Posted by Harry Kiri on 11/28/05 15:17

"Newbury" <Newbury@spamex.com> wrote in message
news:UqudnUKPH873pRreRVn-gA@comcast.com...

> You are wasting your time trying to reason with this lame crowd
headed by
> nappy and a few other toads that seem to enjoy negativity and
constant
> complaining. I have been lurking here for years and some people
never
> change. Anyone with more than half a brain knows what you are saying
but
> common sense falls on deaf ears in this crowd.

Some of us "toads" have had a completely different experience to
yours.

Some of us "toads" run our own video and/or associated businesses and
have done so for many years.

Insulting people proves nothing except you have little else to offer
in the way of hard facts. I have no idea whether Avid will make a
difference to Pinnacle, after all, the Pinnacle business model made
Pinnacle a lot of money (but few friends).

Yes, the following email to my ex business associate (Pinnacle) is
quite old, but it details my experience with that company - I was a
Pinnacle reseller back in the late 90's. I left them long ago, but
from what I see in the ng, nothing much ever changes. I also note
that Pinnacle still have agents riding the ng who consistently attack
the intelligence or motivation of anyone who criticises Pinnacle
products.

Finally, although you criticise and attack "Nappy", there are a huge
number of people who agree with him wholeheartedly.

______________________________________________

Good afternoon/good evening, Pinnacle support team.

I couldn't even begin to describe what the last four years have been
like.
My wife went digital in 1997. I'm an electronics and computer
professional,
also attempting to keep my wifes event video business with a fully
functioning editor - based on a DV300, O/S Win95 then Win98SE with
several
mobos and intel processors as time went on. I have built the
occasional
editor for others (again, based on Pinnacle products) in the past, but
quickly learnt to refuse to build anything for anyone who wasn't
totally
computer literate.

The main problem has been the Pinnacle drivers - a series of
disasters, one
after the other.

The first of your drivers (used with Premiere 4.2), resulted in quite
a
number of Maryannes (XL1) video events being filled with audio beeps.
Each
painfully rubber banded out, huge numbers of hours spent doing this.
Finally fixed in a new driver. All sorts of other problems - single
frames
of audio missing at regular intervals giving a brief but noticeable
break in
audio output. Has to do with the number of audio samples not being
locked
to the number of video frames I think. Time consuming work around
needed on
the timeline. Digital glitches of all types. I suspect that
somewhere in
the chain, digital video frames can develop a data corruption. This
corrupted data, when it hits the Pinnacle codec (on the way to the
1394
interface), causes the codec to spit the dummy completely for a second
or
two. Possibly associated, 1394 interface occasionally dropping out
for no
apparent reason, say around 90 minutes into a 3 hour VHS dubb. Quite
rare,
but never could determine exactly why. Workaround? Had to watch most
important VHS dubbs as they were output from the timeline. Wasn't
dropped
frames - at least the Pinnacle window didn't list any. Deadly
expensive in
our time wasted watching a damned dubb that Maryanne had spent days
editing
already.

Software reloads every time Maryannes editor crashed. Quite a number
of
requests for assistance to you - only one was ever answered, after
that all
further emails were ignored. Working until 3 or 4 am in the morning,
developing workarounds for all manner of glitches, problems,
incompatibilities etc. We totally gave up trying to contact Pinnacle
support, years ago, never to bother trying to get any answers from you
again.

Version 1.6 of the DV300 software came sort of close to being
semi/pseudo
stable - Norton Ghost helped here. Saved a lot of time on reloading
software.

The final straw is version 2.00 of your DV300 (200) software, which we
currently try to use with Prem 5.1c (we've held off going to Prem 6
until at
least a couple of bug fix upgrades are promulgated by Adobe). The
crashes
increased ten fold, until the graphics card acceleration was ratcheted
down
to where it will only support primary surface now.

As best as I can see, the intellectual giant who designed this, in his
wisdom, decided to automatically deinterlace any series of single
frames
being sent to the card. Your designer is obviously not a practical
editor,
for if he was, he'd have realised that he's destroyed an editors
ability to
see many of the camera flashes that are extremely helpful for multi
camera
synchronisation. Most camera flashes appear in only one field, not
both.
Yes, you do still see them on the computer monitor, but it's still
very
annoying for the PAL monitor display to sometimes show them and
sometimes
not.

In addition, we often (used to) select a frame to be used in a frame
hold,
by watching the PAL monitor and scrubbing the time line in a
particular
piece of action. The selection was done by watching for a frame that
had a
(relatively) minimum of flicker. We then deflickered the frame rather
than
de-interlaced it. Gives a superior result in many cases (not all, of
course). This cannot be done at all, any more.

Those currently working with Pinnacle probably know little of the
Company's
past reputation for Support. What can I say. Others reading this
will not
need any elaboration.

My wife persisted with her video production and the problems were
solved by
our tenacity, usenet (thank you everybody for your time and help), a
Diploma
in Electronics and Communications and a Diploma in Microcomputer
Systems
(honours, 1995). God help those who tried to go it alone with nothing
but
enthusiasm to help them. I wonder how many poor people sank after
hitting
the Pinnacle rock. Maybe they had more sense than us and abandoned
ship in
favour of Matrox, Canopus or others long before us ......

I don't really have any bitter feelings, although I probably should
have.
It taught me how to handle despair ..... Over the years, I've seen
some
posts in the NG's that suggested the poster was ready to commission
Bin
Laden to deal with Pinnacle Software Team. Despite the disgusting
language
these posters used, I really felt for them, knowing pretty much what
they
were going through.

It's been a hell of a four years. After building and maintaining
Pinnacle
based NLE's for all this time, it's over.

I'll be building systems based on an opposition real time board from
now
on - with a reputation for rock solid support (and little need of such
support anyway). My sympathy to your driver writers - must be an
absolute
madhouse in there. They're probably all very close to the edge, poor
souls!

There's next to no possibility of a change of heart. Such a long
history of
appalling drivers has ensured that.

Good luck, Pinnacle, you're going to need it, believe me.

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