i am currently thinking about building a new computer and the discussions i have found have been very helpful. However.... currently i am using Pinnacle to create dvds of sporting events, etc. The program is nice in it's use of editing video and adding audio. The problem is that it bogs down to a snails crawl whenever any amount of video is worked on. I have a 1.73 CPU with 512mb and it is about (2) years old. The questions i need help on are: a) What is the best cpu, mobo, ram for my application (i am willing to upgrade using around $1000) if it will help the snails pace issue. and Is pinnacle a good software program for my needs? I have heard the Adobe Premier is also a good program.
Thanks,
Nicknite
in michigan, go blue

let me start by sayting I do not know much about these software products, but I just went through the same situation with a family member. They had an older computer, about your specs, and were having a similar situation. They went out and purchases a dell precision workstation with 1 gb of ram, 3.2 ghz processor and i think it was a ATI FireGL V3100 video card. With those specs he has not reported a problem since he had it.

Hope that helps somewhat

Thanks Grinler that was helpful. It's going to cost me money but hopefully it will be worth it. After all you can't take it with you.
Thanks again.
Nicknite

You may want to see if its cheaper just buying the parts seperately and upgrading your computer..that is if you want to deal with it all

Hi, I am just curious if you have been to Pinnacle's Forums and read about this problem. I was using Pinnacle Studio 8, full version, and it took forever to Render the information of the video so it could be burned to DVD.
As I recall, when I went to their site and searched around for information about this, what I found was something like: Most computer's will take 4 to 6 times as long to render the information as to the movie's length. Meaning, if you have a 1 hour video, it will take 4 to 6 hours to render it, so it can be burned to DVD.
I was using the software on a HP Celeron 2.4, with a 60 GB Hard drive that was dedicated to only using if for movies and editing them. And, it would take my machine about 4 hours to render 45 minutes of movie.
I hope this info helps....PC world had some articles last spring about the various DVD Software and although Pinnacle rated High in Quality, it was by far the slowest to render.
Just for your knowledge, I totally enjoyed using Pinnacle, it is a Fun and Creative way to Produce a Movie and then burn it to DVD.