Learn Why Pinnacle Studio 8 is a Favorite for Video Editing..Step by Step

The Home Video DVD eBook shows you how to make DVDs using Pinnacle Studio 8 and others

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"I really appreciate your efforts. Your DVD Cookbook (preview pages) seem to cover the sort of information that should really be in Pinnacle's own manual; (Pinnacles own manual) makes an awful lot of assumptions that users know why they should be choosing one option over another, etc! Your book seems to explain the various options very well, and I look forward to being able to read it in full" Adrian W. United Arab Emirates

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Our unique 10-step approach will show you how to make DVDs and how to make VCDs that will delight your family and friends and digitally preserve your home videos forever. You can get "expert advice" on the web - so much you literally won't know what to do with it. The difference is that our expert advice is packed into a complete, simple, integrated and proven 10-step approach that will greatly simplify your DVD burning project. I have not seen any other resource or book on the web like it. If you have, I honestly would like to know about it (email me at dvd@familyhistoryproducts.com).

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Pinnacle Studio 8

Our Unique Approach

The DVD Burning Cookbooks 10-step approach simplifies the highly complex process of creating quality DVD movies from your raw video. Each time we have a new feature or a setting we go through the following "4-pass" process to determine how to incorporate these properly into the DVD Cookbook.

Identify the issues. We research and test each feature to identify the detailed issues we must deal with. Does the feature work? How does it work? What are the options and settings for this feature? How do these affect the results? Is it easy to use? How time consuming is it? And more.

Integrate the feature into the 10-step approach. This requires analysis and careful thought as well as testing. When should we use this feature? How should we use it? Does it fit in with the prior steps in our approach? Does it fit in with the following steps?

Simplify the process. What do we need to know to properly use the feature? Take everything else out. Should we provide background on the feature or additional technical information to help you understand why we are using it the way we are? If so, put in a technical breakout section.

Test It. Does it work the way we expected it to work? Did we get a high quality result? Did we meet our time and cost objectives?

The result is that there is no other book or website that has the comprehensive, detailed guidance provided by the DVD Cookbook to successfully complete a DVD authoring project from beginning to end!

Example: Studio 8 Capture to MPEG2

Let's take an example using an exciting, new feature in Pinnacle Studio 8.

Identify the Considerations

Studio 8 allows you to capture directly into MPEG2 format. This has potential advantages because MPEG2 is much smaller size than DV or AVI capture files (about 1/5th the size). This is important because storage space, backup costs, and backup effort all go up when you have 5 times more stuff to deal with.

Studio 8 provides 2 key settings for how you capture MPEG2. First, in the Presets dropdown, you can select VCD, SVCD, DVD, or Custom quality settings. We need to be capturing with DVD quality settings or custom settings that are equivalent or better than the DVD presets.

Second, you select the technique Studio 8 will use based on the capabilities of your system in the MPEG capture dropdown. The goal here is to encode into MPEG2 as quickly as possible but not to let the encoding cause you to lose any frames during capture. Typically, you should select "Use default encoding mode" which let's Studio 8 figure out the best way to capture based on your systems performance. Typically, this means Studio 8 encodes to MPEG2 in the background. This gets some of the encoding work done without causing the video capture task to lose frames. You can also select "Encode in real time" so that captured video is rendered to MPEG2 as it is captured. This requires a 1.8 GHz or faster processor or you will lose frames. The final selection is "Encode after capturing" which does not attempt to do any MPEG2 encoding until the capture is complete. This is the most conservative and will impact the capture process the least. If you have a slower system you should always use this setting. If you use the MPEG2 capture feature, I recommend you use this setting so you are sure you won't lose frames. I don't care how fast a computer is, when multiple things are going on (capture and encoding) the system sometimes has to do "housekeeping" to switch between the tasks and you run the risk of losing some frames.

Integrate the considerations into the 10-step approach

So how do we integrate this new feature into the DVD Cookbook? We don't in this case. Here is why we do not recommend you use this feature. First, you take a quality hit. Despite MPEG2s high quality, it is necessarily lower quality than raw DV or AVI captured video because it is 5 times smaller. This reduced size comes at the price of some quality (the DVD Cookbook technical note explains in detail why this is). After you edit your video and render it into a movie, Studio 8 will have to encode to MPEG2 again (to pick up titles, transitions, etc.). This second encoding will cause another small quality loss. So you wind up going through two MPEG2 encoding passes rather than just one necessary to create a DVD.

The second reason not to capture in MPEG2 is you run the risk of losing frames unless you use the select the "Encode after capturing" setting which will require you to wait between captures. Rather than wait here, we can encode our captured video to MPEG2 after we have created our movies. The result is the same outcome for the same time effort without compromising our movie quality.

The final reason not to capture in MPEG2 is that when you put MPEG2s on your timeline to edit them, they slow the editing process down. MPEG2s require more work by your computer to play them back than with a DV or AVI file. The result is your preview playbacks while editing are jerky and you have to wait when you move the timeline to the middle of an MPEG2 video to clip it or grab a frame. Obviously, the more computing power you have the less of an issue this will be. I have a 1 Ghz system and I found the impact to my editing productivity somewhere between annoying to unacceptable.

Simplify the process

We have achieved the ultimate simplification-- don't use MPEG2 capture at all! To figure this out I went beyond just researching the feature by itself. It required considering how this feature fits into the overall process. We had to consider editing MPEG2 issues, rendering issues and quality issues that were all steps that occur later on in the process. This feature did not integrate into that process and caused us an unnecessary quality impact. No review, web page, book, or product manual could have helped you with this.

Give Me a Chance to Help You

The Home Video DVD Cookbook has analyzed many, many issues similar to the one above to come up with our simple, 10-step approach. We also explain our rationale throughout the DVD Cookbook to help educate you about video capture, video editing, and DVD authoring. You could be reading all of the valuable information in The Home Video DVD Cookbook today!

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Technical Breakout Sections

There are several technical breakouts in the DVD Cookbook that provide technical and background information for you. Technical breakouts include Video Formats, Codecs, S-Video vs Composite vs Analog RGB, Streaming Video Considerations, NTSC vs PAL formats, SVCD Format, Backup Storage Media, and more. We provide technical breakout sections for several reasons.

Keep the steps simple. By putting certain information in breakouts, we don't confuse you or cause you to have to wade through a bunch of detail that is not relevant to getting the job done.

Explain why. Technical breakouts often explain why we don't use a feature or why we take a certain approach. The reason for this is you may run into this feature in the product manual or on the web and you'll wonder why the DVD Cookbook is not using this. We equip you to understand why we took the approach we did.

Technical tutorial. Some technical breakouts are provided to help you understand some of the technical basics behind digital video and creating DVDs.

Example: Technical Breakout on Video formats

The following is a breakout section in the DVD Cookbook.

Pinnacle Studio works with each frame as a still image in JPEG format (this format is designed to compress the size of a digital image efficiently while still being able to quickly render the original image with minimal loss of quality). The actual format is called MJPEG (Motion JPEG) because it is a special version of JPEG designed for video that links each of the digital images together into video. There are approximately 30 digital images or frames per second to make high quality video.

You can select the quality level of each frame when you capture the video (the higher the quality the larger the size of the Captured Video file). Higher quality captures save more pixels (points) in each frame to create a clearer picture. We will always capture with "Best" quality.

You can contrast MJPEG video with MPEG2. MPEG2 is a format that does not keep track of each frame as a still image. Rather it creates each frame by only keeping track of what has changed from the last frame. Since there are relatively few changes from frame to frame, this format is more space efficient and can achieve very high quality as well.

However, it is much more difficult for software to figure out how to edit this format. To edit a format like MPEG2 is called "non-linear" editing meaning that the amount of data to record each frame varies (whereas it is the same amount of data to record each frame with MJPEG). The more professional (and expensive) video editing software programs do non-linear editing, but it typically requires special hardware to assist the software. As we have discussed in this newsletter, Studio 8 now offers editing of MPEG2 files. However, since this editing is not assisted by hardware, it has performance impacts unless you have a 1.8 Ghz processor or greater.

The big win with non-linear editing is you can see the effects of the edit right away without a separate rendering step. This saves time and enables video editors to experiment a lot more to get the final effect they are looking for. Pinnacle Studio also enables you to see your changes in the video window right away without a rendering step. However, unlike professional products with hardware assistance, this immediate video playback is a low quality version and to get the final high quality MPEG2 version requires a rendering step. Nonetheless, it works well in that you still get a chance to review the effect of your changes immediately.

More Examples . . .

Here are some other items we deal with in The Home Video DVD Cookbook. Try to imagine sorting through each of these on your own. The time alone to figure it out would involve many, many hours of research. Now imagine if you got some of these wrong. I certainly did! Add more extra hours to back up and redo your work. And, add money wasted on purchases you shouldn't have made.

Do I have to buy a new PC and if so, what should I buy?

Do I need a new PC? Do I need a second disk drive? What technology, speed and size? What processor speed should I get? How much memory do I need? What kind of graphics card should I get? What kind of sound card do I need? What other I/O do I need such as USB and IEEE 1394 interfaces? We provide a fully configured Dell system as an example.

What video formats should I use?

Should I capture everything in DV format? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Should I capture to MPEG2? What about AVI files? We tell you what video formats to use for capture, rendering, and backup.

Should I take the leap to DVDs or just stick with VCDs?

We take you through the 6 Point / Counterpoint considerations of burning DVDs or VCDs so you can decide if you want to go to DVD right now. If you decide to go with VCDs, we tell you steps to take now so you will ready to make DVDs later.

How do I create great movies from my videos?

How long should my movies be? How should I use titles, transitions, background music, and voice-overs? What about special effects? How should I adjust audio levels? We provide you with a simple 10-step process to create impressive movies from your raw videos.

What is involved in burning DVDs and VCDs?

First, since this is relatively new technology, you need to have reliable software that will consistently complete the burning process successfully. Second, you will want to know how to create personalized menus that will add an additional level of excitement to your videos. Third, if you do have a burning problem, we provide you with 6 solutions to failed burns.

How should I manage all the files I am creating and how do I back these files up?

You are going to have a lot of files, BIG files. How should you organize them? How should you name them so you can keep them in order? What kinds of files are you going to have to deal with? Capture files? Stills? Rendered movies? DVD project files? Music files? We tell you how to set up your directories and naming conventions. In addition, your home movies are valuable. You can not afford to lose them just because of a disk crash. We tell you what to back up and how to back it up cost effectively.

What else will I need to buy and how can I get the best prices?

Should I buy a 2nd hard disk, Pinnacle Studio Deluxe version, a breakout box, a DV Converter box, a firewire cards, CD ripping Software, a DVD burner, DVD media, DVD Player software for my PC, Backup Software? We tell you exactly what you need and when you need to buy it. Several of the items above are not required. We also provide you with several great online shopping locations with great prices and strong warranty and return policies.

Studio Video Capturing Tips

When you capture video, there are certain techniques you must use to minimize losing frames. Frames are lost when your PC can not keep up with the incoming video. We tell you how to setup your PC to minimize and in most cases, completely eliminate lost frames.

Studio Auxiliary Files

Studio keeps certain files in an "Auxiliary Files" folder. These are important files that you need to protect and take care of. We tell you how to setup the Auxiliary Files to make backup easier and to minimize the possibility of losing these important files.

Studio SmartCapture

Studio has a capability called SmartCapture that allows you to capture in "preview mode" from digital videotape at a much smaller size to save disk space. Should you use this capability?

Studio Codecs

A codec (COmpression-DECompression routine) is critical to the quality of your videos. There are numerous codecs for creating video files out on the web. Which ones should you use? What are the issues with using them? Are the Codecs provided with Studio high quality?

Studio 8 DVD Authoring and DVD Burning

One of the promising new capabilities in Pinnacle Studio 8 is the ability to create menus and burn DVD's and VCD's. Studio 8 menus can include motion video and provide a high degree of control and flexibility. How do they work? Are they ready for primetime?

Why Pinnacle Studio DVD Authoring Software?

Our eBook shows you the best way to use Pinnacle Studio and Ulead DVD MovieFactory for VCD and DVD Authoring. Why do we recommend Pinnacle Studio for DVD Authoring?

We selected Pinnacle for several reasons. First, they are the leaders in video editing software for consumers. Second, for about $100 you can buy both their software and their analog video capture card. Third, the new version of Studio (Studio 8) has similar capabilities as far more expensive products including MPEG2 capture, DVD Menu creation, and DVD burning and VCD burning all in one product. Fourth, Pinnacle has a history of aggressively enhancing their Studio product line so you can expect additional capabilities in the future. And finally, Pinnacle is a leader in professional and broadcast markets as well. Pinnacle has demonstrated a strategy of moving these technologies down into their consumer products.

However, we have one important word of caution. Pinnacle often releases software too soon in our opinion. As a result, a few of the features in Studio 8 are not ready for prime time. We tell you which ones. Pinnacle provides frequent updates and Studio is its flagship consumer product, so we anticipate these issues will be resolved.

Ulead DVD MovieFactory

The other software product we recommend is Ulead DVD MovieFactory. This is a simple, reliable, powerful, and inexpensive product lets you reliably burn your DVD and VCD projects.
We recommend it because it works very reliably in a world of unreliable DVD burning.

These products are not perfect because there is no perfect product. In my opinion they are the best price-performers by far and they get the job done. Keep in mind, these products are just tools, they are not the end game, your DVD video library is.

Q: What if I don't use or if I already have products that are different than those recommended by "The Home Video DVD Cookbook"?

A: "The Home Video DVD Cookbook" is useful for any Windows based video editing or DVD/VCD burning project. The 10 step approach, considerations on buying a new PC, need for a 2nd hard drive, file management strategies, VCD versus DVD, developing a backup strategy, and estimating total time and effort are just some of the things that will apply even if you don't select the video editing and DVD/VCD burning products recommended by the Cookbook. If after purchasing Full Access you don't agree, you may exercise our unconditional guarantee.

There you have it! You are guaranteed success because you now know an expert in the field. Trial and error is frustrating. Don't get caught up in it. Get The Home Video DVD Cookbook, follow the steps and it won't be long before you pop that first DVD of yours into the DVD player.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE HOME VIDEO DVD COOKBOOK

Pinnacle Studio 8

Learn Why Pinnacle Studio 8 is a Favorite for Video Editing..Step by Step

Pinnacle Studio Software