This is going to be one of those good news-bad news reviews, where you might wonder at the end if I really liked this $1799 nonlinear editing system from Canopus or not. DVStorm, released in early December, gives you the capability to capture video via numerous sources, like 1394, Y/C and composite connectors and output real time video to DV or analog from the time line. It also lets you output to MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and streaming video files, and the audio clock is genlocked to video reference for superb audio sync, unlike problems that have plagued DV editing for years. This combination of a great DV hardware card, Canopus's sturdy software array and assorted software titles like Adobe Premiere 5.1c, stripped-down versions of Boris Graffiti, Spruce DVD and Sonic Foundry's ACID Music, along with Canopus SoftXplode and Web Video Wizard is one powerful package with lots of growing room. On the downside, you better have the right computer, meaning at least a 700 MHz P3 with 256 MB of RAM, or even better -- a dual processor behemoth -- or you'll miss all the fun.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Even though Canopus support reps lay blame away from DVStorm, the implementation of the DVStorm card with Premiere 5.1 leaves a lot to be desired. Whoever is at fault, it's simply crash-prone, and if you don't constantly save your work, you'll be sorry. Sure, Premiere has often been cited for instability with other hardware configurations, but this is beyond unstable and bordering on the unusable. Countless times, as I was working on a highly complex segment, Premiere would simply disappear from the screen, leaving nothing and losing all data. Other times, Premiere would freeze, stubbornly holding on to the overlay as it crashed, causing a blank green screen on my NTSC monitor and forcing a complete cold boot of the system -- a rarity in the Windows 2000 setup on our Dell Dimension XPS B1000 computer here at the Midwest Test Facility.

But it was plain to see that there's great potential here -- real time effects, moving titles and filters within Premiere, as long as you choose the specially-created Canopus transitions and filters. But hey, the issue is moot because like the old year 2000, Premiere 5.1 is now on its way out, making way for its successor, Premiere 6.0. Canopus has promised to bundle Premiere 6 soon, and for the paltry sum of $20, offers an upgrade to Premiere 6 to anyone who bought DVStorm after November 11, 2000. Canopus insiders say the Premiere 6 plug-ins will be available in February. Let's just hope that version 6.0 and DVStorm can get along better than this, because I found the combination of DVStorm and Premiere 5.1c to be unacceptable.

Next: The Good News