DV500 Plus takes advantage of one of the great new features of Premiere 6, letting you create an automated audio mix in real time.

And that leads us to a weakness in the DV500 Plus. If you want to do real time 3D effects, forget it. It's just not going to happen with the DV500. But some editors might not mind that shortcoming, because they may not ever need to use 3D effects. Pinnacle has apparently decided that some other features are more important to have in real time, such as the ability to do limited color correction (what Pinnacle calls "image correction"). The advantage of this would be, for example, if you had a twenty minute shot that was too dark. In real time, you're able to bring that brightness level up to the normal range, without out rendering.

Another strength of the new software is its ability to take advantage of Premiere's new audio mixing tools. As you play a sequence, you're able to do a live mix of your audio sources, and Premiere remembers all the fader settings you've made. It reminds me of the Sony digital audio board we have in an old linear edit suite -- when you play back the tape, your servo-controlled faders move around as if controlled by a ghost. This is the best implementation of Premiere's (somewhat limited) audio features I've seen yet.

Another weakness in the DV500 is the necessity to render any effects that are in your timeline if you're going back to DV tape. Keep in mind that this makes no difference whatsoever if your footage will be recorded on analog tape from the timeline. Also, if you're just going to play back your show while recording it to a VHS or Betacam tape, you're in luck. If your output format is DV tape, though, you'll have to wait. But it's not a really long wait, because only the effects you've created need to render, and those took about 4 seconds for every second of effects on our test system, a lowly Pentium II 550 machine.

It's not exactly color correction, but it's what Pinnacle calls "Image correction." Handy for that too-long dark shot -- brighten it up with a flick of the mouse, in real time.

Another point I'd like to mention is that the DV 500, unlike the DVStorm by Canopus, can get by with a positively crappy machine, like the one on which we evaluated it here at the Midwest Test Facility. Sure, we have some monster machines here, but we wanted to see what would happen to the DV500 in the worst of conditions. So, we tested it on a Compaq Pentium 550 machine with 128 MB of RAM and an awful, ancient Matrox Millennium 200 card. Even when it was running Windows 98 SE, the thing was able to play back all its effects in real time.

Even so, since the DV500 reportedly works even better with a real operating system like Windows 2000, using the lame-ass Windows 98 SE is certainly not recommended, although the point is, it's possible. And what about that fossil of a graphics card, the Millennium 200? No big deal, because the heavy lifting for all those real time effects is done on the DV500 card. The graphics card you choose doesn't appear to make much difference, as long as it can display your Premiere time line. I think this is a nice feature, because you get to choose any graphics card you want, not one that chosen for you. And, the lack of reliance on a very fast processor(s) could be a huge cost-saving factor -- you don't have to buy a whole new machine or change operating systems to get some productive video editing done. Keep in mind, though, if you want to render some fancy effects, that old slow processor will drag you down.

One thing that dragged me down for a while was setting up the DV500 Plus. It's not easy. Here's where I wished the card worked on a Mac, where there are no such things as IRQ conflicts. The first DV500 card I had would not work at all in any of the machines in which I installed it. Even Pinnacle's tech support department couldn't get it to work. It appears that the DV500 Plus needs its own IRQ in order to function properly. But even after turning our computers upside-down, clearing out IRQs, and uninstalling everything except the DV500, it still wouldn't work, and I still don't know why. After I sent that card back and Pinnacle sent me a machine that was preconfigured with the DV500 Plus, (where the computer had the DV500 on its own IRQ), all was perfect. With my installation attempts, though, I noticed that it's just a bit too hard to please this card. Imagine, if I had trouble getting it to work properly, with the full attention of Pinnacle's PR department and support staff, what would happen to someone without the clout of over 30,000 readers breathing down Pinnacle's neck? Scary. My recommendation: Get a dealer, reseller or digital video expert, preferably a PC-oriented propeller-head, to set it up for you.

Here's the breakout box for DV500 Plus with its distinctive red cable. Alongside is its single DV card that can be used with the graphics card of your choice.

That said, once the card was properly configured, it worked flawlessly. I found its integration with Premiere 6 to be the best yet. I liked the included software packages, and was impressed with its real time titling, and even liked its somewhat limited color correction tools. If you're not concerned with producing 3D effects in real time, and aren't outputting your timelines to DV tape, it's hard to find anything missing from this value-priced package.

The author would like to thank Midwest Test Facility Information Services Manager Drew Gagliano for his assistance in the preparation of this review.

Charlie White has been writing about digital video editing since it was the laughingstock of the post-production industry. He's an Emmy award-winning producer and director for PBS, and Senior Producer at Digital Media Net. Reach him at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com

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