Affordable Intermediate Video Editing Solutions that enable you to
produce much better videos.

Over the past few months we’ve been putting together a product line-up
of video editing bundles that combine full featured NLE software with
analog/DV conversion hardware at a great price. We’ve worked with our
vendors to make sure that each of these bundles offers you a
tremendous value while still keeping the prices as close to $500 as
possible. This article reviews four of these bundles:

   1. XDV4AV - Avid Xpress DV w/ ADS Pyro AV Link
   2. API-757 - Sony Vegas 6+DVD Production Suite w/ ADS Pyro AV Link
   3. Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 w/ Pinnacle MovieBox Deluxe
   4. Canopus Edius Pro 3 w/ Canopus ACEDVio

I hope you find this article very informative. Not only do we review
each of these bundles, we go into several of the most important
features that separate the software found in these bundles from the
cheap video editing titles you can find at your local computer or
electronics superstore. If you’re looking to get more serious about
video editing, this article is a MUST READ for you. Click here to read
this great article http://www.videoguys.com/Shootout2005.html

Gary

The Electronic Mailbox   http://www.videoguys.com
The Desk Top Video Editing & Production Experts
800 323-2325 or Free DTV tech advice (516) 759-1615

All DTV purchases include our 30 day customer assurance program
and FREE tech support

Show quote Hide quote   Let me guess; you guys selling this stuff found some very
compelling reasons to buy the more expensive stuff, right?

  I like my commercialism right out front, not pretending to be
friendly advice.

Ken

....and presumably they aren't Apple resellers, as there's no Final Cut
Express. It isn't an article, it's a clip from their catalogue.

Ken and Bernard. What morons you are. If you purchased everything according
to what a friend says, then you must have duplicates of all the things found
in those friends houses, or you are both just a couple of liars.

I'm sure the pizza you eat is only the pizza recommended by a friend. The
car you drive was reviewed by some magazine, which I am absolutely sure did
not take advertising money from the car maker. The milk you drink was
recommended by a very good mother who lives near you. God forbid you should
take the dairy farmers word his milk is good!

The furniture you sit on at home and the office was most assuredly not
purchased by visiting [big gasp] A FURNITURE SHOWROOM!!! Surely you had the
balls to buy only the furniture recommended by a friend and you had never
ever seen an advertisement for the place of purchase or the furniture brand
name!!!

You guys are so full of sh*t! Gary Bettan at purchases all those products
and tries them out one-by-one. If there is anyone on this planet who knows
about editing hardware and software it is Gary Bettan. My guess he know way
more about the stuff than either of you ever will.

I too am a reseller of editing gear. I edit everyday. I test every product
we sell and know what is better in one product than another. I can give an
honest opinion on each one which is not weighed according to what I want to
sell the most of.

My guess is that you guys can't afford most of those things and need to put
someone else down to make yourselves feel better somehow. Sure, you can say
you can afford anything that is out there, but in truth I think you are both
a couple of ner'do wells who are one paycheck from being homeless.

You can scramble to make yourselves look better, but like your attitude
toward Gary for his articles, I won't believe any of it. After all, you are
just a couple of guys sitting comfortably out of the way hiding behind the
safety of the internet puffing out your chests and spouting nasty comments.

If you are truly editors how do you ever get business? After all, if you say
you are good then it is most assuredly because you are just trying to sell
yourself to the customer - God forbid! You should be recommended by someone
or reviewed by an outside party before anyone should hire you to do editing
for them!! You are the product, aren't you?????

My recommendation is to go f*ck yourselves.

<bernard.newn***@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
Show quoteHide quote

  <Snip part of irrational rant, in no way based on either post.>

  Ah, birds of a feather, do you post thinly disguised commercial
announcements all the time too?

And your "Truth" is based on what? Certainly not the facts, so what are
your evaluations of Editing product based on? You have demonstrated
you don't need to know the factual situation before you can arrive at
your own version of "truth".  So what drives your evaluations; Profit
margin's perhaps?

   Pointing out that a guy out to make a sale, isn't an unbiased observer,
is not a major accomplishment, nor is it a "nasty comment"


  Where do I claim to be employed as an Editor?  Or Employed
at all?  Actually I retired at 45 over 12 years ago.

   Now what could it be about my short little post that could
engender such a response?  Perhaps you see the "Truth"
more clearly than I thought,  you just don't like it.

Luck;
    Ken

Yes, amazing - you write a couple of lines, and get such a vehement
result.  Personally, I spent several years testing editing systems for
the DigiLab at BBC Television. Before that I spent many years making
promos for the same organisation.  I can tell the difference between an
ad for a company and a dispassionate review.

To answer a few of your questions.

1) Yes, the purpose of the article is to point out that ther are
affordable upgrade solutions for video editing. At around $500 each,
these bundles include not just an advanced NLE, but hardware to
capture your older analog footage. Another benefit of these encoders
is you can oiutput back to VHS or just monitor your editing on a TV
screen.

2) Yes, we sell the products reviewed. heck, 3 of these bundles didn't
even exist until we worked with our vendors to make them. The article
(and all the articles found on the Videoguys website) are there for
you to read - for FREE. We have some fantasitc artilces on opitmizing
your computer for video editing and making sure you have the right
specs to run the software/hardware  we sell. Youa re under no
obligation to buy any of the prodcuts we review - if you do decide to
buy them we hope you buy from us ;-)

3)  If you have a Mac, then you have iMovie and the next logical step
up is Final Cut Express. The Pyro AV Link converter box included in
two of these bundles will also work with Mac based NLEs, as will the
Canopus & DataVideo line of AV/DV converters.

4) When looking to purchase NLE gear, you should get information from
as many reliable sources as possibel. Check outt user groups and
communities. Read the reviews from the various magazines. Talk to
other users/ friends. The Videoguys blog
http://www.videoguys.com/blog/ is loaded with links to articles and
reviews and tech tips all over the web. Type in the name of the
prodcut you are interested into the blog search and you'll be well on
your way.

5) When you do buy, buy from a company that's going to offer you
support and customer service. We offer free tech support on all our
videoe diting gear. And we offer a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. If
you buy NLE xyz and decide you would rather get NYE 123, just call our
custoemr service dept to work out the exchange.

6) At the end of thte article we placed a link where you can request
trial versions of all 4 software titles reviewed. We have contacted
our vendors and we have most of the trial disks in house. (we are
still waiting on one vendor).
http://www.videoguys.com/Shootout2005.html

Gary
The Electronic Mailbox   http://www.videoguys.com
The Desk Top Video Editing & Production Experts
800 323-2325 or Free DTV tech advice (516) 759-1615

All DTV purchases include our 30 day customer assurance program
and FREE tech support

Hi Gary

I didn't mean to be personally unkind to you as suggested by the rather
loopy Innocent Bystander. It's just that you didn't have any winners or
losers.
Magazine "shootouts", like in the westerns, always have winners - gold
awards, percentages or whatever  - to recommend their best buys, and
this is what I expected when I went to your site. I guess as you sell
all the stuff you can't do that, just point out the differences.
Perhaps you should call it something else so as not to disappoint.

cheers

B

www.tech-ops.co.uk

This is what Ken meant.  All of the articles and reviews fail to mention
problems or limitations.

However, Electronic Music Box is excellent.  We bought a Canopus DV Storm 2
product with Edius 2.5 and could not be happier because it fit our needs and
equipment budget.  I also did *extensive* Google research re strengths and
weaknesses, compared to say Matrox or Pinnacle Liquid.  This external
analysis is essential.  How many catalogs do you know of that say 'don't buy
this product we carry because the drivers are flakey'?  Amazon has the
interesting concept of leaving unedited reviews so the individual can
perform at least a minimal compartive analysis (you have to watch for small
companies planting 'reviews' however).  Most other sites are not so bold.

And, just like Gary says: do your research on user-forums/webpages etc,
don't rely only on them.

-martin-

A very fair point. In hindsight its more of a round-up than shootout.
I'll keep that in mind the next time I name an article.

I would like to add the following:

All four of the software titles reviews in the article are excellent.
I tried to point out specific strengths of each one, and the tools
that I think make each one special.

The choice actually comes down more to personal preference and style
and key "must have" features. That's why we put together the trial
version offer at the end of the article. It allows you to be the final
judge of which title is best for you.

I use all 4. Bounce back and forth between them. Sometimes I pick a
particular NLE because the project calls for the tools it does best.
Other times I just pick the NLE that has had the latest update, as my
way of real-world testing it. Still other times I'll pick a particular
NLE becasue we are getting a lot of calls about it, or I see users
asking the same questions about it on a forum.

Gary


Videoguys.com   http://www.videoguys.com
The Digital Video Editing & DVD Production Experts
800 323-2325 or Free DTV tech advice (516) 759-1615

All DTV purchases include our 30 day customer assurance program
and FREE tech support

Gary Bettan wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteUltimatly, I think that most of us, while not anticipating buying
editing gear based strickly on one writeup from a vendor, would, at the
end of the day, say we found usefull information in that writeup and
included it in an overall search of product plusses and minuses.

Perhaps people are getting picky here because they used the phrase
'Shootout', but I'm happy to overlook that as being rather unimportant.
Had they labled the article "A basic feature overview comparision",
perhaps it would have satisfied the accuracy police. However, it would
have failed marketing 101.

Show quote Hide quote   Well, the same could be said for most "Infomercials".  They were
once rare on TV, I guess we'll just have to get used to them in the
newsgroups now.   I have as much appreciation as the next guy, for
any useful information and have spent time pouring over catalogs, as
well.  Even drooling over Heathkit's as a kid.  But I don't know if
this is a trend I would want to encourage.

Luck;
    Ken

Ken Maltby wrote:

At least they are less intrusive and more topical than the regularly
appearing 'free ipod' comeon's. We may have a strict constructionists
defination of spam, but hey, when the author sticks around to politely
answer the critics, at least its not a step backwards.

Show quote Hide quote I prefer on topic product discussions from purveyors and manufacturers 10 to
1 over OT political posts.  Just me.

Steve King

I have found the information on the videoguys webpage extremely
useful on several occasions, even though I've never bought
anything from them.  They have always seemed to me among the
more benevolent vendors I've run across on the net.

Scott

This is a peer to peer user helper group.
Gary does advertizing on it.
It's like your friends selling you Mary Kay or plastic containers.
They either don't get that you aren't overly pleased with them trying
to sell you stuff or they just don't care. 
We've been through this many times.  We say we don't care for it.
People say that Gary helps many people.  Other people say that lots of
people help many people but don't advertize.  I can tell you that
obviously Gary isn't going to stop.  It's part of his marketing
campaign.  It's not personal, it's marketing.  This is the wild west
and he has a sufficiently big gun and just does what he wants.
Requests:
    Please don't call his marketing something which it is not.
    Go on with your life.  Don't obsess about the percieved
injury.
    If you are upset show it by our choice of vendors.




On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 03:24:06 GMT, video***@videoguys.com (Gary Bettan)
wrote:

Show quoteHide quote

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