Yeah, filmmaking is not what I am looking to get into.

I need to edit, have some transitions, ability for some music, good quality and to put it on a DVD. That's pretty much about it.

So with that being said is Pinnacle still a good product or is there a better one out now that is a quality product and easy to use?

Speaking as one who jumped ship from Pinnacle Studio because of the instability problems (I was on version 9.4.3 - v10 I believe suffered even more), I would suggest that IF (a) most of these problems have been eradicatd which I understand to be the case AND (b) you are already familiar with the product AND (c) it does pretty much everything you need or think you are likely to need in a video editing suite, then it's an excellent choice for you.

If you want to invest time learning a new package which might lead to a more advanced package later, I'd thoroughly recommend Vegas Movie Studio. All the Movie Studio versions offer the same basic video facilities (up to 4 tracks of video and four of sound) for the Platinum & Platinum Pro pack see the Sony site for the additional bits.

I found it easy to adapt to from Pinnacle. I also tried Premiere Elements. If you like the Adobe interface you might prefer this. Personally I find it all a bit messy - especially on one screen and everything seems to be a few clicks away. However, it's a very capable package and I'm not going to argue with the zillions of people who use it.

With either of these packages you have the option, after you become addicted, to upgrade to a "Pro" version which simple ADDs facilities (ie time invested learning the consumer version will not be wasted)

There are a number of other packages available, but I see no advantage over sticking with Pinnacle as there's no upgrade path.

As they say "I've nothing against Pinnacle. Some of my best friends are Pinnacle users"

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Tim

I think Pinnacle software is buggy.

I use Movieplus. It is lowcost and I am quite happy with it.

I am much a novice at video editing, I don't even have a video camera, except a digital still camera that takes low quality video.

What I wanted to do is transfer content from VHS video tape to DVD = being able to edit out the adds from movies I record, I have MS Movie maker and am not impressed with it, compiled several short movies from my camera files and the sound quality was garbage.

I tried Cyberlink Power producer and had so many crashes I gave it up in disgust, I went searching for something better and found "MPEG Video Wizard DVD" from Womble Multimedia MPEG editor and DVD editor- Womble Multimedia, Inc..

I have found it to be brilliant, not one glitch or crash in about 20 tapes I have converted so far, and the best patrt is if you are only editing out adds and not changing the format it doesn't have to re-render the video.

When I was using Power Producer every thing you did it had to re-render the file and usualy for a full movie took 2-3 hours, this one does it in about 15 min, and it has its own inbuilt DVD burner software.

It's only perhaps drawback is that it has no capture facility, I do my capture with a copy of Ulead Video Studio SE I got bundled with a piece of hardware it does that job OK but as an editor -- Yuck.

MPEG Video Wizard DVD is worth a look, and the price is good, and I might add I have No connection with Womble Multimedia, I am just happy that I found an editor that WORKS.

Ausimax