Pinnacle newletter today offers upgrade for DV 300 owners to DV500 card with Edition 4.5 for $399 I think. I have searched this forum and found comments that DV 500 is difficult to install/run and other comments, including reference to VideoGuys "review" that were generally favorable regarding Edition. I have finally got a stable platform running Premiere 6.0 with Pinnacle DV 300 (Win 98 SE, AMD 1.8 G, 256 RAM, 2 SCSI's using controller on DV 300 card) and with help of Total Training videos now can generally use P 6.0.

Now, with apologies in advance for all the questions, DV300 is old and no longer supported and I always like to think I am getting a bargain, so would appreciate real world, non-biased comments regarding: (1) how difficult for P6.0 user to learn Edition; (2) Edition benefits vs P 6.0 particularly speed of use; (3) P6.0 features I would be giving up. The Pinnacle offer is not real specific about just which DV 500 it is (I recall at one time there were several different versions) and I don't know anything about Edition 4.5 (is that a full featured edition or "light" version). Appears I would have to change OS to Win XP (worth doing anyhow I think) and I will probably lose DV 300 onboard SCSI controller so would have to either get new controller or change to 7800 rpm IDE? drives. I already have Hollywood FX Silver and Title Deko Pro so won't gain anything there from other bundled items with this offer and short promo on Edition 4.5 didn't show much about effects provided or "real time" features other than background rendering. Will gain ability I guess to one degree or another to burn to DVD when I get a DVD burner and I wonder about export to Web features of Edition 4.4 for streaming video.

Also at one point Pinnacle tech support was really getting cut back and was pretty marginal with all the changes that company was going through so I wonder if that has improved? If DV 500 is hard to install and configure tech support will be important to computer novice like me. Whew, and thanks in advance for any advice.

From what I heard at the DVCreators free seminar and read on the Pinnacle Edition forums, version 5 of Edition is not that far off. I haven't heard whether you get a free upgrade from 4.5 to 5.

The posts on the forums are both favorable and unfavorable. Here's the link.

http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/

Go to Software Solutions and select Edition.

I don't have Edition (not yet anyway) so I can't help you with any specifics.

Edition 5 is currently being shown at the CeBIT show in Germany and is planned for release in May.

It now integrates a new realtime rendering engine enabling it to work without any specific hardware and taking advantage of your current FPU and CPU.

I'm sure you'll see plenty of info regarding this upgrade in a couple of hours since Pinnacle just held it's press conference showcasing the product today...

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/Htm/DVEditHomeSet1.htm

I c an hardly wait to upgrade from my Edition DV 4.5 to Edition 5 Pro...

Sounds great and the reviews are placing Edition 5 and Edition 5 Pro at the top of the NLE systems...

Don't know yet if this a worlwide offer, but Pinnacle will be offering a special "switch" price for current Premiere owners. Edition 5 will be made available for 300 € instead of 800 € normal price ($699 in the US).

Dennis, installing and running the DV500 board with a new OS is not always the easiest thing in the world. But if you've survived doing it under 98SE and a DV300, you'll probably be fine (your the first person I've seen use the words "stable" and "98 SE" in the same sentence ;-). As with any hardware/software combo, there are some limitations you should be aware of and I suggest searching this board and the Pinnacle site knowledge base. As to Edition v. 6.0, I'll be interested to see answers from those who have used both....

If you're going to upgrade to XP, you might want to add some RAM also. Just a thought.

I just got my Edition/DV500 package yesterday. So far, everything is running fine. I didn't have any issues with the installation, and no glitches on capture. Since I'm still going through the manual, I haven't really put it through it's paces yet. I'll report later if I run into any issues.

By the way, my system is a 2.5ghz P4 with 512 RAM running XP Home.

Rick Foxx
Photographic Memories

Good to get feedback beyond the marketing brochures and thanks again. Looking forward to your experiences. By the way, did you upgrade from DV200/300 and convert from Premiere to Edition?

<<<-- Originally posted by Dennis Hull : Good to get feedback beyond the marketing brochures and thanks again. Looking forward to your experiences. By the way, did you upgrade from DV200/300 and convert from Premiere to Edition? -->>>

Actually, this is my first PC based NLE. I used Premiere on the Mac for years, and jumped to Final Cut Pro last summer. I can't really speak to upgrading from the 200/300 to the 500, but if you are upgrading O/S, you might as well archive your data and do a complete rebuild with the new operating system. If you wipe your hard drive and then install Windows, you'll be installing only the necessary drivers for the DV500, and it will probably simplify your transition.

Rick

Thanks for the tips, Rick. Regards, Dennis

Thanks to all of you for the helpful comments; what I have just read the last few days about Edition 5.0 (mostly PR and sales. marketing info--no offense to other Dennis- make it look very interesting. Would save me a lot of time to be able to see all my rendered mistakes faster so I could do things the right way quicker.