Pinnacle Studio Deluxe Review

Studio Deluxe is a hardware + software bundle of a AV/DV capture card that takes inputs from analogue and digital camcorders and a software bundle of Pinnacle Studio, Pinnacle Express, Hollywood FX Plus and TitleDeko to allow you a fair range of video editing functions and the option of outputting your finished product on to DVDs or CDs. The AV/DV PCI card is a lite version of the card in the DV500 DVD product. 

The package includes a breakout box with all the analogue connections for input and output that you can locate on your table top to save crawling behind the PC each time you need to plug something in.

The package is fairly easy to use. Installation of the hardware is simply like installing any other PCI card. Once fitted and with drivers installed you want to start up Pinnacle Studio 8 to do your first editing.

Notes:

• The AV/DV card is not sold on it's own, it's part of the package.
• Apparently the analogue output is to NTSC only

You can:

• Capture and edit footage from your DV, Digital8 camcorder or  8mm, VHS, SVHS, VHS-C, or SVHS-C analogue camcorder
• Capture and edit DVD quality MPEG video from your DV or Digital8 camcorder
• Import and edit MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files
• Perform up to 200 scene transitions with the included Hollywood FX Plus
• Add titles Pinnacle's TitleDeko
• Add Fast/slow motion effects
• Add some special video effects
• Perform some limited image correction
• Import sound from MP3, audio CD or microphone
• Save your creation in MPEG 1 & 2 and AVI or create a streaming video in Real Video 8 or the Windows format