Do you need to connect an older, analog video camera and a newer digital video camera or even a VCR to your computer? In that case, Pinnacle Systems has the answer in a box for you, Studio MovieBox DV, that is. This is a comprehensive system for connecting, downloading, editing and making a movie from your old VCR footage, digital tapes or analog tape video footage. Pinnacle has numerous products on the market for the consumer to use to edit, convert and digitize movie footage, whether recent or ancient. On top of the connecting device in the package, there is a software program, Pinnacle Studio Version 9 enclosed. Learning to use Studio Version 9 is not the easiest of tasks but it is also far from the most difficult in my personal experience. More on that later in the review.

Let’s get right to the abilities of this device and software program. First of all, digital cameras can connect to the MovieBox (See Figure 1), then to your system via the IEEE 1394 or Firewire connection. This makes the digital connection a very fast one which means the video files being transferred from your camera will be more intact and have less “loss” than when files are transferred over a slower connection. It also offers S-video or composite (RCA) connections for analog cameras which means that any video files you have from any video camera can be downloaded into your computer for editing, archiving and saving to Video CD, Super Video CD or DVD format. As I have already indicated, you can also connect a VCR to the MovieBox and move those old home movies on VCR tapes to a much better and more secure, longer-lasting format such as a Video CD or DVD.

What does your system need to make use of this hardware and software system? Requirements are for an Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon 800 MHz with a recommendation of CPU speed at least 1.5 GHz or faster. Operating system should be Windows XP (recommended), Windows 2000, Windows 98SE, or Windows ME (Millenium Edition) with at least 256 MB of RAM and 512 MB of RAM recommended. Graphics card should be DirectX 9 compatible such as an ATI Radeon or an NVIDIA GeForce 2 or higher. You need an IEEE 1394 Firewire connection, DirectX 9 or higher compatible sound card with 500 MB of available drive space for software installation. You will need a CD-ROM at minimum. Optional devices that will enhance your capabilities with this product include a CD burner for creating Video CD’s (VCD’s) or Super Video CD’s (SVCD’s). You need a DVD Drive if you want to install the bonus DVD material, which includes the manual. You can get it on CD for free but you will have to pay for the shipping costs. Let me make one last comment about the hardware you use to convert video files whether analog or digital. When using a computer keep in mind that the faster the CPU the better, the faster the hard drive the better, the more RAM the better and so forth.

Once you have transferred video footage files to your computer, now you have to do something with them. This is where Studio 9 comes in. It has the fairly standard three-step interface Capture, Edit and Make Movie. The Capture interface differs depending on whether you are using a digital or analog connection. With either one, you have a “diskometer” which lets you adjust and control your downloading process (See Figure 2). If you use analog capture, you will have a diskometer with panes on each side that allow you to tweak the audio and video levels as you are capturing them from your device. When you progress to edit, you can add clips, delete clips, include transitions, titles, sound effects and split clips or scenes. When you are editing, I found that using the player scrubber is convenient to get you to the portions of the footage that you may want to edit out (See Figure 3). It moves you very quickly through the video rather than waiting and having to play through a whole section to get to the part you want to delete. Moving to the last step, you have some choices as to how to output your edited video file (See Figure 4). You can make a DVD disc, an MPEG file, an AVI file, a videotape, or a streaming RealVideo or Windows Media file. One thing that I had problems with even after I updated the original 9.0 version that came in the box with 9.1 was the “Smart Movie” which is supposed to make a movie for you in 5 minutes. Each time I clicked on the icon to try using it, I got an error message, so I abandoned that test as a failure or at the very least a serious glitch.

You can purchase this product online and you may be able to find it in local stores such as Best Buy or CompUSA. It is also available at various places online and prices I have seen ranged from $199.00 to $249.00.