I would like to rip one or more scenes from several DVDs, edit the
files with a video editor and burn the results onto a single DVD.

I want it to be relatively simple as my intention is to use it to
compose DVDs from my favorite scenes. For example I have several DVDs
with particular scenes I like to watch. Rather than have to fish thru
individual DVDs, I want to rip the scenes of interest and compose a
new DVD with them as individual tracks which I can then access with an
ordinary DVD player Skip feature.

What software do you recommend? I would like something that is like
SoundForge for audio editing. I do not need elaborate post production
capabilities.

I would also like to make Open Sessions so I can add to the scenes on
any given DVD that I previously edited. Is that possible?

I recommend Pinnacle Studio 9 - it does all that, and is intuitive.

But leave your arrogant signature at home next time.
Alan, Great Britain (you know, the former Empire that spread English
around the world? Please don't counter that I'd be speaking German if
it wasn't for you guys saving my sorry ass  - I've heard it all before,
I'm just asking you to drop contentious political sigs from a REC.
posting)

You snipped everything so we don't know to whom you refer.

It couldn't be me since my name is Bob.

Ingrate. Americans lost their lives saving Britain from certain doom.
If it hadn't been the Nazis it would have been the Commies.

Winston Churchill, who was half American, camped out at the White
House begging FDR to save your limey arses.

FDR finally had to perpetrate one of the biggest examples of treachery
ever in American history - the "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor - in
order to force Americans to accept entrance into WW2.

The commies actually won - Britain is a socialist country suffering
from all the ills of the former soviet states.

A study was conducted recently that concluded if Britain were
destroyed it would not be worthwhile to rebuild it.

See, told you. <g>
Question: Just how long do we have to continue to be "grateful"? How
must we show our gratitude, O masters?

If this "study" is other than in your head, then please enlighten me.

As long as there are American soldiers buried at Normandy.

By remaining a faithful ally, which is exactly what Britain continues
to do in the Iraq War, despite the considerable pressure brought on by
our mutual enemies, like France and Germany.

I may be wrong, but I think that's in France.

By invading Iraq to secure Oil for the USA.

Reviews:

I have been using this software regularly since purchase. It is
running on a monster PC packed with a 200 gig hard drive, 256 mb of
video ram, 1 gig of system memory, a top of the line Pentium 4
processor, using XP professional. So, Pinnacle cannot blame the
hardware! If you use the BASICS of the software, you MIGHT be ok - but
when pushed to the limit, the software FAILS miserably! I am currently
working on a 10 minute video project, adding an audio track and
editing - a basic function of this software - yet, it cannot handle
the process. The software constantly locks up performing simple tasks
- such as opening a section of video. I have actually uninstalled the
software, and reinstalled it just to get it to operate again. On the
second install, I chose NOT to install the 9.3.5 upgrade released late
in 2004, in hopes the software would be more stable - and in fact, it
has been. Support is worthless - it took nearly a week to get a
response, and the diagnosis was hysterical - I'll post it at my web
site soon (drakkar91.com/studio). Equally sad is this software wins
awards from big-name PC magazines - must be pay for play, because
anyone putting this software to the test will see it cannot handle
larger more intense projects. Spend your money elsewhere. Why pay
retail for software like this? No wonder so many people download
bootlegged copies off the Internet - it's not like you're getting good
software or support for the money paid.

---

HANGS ALL THE TIME! Hangs w/ background rendering-disable it. Hangs in
make a movie. Large transition set but not trans. types (like fading).
Title edit sucks! Custom menus 1 page only.

Summary: Don't use Studio 9 for projects over 25 clips. I downloaded
update 9.3.5 and I still can't get it to make a disc, mpg or avi.
Hangs EVERY TIME! Even after upgrading every driver I could find.
Menus are filled with locked features that cost $14.95 each! VERY
ANNOYING!

---

When Pinnacle offered the upgrade to Studio 9 I took the bait. First
of all, the installation feature removes the previous version - not a
smart move; thank goodness for SYSTEM RESTORE!

Each time I began editing I got "Program not responding". I was
suprised to see 2 instances of Studio running but now I understand
that must be how they accomplish background rendering. I posted a
message on their web site and was told that I no-longer met the
minimum system requirements. Did I get suckered into the upgrade?

I don't think so. Again I think the product has just be released
prematurely and the upgrades will eventually address the problems.
Curiously, I installed an update upon my initial installation that
described the problems I was having but to no avail.

The thing that really bothers me is that this time I waited for an
upgrade but still got stung!

---

Rendering took as many as 28 hours and locked up after that. Editing
tools not easy to use. Never have been able to burn a DVD.   

Summary: I have tried at least 4 times to download video from my
camcorder and edit it. I have worked thought the unfriendly user
interface to edit the video and add menus. Once I finished that I
tried to burn the DVD. Rendering took as many as 28 hours only to have
it lock up at the burn stage. Everything was lost and I had to start
over. I did this 4 times before I gave up.

I down loaded all the updates at the beginning and it didn't help.

I was able to take the captured video and use NERO express to edit and
burn my DVD. That software came free with my DVD burner.

There is nothing about this software that I think is worth the price.
I wasted 4 days trying to burn one DVD and it never worked.

---

It Always Hangs and works unstable!

Summary: It's very bad. i work with since jan 2004 and i hope fix it's
bug with upgrade from pinnacle. my pc is athlon barton 2600+ / 512 mb
ddr ram/ grource 4 with 256 mb vram and when render and burn one
project (90 minutes dvd movie with menu and no any effects) it's work
4 hours and final dvd is unusable because last 30 minutes of movie is
jercky and unreadable by my dvd player!

---

Hmmm. It works for me.
Here's what I've done:
Captured a whole 60 minute DV tape from a Canon MV630 as "Full Quality
DV". This wrote one long AVI but the Pinnacle software showed me the
whole tape broken into auto-detected scenes (I left the default option
to detect scene change when timecode changed)
I deleted the crap scenes and inserted transitions, captions, sound
effects and a menu and burned the whole thing to DVD. I made 4 copies,
2 on DATASAFE and 2 on BulkPaq media and they all play fine. The
program never hung. The capture took 1 hour, editing about 2 hours,
rendering about 4 hours, burning about 20 minutes per DVD.
No hangs.
I have XP Home SP2, Celeron 2.2GHz, 786Mb RAM, 80G UDMA second hard
drive with 60G free. I'm not at home so cannot tell you the version of
Studio I'm using.
I'm yet to try ripping from DVD or combining multiple AVIs.

I have essentially the same kind of system.

I can rip DVDs. I want something to edit with so I can compose my own
video clips and burn them onto a DVD.

Is there a DVD equivalent to an "Open Session" like in CDs? That's
where you can add new tracks whenever you want.

When you have a chance please find out if you are using Pinnacle
Studio 9 or Pinnacle Studio 8.

There seems to be a significant difference in quality. IOW, Pinnacle
is good stuff but they publish it too early. I have read that Pinnacle
Studio 8 is stable. But everywhere I read, Pinnacle Studio 9 is very
unstable.

I have read that Pinnacle is better than the other products with the
possible exception of Microsoft's Movie Maker. So it can't be all that
bad. I suspect most of the complaints I posted were from people who
did not meet the hardware requirements. Locking up sounds like a lack
of resources.

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