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Pinnacle Video Editing Cards
Pinnacle was probably the world's #1 manufacturer of video editing cards. Their DV200 and DV500 (later DV500 DVD) were extremely popular products for the value they represented, especially as they included a full copy of not just Adobe Premiere but also a whole suite of other software packages including Adobe Photoshop (LE version).
But that was in the past. As of 2003 Pinnacle seemed to have changed direction. As PCs got faster customers were choosing to count on the power of the PC to perform intensive video editing tasks. Canopus and Matrox's marketing ploys changed tack accordingly to promote their products as still being essential to real-time work. The emphasis was on combining or leveraging the power of today's fast PC technology with a dedicated card to achieve even faster and better results. Canopus called it "Scalable Media Effects" technology and Matrox called it the "Power of X". The theory behind both messages is that the faster your PC the more power and performance you can get out of your real-time video editing card be it a Canopus DVStorm2 or a Matrox RT.X100 Xtreme Pro. And those are certainly valid claims. Both those cards simply rock in the right PC. However, as Pinnacle are concentrating on pure software solutions like Liquid Edition the market for real-time video editing cards among the beginner to semi-professional users is now a two horse race.
Pinnacle's main products as of 2003-2004 were:
Pinnacle Studio DV8 editing system (software)
Pinnacle Studio DV Mobile (Pinnacle Studio + PCMCIA card)
Pinnacle Studio MovieBox USB
Pinnacle Studio DV Plus 8
Pinnacle Studio Deluxe V8 editing system
Pinnacle Studio Movie Box DV
Pinnacle DV500 DVD (no longer listed on the Pinnacle site)
Pinnacle Pro-ONE RTDV SE
Pinnacle Liquid Edition PRO V 5.5
Pinnacle Pro-ONE RTDV
Pinnacle DV500 DVD Review
The DV500 DVD was the first dual stream video editing card to break into the Prosumer market. It started off as the DV500, was later revised as the DV500 Plus and then in 2002 was software updated to the DV500 DVD. The addition of the DVD was to emphasise that the product now had the ability to export to MPEG 2 using a C-Cube chipset (hardware acceleration). The product's external breakout box (pictured below) was also updated to include a DV port that was previously only available on the card itself.
The great attraction of the DV500 product, irrespective of the various names it went under, was that it came with a wealth of software that would otherwise have cost more than the card itself. Adobe's Premiere was included as was Adobe Photoshop and various other packages like TitleDeko, Pinnacle DV Tools, Impression DVD SE and Hollywood FX.
However, the DV500 was always an in-between kind of product targeted neither exclusively at the professional market, nor at the home/consumer market. Perhaps that was the reason for it's phenomenal success. Home buyers bought it as a cheap route to getting Premiere, professionals bought it because it was the most affordable of the prosumer cards. Another reason for it's popularity could have been it's support for both analogue inputs and outputs plus a firewire port if you did plan to upgrade your camcorder at some point. All of this was via the breakout box that was a handy way of getting the connectors to the top of your desk to save fiddling around at the back of your PC.
The real-time claim was always to be taken with a pinch of salt as the real-time capabilities were very limited. As far as special effects were concerned - and real-time editing for that matter - products like the Matrox 2500 (now the Matrox RT.X100) outclassed the DV500 DVD. But the reason we would most advise against this product is that Pinnacle seem to have lost interest in developing, and perhaps even manufacturing, the DV500 DVD. More on Pinnacle's future.
Features of the DV500 DVD
Digital and analog input/output - for all VCRs and camcorders
New break-out box with integrated FireWire 1394 port
Even faster Pinnacle DVČ Codec
MPEG2 import for re-editing of DVD projects with intelligent rendering
Real time keyframeable effects
Fast and slow motion effects
Real time slow motion in preview quality
Optimized workflow for DVD authoring
Analog and DV capture without file size limitation
Analog cutlist playback
DV cutlist playback
Automatic scene detection to Premiere Storyboard
Software Included
Adobe Premiere 6.5
Pinnacle Impression DVD SE
Pinnacle Performance Tools
Pinnacle Hollywood FX
Pinnacle SceneCutter
Pinnacle TitleDeko RT
Pinnacle DV Tools
... more on our site
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