I am gearing up to jump into the realm of digital video editing. I have a new PC still in the box (Pentium D Dual Core @ 2.8 GHz, 2 GB DDR2 RAM, 160 GB SATA @ 7200RPM, 256MB ATI Radeon vieo card, and firewire). I am ready to purchase a DV editing app and am concerned by all the negative reviews and experiences reported for Pinnacle 10. At another review site Cyberlinks Power Director 5.0 was given the highest review with Pinnacle 10 rated lower.

Any thoughts or comments of Cyberlinks Power Director 5.0? I didn't see a forum or bulletin board for this product.

I am looking to make family DVDs and some ametuer surfing videos, so nothing too professional. I would greatly appreciaate some expert adivice.

Hi, welcome to the forums!
Pinnacle Studio is often mentioned as a buggy app. Power Director however lacks most of the features decent editors (including Studio) have to offer. You may not be doing chromakey or PIP but you certainly don't just want to arrange some clips on a timeline (album style). Because that's what Power Director does. And Windows Movie Maker can do that for free, except you can't do DVD authoring directly.
I personally believe that you should research more into Pinnacle. Or, in the same price range, you can take a look at Vegas Movie Studio, Premiere Elements or Ulead VideoStudio. Download their trials and see how each works for you.

Mihia,

Thanks for the welcome & info. Two of my friends have been using pinnacle. It's been a tale of two users...

My friend who has been using pinnacle 9 for about 6-9 months is very happy and having few problems. My other friend just bought a similar PC set-up to mine and ran out to get pinnacle 10--lots of problems.

Did you demo Vegas Movie Studio? I will look into it and your other suggestions. Thanks!

I mainly use Avid for DV work and Pinnacle Studio for analog.
I tried Vegas Movie Studio 2 years ago and to tell you the truth I didn't like it much. Sure, it has all the features you will ever need, but the interface wasn't too efficient for me. Ok maybe I evolved since then but I wouldn't try it now, that I've found other apps.

I gave up with pinnacle at ver 8. A friend of mine swears by pinnacle studio and has had every version from the start, but also admited ver 10 is pants, but now there is an update and he is a happy man again.

There is other software at the same money with more features, so take a look around and don't think your choice is just between the 2.

Premiere elements probably gives the most features for the money, but it is a resource hungry app, and you would be advised to add a second HDD for capture and project files.

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