Pinnacle Pro-ONE

The Pinnacle Pro-ONE is the latest in a line of products that have brought broadcast-quality effects and editing tools onto the screens of desktop videographers. Like the Matrox RT2500, the Pro-ONE delivers the Holy Grail of realtime editing. There's no waiting around for complex 2D and 3D transitions and dissolves to render - you can watch them play as soon as you've dropped them on the timeline.

The Pro-ONE is a single-slot, full-sized PCI card with a C-Cube DVxpress MX25 chip at its core. This is the same chip used to provide the RT2500's realtime effects and it's also used in Pinnacle's DV500. We reviewed the Pro-ONE in an Armari 2GHz Pentium 4 machine with 40GB and 60GB internal EIDE hard drives and Pioneer's new DVR-A03 DVD-R/RW drive.

The Armari runs Windows ME - a choice no doubt dictated by the current lack of Windows 2000 drivers for the Pro-ONE. Pinnacle is working on the Windows 2000 drivers and didn't want to hold up the product until they were ready. But, given the preference for Windows 2000 among videographers, they can't come too soon.

The card has one internal and two external FireWire ports, an audio-out port which connects to your PC sound card, and a connector for the blue breakout box which has inputs and outputs for S-Video, Composite video and left and right audio channels.

While you can view realtime effects overlayed in the Premiere monitor window, by far the best way is to connect a video monitor or TV to the blue box. You can also make realtime recordings to a VCR, but if you want to create a DVD or record back to your DV camcorder, you're back in renderland.

Like other realtime cards the Pro-ONE only provides instant analog output. On the 2GHz Armari machine rendering times were around five times realtime, and this is one area in which Pro-ONE has some catching up to do to match the performance of the Matrox RT2500.

In addition to Premiere 6, bundled software includes Title Deko RT, Hollywood FX RT, Adobe Photoshop LE, Media Cleaner 5 EZ, Pinnacle's DV Tools capture software, and Impression DVD SE for DVD authoring.

The Pro-ONE provides an excellent selection of 2D and 3D realtime effects that can be used simultaneously and provide keyframe customisation. Like the RT2500, the fundamental rule is that you can have two video layers with a realtime transition and a graphic or title layer with alpha channel transparency. You can apply realtime filter effects to any of these layers, and with some exceptions the whole thing zips along beautifully.

The Instant Video RT window shows a green filmstrip which turns red if you do something that requires rendering (and you also get the Premiere timeline red bar). The rules about what requires rendering are not always obvious. For example, you can apply the image correction, zoom and rotate filters to two video layers and use a transition, add a title to which the motion filter has been applied, and it will all preview in realtime.

But you can't apply a 3D filter to a clip used in a transition, use the zoom and rotate filters on clips to which a Hollywood FX transition has been applied, or use page curl, page peel, or Picture-in-Picture on a title overlay if the underlying clips use the Gradient wipe transition.

Rather than worry about this, you just get on with it, and you rarely invoke the wrath of the red render bar unless you're attempting something really complicated.

Control over individual filters and transitions is versatile and very easy to get the hang of. Each transition opens with a number of presets; keyframes can be cut and pasted within and between transitions, and you can save the results for future use. Effects and transitions can be previewed in the transition dialog using the source clips, or on the monitor.

The Pro-ONE has one unusual and possibly unique feature. The image stabiliser eliminates camera shake by identifying high-contrast edges and adjusting the frame position to compensate for camera movement. The results can be good, but you may prefer the shake to the slight softness caused by edge pixel cropping.

Contact
Pinnacle Systems: 01895 442 003 www.pinnaclesys.co.uk

System requirements
Pentium III, 128MB RAM, 500MB hard disk space, 20GB dedicated AV hard disk, Windows 98SE or ME

See also:

Evesham Axis 1.4GHz

Evesham presents 1.4GHz of smoking games monster. Anyone for Quake 3?  12 Dec 2001

Evesham Athlon XP 1900+ PC

A blisteringly fast Athlon XP processor beats at the heart of this PC.  10 Dec 2001

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