I guess it's an old age thing, but I just have this drive to secure all of our old family media. More than ten years ago, I scanned all our old 1950 to early 1960s 35mm slides. A long effort, but well worth it. Interestingly, I really should do it again. While the scanner I used at that time was about as good as they have today, I was limited by the amount of online storage. But I also found out that the program I was using at the time had a bug in it, causing the JPEG compression to be done incorrectly. The photos still display, but coarser than they should be.
A couple of years ago, I started getting all of our old VHS and Sony Hi8 video tapes onto DVD. After looking around for software to use, I settled on the Pinnacle Studio product. But I had quite a bit of trouble with it: the functionality was OK, but it often froze up or it would not work properly. I got to the point where I had to do a "save" after each step I did. But the biggest problem was that when getting input from VHS tape, the audio and video began to cumulatively get out of sync. By the end of the video clip, it was like looking at a bad Chinese Kung-fu movie dubbed into English. I was so frustrated (and had many other things to do) that I dropped the effort. Many other people on the Pinnacle user forums had similar complaints. Upgrading to the next version did not help at all.
Well, here it is Winter, and I decided to start the project up again. But obviously I needed new software. I decided to call a company that had been in the video business for many years - the Videoguys, at www.videoguys.com. They deal in everything from lower end consumer products to high end professional stuff. The salesperson I talked to was very helpful, and was willing to spend lots of time with me. He listened to my requirements, then suggested one of two packages they had, both with a digital interface box from ADS. One software choice was Premiere Elements 2 (PE), by Adobe. I really like Adobe products, and wouldn't be without Photoshop for photo editing. In functionality, PE was fairly similar to Pinnacle Studio.
But he also recommended a more expensive package from Avid, called XpressDV (XDV). A large majority of the video you see on TV was composed using Avid products - it is the standard of the industry. Given my skill level and desire to move up from Studio, he talked me into XDV. Their policy of a 30 day money-back guarantee made this choice easier. He said this was a very stable product and shouldn't have any of the issues that I had with Studio.
Well, NOT! The program never worked right from the start. It had a huge learning curve, hung my PC often, and had worse audio / video synchronization problems than Studio! Back into the box it went. At this point, I was getting pretty demoralized. By the way, the PC I was using was very capable: 3 GHz. P-IV HT, 2GB of RAM, and a large RAID 0 (i.e. configured for performance) HD array. Of course, all the software (especially the display drivers) was up to date.
I then browsed over to the Adobe website, and found that they offer a fully functional trial of PE that could be used for a month. The only limitation is that any project generated has the Adobe "A" logo in the top left corner of the screen. I downloaded the huge file (1.2 GB!) and installed it.
From the start, it worked like a charm. All the function that I needed was there, no hang-ups or problems, and the audio was always in sync with the video. I was quickly able to turn out a DVD of photos that my wife took of my grandkids at a recent cheerleading competition. Now to convince Videoguys to take the XDV back and send me the full version of PE. Of course, there shouldn't be any problem given their policy (I will even pay a reasonable restocking fee if needed), but you just never know in the PC business today what you really get. I will keep you posted.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)