Great real-time performance, particularly with high definition footage. But the EDIUS Pro software still needs a few more features to usurp the competition.

Canopus first made its name providing top-notch 3Dfx cards. Realising the deadly competitiveness and pace of that market, however, Canopus has moved on and repositioned itself as a company specialising in video editing.

There was a time when Pinnacle dominated the PC video-editing market. But, after its initial success with the DV500, the advent of sophisticated realtime editing seemed to leave the company behind. While it was a good product, the company’s Pro-ONE arrived when competitive products from Matrox and Canopus had been available for some time. The Pinnacle Edition PRO 5 is an entirely different matter.

The ProV is a product similar in nature to the Canopus ADVC-100 (page 44), but where the ADVC-100 is used for transcoding video streams with an eye on digital video work, the ProV is used to bring versatility to your computer monitor, or breathe life into any spare monitors youve got laying around.

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Excellent features and performance, but it’s pricey and you need a suitably powerful PC to make the most of it.

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There was a time when semi-professional video editors and home-video enthusiasts had little choice but Adobe Premiere. Back then, video capture and output depended on proprietary hardware, which often only worked with its bundled software.

Digital video is a rising star, with DV camera sales increasing from year to year and digital software sales to consumers and enthusiasts alike also on the rise. It's a welcome trend, to be sure, but with all such trends there is a widening gap between the digital haves and the have-nots, with no easy way to share video between.

Video editing can make or break those home movies of your latest adventure or that important business presentation. Until recently you only had the choice of some expensive professional, or some fairly crude software packages, but over recent years Ulead has put video editing within the reach of most video camera users, and at a reasonable price.

One of the cheapest Vista SSD notebooks we've seen yet, though we're surprised by the benchmark results.

Editing performance with HDV remains sluggish, but DV-editing ability is formidable.

Sony's first CMOS based consumer HD camera brings control and fidelity to images in a package that's hard to beat.