record Xbox 360 game play. This works like a charm after a few setting tweaks. The flaw is that it did not work at a high resolution which was the default setting but after I tweaked with the settings for a little bit it worked fine! The Key Is Patience |
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