I have pinnacle studio 9 SE (9.4.3) and a panasonic mini Dv (GS31?). I plan to capture it to my pc.....someday, but some of the footage is kinda dark. Can my version of studio brighten the image? Also, roughly how big of a file size will an hour of dv footage be? on the best quality setting (im guessing avi)? I have probably bout a dozen tapes and maybe 30gb or less of HD space left (although I have planned to put my pr0n on cd to clear space) thanx

now I know that usually I would get this answer from most places "why don't ya just check it out" or something to that affect. which case my answer would be "you try having two month old twins at home and see how much time you have to dick around with summtin". thanx again

Studio has brightness & contrast controls - they're not as versatile or effective as apps like Premiere, but you can smarten up clips quite a bit.

About 5 minutes of avi uses up a gig of HDD space, so your hour will be something like 12Gb.

I don't know if you can alter gamma using the SE version of Studio (but since it's a basic effect, it's probably enabled), you can definitely do it with the full (standard) version, but I'm telling you it rarely gives good results (it will add lots of grain to the footage) so try to avoid shooting poorly lit video anyway ( sorry I couldn't help it). Still, are you sure the video is insufficiently lit and it's not just a bad calibration of your TV/PC monitor?

the panasonic mini dv I have is crappy in low light conditions. I think our LR isn't that dark, but it is on the camcorder. So we have to turn extra lights on (sometimes even during the day) to get a good bright picture.

dunno if I'll continue using pinnacle (at least to capture). can't ever get a decent capture.

If you're doing it right, Pinnacle can't go wrong. Not getting "decent captures" in terms of quality? No other app will fix that. It depends on the quality of your source and using the proper procedure.

dropped frames, choppy playback, etc. if the vid is anything over 15-30 min, its crap. I know I need to shut down services like virus scanner, etc, but wish I didn't have to. and I am using firewire. think the REAL problem is that I have to capture to my C:/ cause pinnacle just doesn't like my 2nd HD, something bout the transfer rate is to slow, but dunno how to speed it up.

You can start by defragmenting.

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trust me, I keep up on that along with virus/spyware scanning, etc.