I bought a Dazzle 150 analog video capture device and it came with Pinnacle Studio 9.3 SE. Capturing from the device was a
breeze. I didn't encounter any problems and the quality was quite good. Things started to look pretty bad when I started
editing, however. At first, by adding a few existing MPEG-1 files to my storyboard, I was able to produce somewhat of a movie
and with transitions in between. However, once I got to about 20 clips, my system started getting bogged down performance
wise. Anything I did in Studio 9 took about 5 minutes to accomplish - and I mean anything! From a keystroke to a mouse click,
every single input action I gave Studio 9 took forever to complete. What was Studio 9 doing? Who knows! I did some research
on the Internet and found a suggestion someone made regarding turning off background rendering, so I did. I still had the
same problem. Everything I did took forever for Studio 9 to process. It's not like I told it to make the movie, I was simply
doing things like inserting transitions, moving a clip from one position in the storyboard to another, and simply clicking on
an existing storyboard clip. After about the 25th video clip, Studio 9 now took about 30 minutes to do any little thing. It's
not like I have an old, slow system either. I have a P4 3.0GHz hyperthreaded, 1GB DDR400 RAM, 120GB SATA HD, ATI Radeon 128MB
video card, Windows XP Professional system! Now that's pretty fast! There should be no reason for Studio 9 to have to take
30 minutes to do something in response to a simple mouse click on an existing storyboard video clip!
So, in an effort to resolve this issue, I decided to go to Pinnacle's website and see if there were any patches available for
download. There was: version 9.3.5. So, I downloaded it and installed it. Now, the program wouldn't start! It gave me a
'DLLMain entry point' error! Can you believe that? The patch made things worse! After reading some FAQs at Pinnacle's site
regarding this issue, I did what they told me to do: 1) uninstall Studio 9, 2) remove the entire application directory from
disk, 3) remove anything running from the background in memory (such as antivirus programs, anti-spyware, unnecessary
services, etc.), 4) re-install Studio 9, and then 5) re-apply the patch. After going through steps 1 through 4, I was able to
get the unpatched version of Studio 9 running. However, after installing the patch once again, I got the same 'DLLMain entry
poin't error again! I still could not start Studio 9.3.5! I should've left it unpatched, at least it would've worked period!
So, I decided to reformat my entire hard drive, re-install Windows XP and then re-install Studio 9. I planned on only have
Windows XP and Studio 9 on my system. After installing both Windows XP and Studio 9 on my system, I had a working version of
Studio 9 running. So, I decided to try out, once more, the patch. This time the patch worked! I had to completely re-install
my operating system in order to get this patch to work with my OS! What a nightmare! So, I started created my project again
from scratch. I added some video clips and added some transitions. After about the 20th video clip, which are each only about
5 minutes in length, Studio 9 started to creep. It starts getting slower and slower! After about the 25th video clip added to
my storyboard, I've just about had it! This is not worth the time and frustration! I took my Dazzle 150 and Studio 9 package
back to the store for a FULL refund (after carefully re-packaging the box like it was new)!
I will NEVER buy another Pinnacle product again! Their software is completely useless, poorly devloped and obviously poorly
tested. Instead, I bought a firewire card and converter and Intervideo's WinDVD Creator and ULead's VideoStudio software.
Both ran just fine on my system. I didn't experience ANY slowness (unless of course it was time to make the movie) during my
editing phase of using both programs, adding video clips to the storyboard didn't take 30 minutes to complete and simply
clicking and keyboard actions didn't take 15 minutes to accomplish! These are really good programs that are fast, have great
quality and WORK! Pinnacle's Studio 9 is the worst software I've ever encountered!
You've been warned - DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! Note: the Dazzle 150 device itself was great, it was Studio 9 that was the
problem. Oh yeah, another point, the Dazzle 150 can only be used with Pinnacle software - you can't use with other video
editing software such as WinDVD os VideoStudio!

Wow, thanks for the warning re: Dazzle 150 only working with Studio 9...I had the Intervideo WinDVD Creator basic as part of my new HP package and it's great. So far I have only used it for my digital still pictures...want to import VHS video and was going to use Dazzle as the external capture device but not now! Any other suggestions for external video capture device?

I would have to echo the comments above. I bought an upgrade to Studio 9 Plus. I am ready to send it back.
It is sad that Beta versions (Alpha?) are feisted upon the public as a functional product.
I spent two weeks trying to install and get it to work. I finally put in the 9.4 patch which fixed one thing only to break another!
I am ready to explore other options!

I have an IDE and a SATA hard drive and I too encountered this problem after installing any update patches after 9.3.5. All works well with 9.3.5. I eventually traced the problem to Studio 9.4.x not liking any of it's components, files or captured video AVI's on the SATA drive. As long as all is on the IDE drive it works fine. Isn't SATA supposed to be better and faster? Obviously nobody told Pinnacle!

It's interesting to read the 'fixes' on Pinnaclesys.com but this issue is not even mentioned.

I also note that v10 must just be a re-badged v9 as, already, they've issued nearly as many fixes for it!

I am using 9.4... and the 150 box just fine with no issues on Win 2000 and XP Home.