Not so long ago, Pinnacle concentrated on manufacturing graphics hardware and bundling third-party software with it. These days the company provides its own digital video editing software and makes no bones about competing with Adobe's Premiere.

Edition 5 is aimed at the enthusiastic hobbyist and professional video editor, so if you yearn to create a video with Matrix-type effects Edition 5 will get you much of the way there. However, if you are looking for something that resembles iMovie you should be looking elsewhere.

Edition 5 comes bundled with a FireWire card, but take heed: there is no provision in the software to import video via USB.

There's also a Pro version of the software, for $2,200, which bundles in a custom AGP graphics card based on the ATI R300 GPU and features analog input and output and FireWire. With this card you can capture video as well as use the GPU to apply real-time 3D effects when editing. Another benefit is dual output to a video monitor via the analog output alongside your PC monitor.

The interface is similar to but simpler than Adobe Premiere, although there is a danger of drowning in menus that seem to appear from almost anywhere. However, the benefit is that you can change your working area at the click of a button and you can just as easily customise it to suit your requirements. This makes it easy to switch between windows, edit individual clips, change the order of clips by dragging and dropping, and compile your final production complete with special effects and transitions.

There is an excellent range of transitions and effects; in fact, a separate chapter on realtime software effects was added to the manual for this version. All of the realtime effects can be previewed and they will automatically adjust to suit the specs of your PC by dropping frames if it's not quite powerful enough.

The final edited product can be recorded back to tape (via the FireWire port to the camera) or burned direct to CD or DVD.

Edition 5 now supports screen resolutions up to 1,600 x 1,200, and because it makes use of both your CPU and your video card at the same time it is able play back partially rendered clips.

However, Edition 5 is very resource hungry and can suffer problems with severe memory leaks unless you download the 250MB service pack from the Pinnacle Website.

Edition 5 demands a lot in terms of processing power but if you have what it takes it will give a lot in return.