Pinnacle Systems DV500

The pinnacle DV500 and it's sister the DV500Plus are great cards for the amateur/semi-pro video editor. (The only difference between the DV500 and DV500+ is the bundled software). Now shipping with Premiere 6.0. The card offers great NLE functions (non linear editing) and provides many and varied methods of getting video and audio into and out of your PC. Many of the transition effects which ship with it and integrate into Premiere can be rendered in realtime, greatly reducing production time. The DV500/+ hardware works natove with the DV format so DVin and DVout areb the connections of choice, although composite analog ...  Read the complete review

The Pinnacle DV500 is an excellent video capture card which supports both analogue and digital video. If you shop around you can buy one for as little as £530 (inc. VAT) which makes it one of the most competitive consumer/low-end professional cards around. The card itself fits into one PCI slot and has 2 bi-directional firewire ports (IEEE1394) built onto it. In addition there's a breakout box which has sockets for analogue in and out for video (composite & S-Video) and audio (left & right). This is great and makes it much easier to connect external devices such as video cameras without having to pull your computer out everytime. The video editing ...  Read the complete review

The DV500/DV500Plus (the Plus version simply has upgraded software - the hardware is exactly the same) is a fantastic piece of kit for the price. To get DV *and* analogue in/output, plus the full version of Adobe Premiere 6 for about £600 isn't bad going at all. In terms of functionality you have pretty much everything you need for producing professional-quality final video, unless you're a total FX-head, in which case you'll be spending hundreds more on a companion package like Adobe After Effects. Now to the sticky issue - compatibility. Yes, the DV500 is known for compatibility problems, there's no hiding that fact. Yes, there are ...  Read the complete review

The DV500 is fast and solid. The speciallly written Premiere RT really works. Projects play and preview in real time, no rendering! Just hit the space bar and you see it all: video, transitions, stills (you do still need to render some filters and non-Pinnacle transitions). Another big bonus is the specially written Pinnacle capture mode supports AVI files of over 2GB. Make a clip as long as you have room for on your hard drive. I only have one warning: you must have a VERY FAST hard drive array. A single UDMA66 drive on a Promise Ultra won't cut it. I tried. The reason is the way Premiere RT works. The reason it runs in real time is that it streams data ...  Read the complete review

Very little and very slow back up from Pinnacle. The programme has many bugs. I have been supplied with FOUR new up-dated drivers in less than a year. Do not try to run the programme with the minimum requirements stated in the handbook. Videos over 10 minutes take a very long time to render - even Pinnacle wipes have to be rendered. When saving any work save it into the previous save or your free memory will disappear in no time. The handbook is very poor compared to the one supplied with the entry stage Studio 400. Once working it is the best programme on the market for anologue video. Do not bother contacting Pinnacle Partners for information, they are not ...  Read the complete review