Pinnacle Express

Burn your home movies straight to disc.

Price: £50

Manufacturer: Pinnacle

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Verdict

Although Express will turn your camcorder clips into something watchable on most DVD players, its limited editing features make it unsuitable for anybody with more than a hobby-level interest in home video.

Kyle MacRae, What PC? 05 Apr 2002

The trouble with home video is that, once you've shot your footage and transferred it to a computer for editing, what do you do with the finished product?

The usual route is re-recording to a VHS cassette, which means it's easy to share, but you lose the digital quality in the process. Here's an alternative of sorts: burn your movies straight to discs that can be played on a domestic DVD player or any DVDRom-equipped PC.

Express has three functions. First, it captures video from a digital camcorder through a FireWire port (and if your computer doesn't have one, you can buy the the DV edition of Express which, for an extra £20, includes a FireWire card). Existing AVI video files and still images can also be imported.

Second, it lets you sort your clips and pictures into some semblance of a story line. At this point we should state categorically that, if you're looking for a sophisticated editing package along the lines of Pinnacle's own Studio DV, you'll be sorely disappointed: options here are few, rudimentary and ultimately frustrating.

Finally, it burns a finished project onto either CD-R media (in VideoCD or Super VideoCD format) or straight to DVD (if you have the required hardware).

A VideoCD will play on some but not all standalone DVD players (check compatibility first) and only at approximately VHS quality. The Super VideoCD format offers a far superior quality but has virtually no DVD player support. DVD is by far the best option but few PCs come kitted out with DVD-R/RW drives.

Aside from the editing limitations, our main quibble with Express is its limited support for CD-R/RW drives. We tried it with three without any success. Indeed, the only drive with which we could persuade Express to perform at all was a new and expensive La Cie DVD-RW.

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