A Cardinal doesn't run off! He retires in a stately manner.

I use Pinnacle Studio 11.
It can be a bitch to install and it can be very tricky to operate, especially if your project involves of lots of transitions and special video effects.

However, the results are spectacular! I made a DVD with professional looking menus and tons of transitions and effects of my grandson's first year on this planet. Everyone loved it, paticularly as they were expecting 'home movies - groan ! '  I was able to add a backgound music track and sound effects too.

I'm in the middle of making a DVD of our holiday in Scotland and one involving another of my grandchildren.

To use Pinnacle effectively you need a good graphics card, lots of ram and a large hdd. I use 3 hdds - 500gig, 300 & 160 gigs. Pinnacle generates a lot of huge temp files as it renders and depending on the size of your project can take hours to render to your DVD burner.

But, I promise you if you do it right and stick with it the end result can be every bit as good as something you might see on the tv, which isn't surprising as many TV Companies use Pinnacle sourced products. You should be warned though, your project will only be as good as the footage you are working with. You can't do too much with crap footage and there's no answer to idiots who clap along with the crowd at an event instead of filming the crowd clapping!!!!!!

Nero has it's own video editing software suite called Nero Vision. It's nowhere near as complex or sophisticated as Pinnacle and works a lot faster, but for my money it doesn't give you the quality end-result you can get from Pinnacle Studio.

Hope this helps.

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...