Entered CNET Catalog: 10/25/2002
SKU: 210100215
Manufacturer: Pinnacle Systems Inc.
Manufacturer description
Pinnacle Expression is a great way to share your home movies and digital photos with friends and family. Simply connect your DV camcorder or import your digital video and photos, and Pinnacle Expression will allow you to capture and edit your video, edit and arrange your photos into a slideshow, build menus, add music and use your CD or DVD burner to publish CDs and DVDs that will play on your set-top DVD player. Pinnacle Expression also automatically creates fully customizable disc and DVD case labels to ensure that your discs looks as good on the shelf as they do on your TV.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 11/06/2002
It doesn't get any easier
After installing Pinnacle Expression--a quick and painless process--you'll find yourself staring at three of the biggest, friendliest icons across the top of the screen and one of the easiest interfaces ever, outside of software designed for tots. The big buttons take you to the main content areas: import, edit, and export.
The import screen displays an enormous video camera on the left and a list of imported video clips on the right. Unlike most video tools, including Roxio VideoWave, Expression won't capture footage from analog cameras--it needs a digital video (DV) camera or a VCR with a FireWire connection. It will import video (AVI, DV, or MPEG-1 or -2) or photos (BMP, JPEG, PCD, PCT, TGA, WMF, TIFF) that are already on your hard drive. Expression automatically breaks up your video into scenes for easier editing.
Editing for the low-tech crowd
We have yet to see a newbie-level video-editing tool that makes the process both feature rich and simple. Some apps, such as VideoWave and Video Explosion Deluxe, throw in a spate of advanced features and hope users will grow into them. Expression skips those features entirely, offering only simple trims or a tool for combining clips, but that's all. Don't plan on working with timelines, overlays, transitions, or soundtracks, either; Expression doesn't offer any such tools.
Pinnacle went a little too far making this product easy to use; we'd prefer a few more tools. While fast and simple, this app won't grow with your movie-making skills. Oddly enough, if you're making only a slide show with digital still images, you have more editing possibilities: the ability to set how long each image will display on the screen, transitions, and soundtracks. These are tricks that we'd like to work on video, too.
So many menus
We particularly like Expression's DVD menu-creation tools, which, like the slide-show tool, are much stronger than the video-editing options. After you've imported video or pictures, Expression arranges them into a sample menu in the tool's preview screen. The Style Chooser, a small drawer on the left side of the screen, allows you to choose from 44 menu templates, 6 of which have full-motion backgrounds. Or, you can click the Custom Menu button at the bottom of the Style Chooser to create your own image combination from existing templates. If you don't like any of the templates, which are attractive but not as professional as the ones found in Apple iMovie or VideoWave, simply import one of your own pictures to use as a background.
Once you're ready to burn a disc, Expression offers video CD (VideoCD), Super VideoCD (SVCD), and DVD. We found the burning speeds to be roughly average and the resulting quality acceptable, if not outstanding. Expression also includes a typically easy-to-use label-making component, which can automatically make professional-looking booklets and CD labels that incorporate the button pictures from your onscreen menu.
Aside from the software, Expression comes with a plastic DVD case, a plastic tool that helps you apply disc labels so that they line up with the case edges, and a few blank labels ready for your printer. Should you have any trouble and need tech support, Pinnacle offers well-organized and extensive FAQs, forums, and e-mail help through its Web site. Sadly, though, there's no phone support.
The right tool for the right person
If video editing sounds like nothing but a headache to you and you simply want to get your footage onto DVDs and into the hands of your friends, Pinnacle Expression is a great tool. It isn't full featured, and at $49, it's priced a tad too high, but it is a winner for ease of use and attractive results.
Expression features a preview interface that's as easy as pie. The Style Chooser, on the left, offers a variety of templates, while the meter at the bottom shows how much time is left on your disc.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
User Rating: 
1/10
HANGS on almost anything I tried
Pros: pros ? Hu ???
Cons: All I could get out of Expression was HANGS, hangs, hangs, never got any further than importing a mpeg file.
User Rating: 
4/10
Stick with Roxio.
Pros: Does well with importing video from, say, a VHS player. Allows you to see in thumbnail view, text/titles view, or scene-to-sound view.
Cons: Takes forever to encode. Back up to hard drive is a whole directory of files instead of one .iso file like Roxio. Says it requires 256MB, I had 512MB and ended up doubling that, and the program would still crash with under 1 hour compilations. Thanks,
User Rating: 1/10
Rubbish, would not waste anymore time!
Pros: Almost nice GUI, but fails to display chapter thumbnails. Promises alot but fail to deliver!
Cons: Fails to even compile. Setup a new PC with only Win2K and this software, DVD-R (supported), 82Gig space, 512M mem, still fails at 0%, then 2%. CPU at 100% with no power save features enabled! Well, it was free with writer!
User Rating: 
2/10
So much promise, so little return!
Pros: Simple to use interface which promises so much as an introduction for the novice.
Cons: Delivers so little as it crashes 9 out of 10 times. Can't comment on the quality of the results.
User Rating: 2/10
Great time waster
Pros: Very easy to generate very neat slide shows with music and transistions....
Cons: ...but if you want to burn them to a disc, forget it. Never got mine to work. Tech support is non existant. Website is useless. Literally 100's of people on website with same issues, no one every resolves them
User Rating: 4/10
Too slow to be of any practical use
Pros: Don't know, can't be bothered to wait for it to do anything
Cons: Took two hours to perform 2% of a DVD burn on a PII 450MHz machine with 256Mb of RAM Unfriendly user interface - what's with this trend of having icons hidden away that don't look like buttons?
User Rating: 1/10
Hangs on compile for DVD
Pros: Menu creation easy, previews OK. Free with DVD burner - it needed to be!
Cons: crashes computer on compile and never creates a DVD. Original video edited in Premier - burns to DVD with other software but, although preview OK and menus god will not burn to DVD.
User Rating: 
5/10
Read Beyond The Same Opinions!
Pros: I noticed after looking at all the "COMMENTS" left here on CNET that half were written on the same date! More so, those that were not written on the same date all had the same spelling error or grammer profile. This is a NOVICE piece of software. Just
Cons: Customer Support is near non-existant.
User Rating: 
6/10
If only it can finish burning
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User Rating: 5/10
Agree with everyone else...
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User Rating: 4/10
Very bad experience using it
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User Rating: 6/10
VCD-DVD
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User Rating: 5/10
Very Disappointing!!!
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User Rating: 4/10
Maybe if it worked...
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User Rating: 1/10
Horrible picture quality
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User Rating: 2/10
Don't waste money on this trashware
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User Rating: 4/10
CNET Reviews are BOGUS!!!
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User Rating: 4/10
This Product Does Not Work
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User Rating: 1/10
This product stinks!
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User Rating: 5/10
OK, but what about DVD+R?
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3/10
Big Waste of Money and Time
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User Rating: 3/10
Photodex ProShow Far Superior
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User Rating: 6/10
great software if it worked...
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User Rating: 6/10
Simple stuff ...
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User Rating: 6/10
Great Program if Pinnacle Upgrades Encoding
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User Rating: 2/10
This software does not work
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8/10
Quite good! Easy and fun to use!
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User Rating: 2/10
A Waste Of Money
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User Rating: 4/10
Program crashes when I try create slide show.
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