Pinnacle Video Transfer for iPod PSP or USB Storage Device Review
Today we’re going to take a look at the Pinnacle Video Transfer device. This nifty, and rather inexpensive, little device allows you to record analog video into MPEG-4 digital video files using any USB 2.0 compatible storage device. You don’t need a PC, you can also transfer the video to an iPod, PSP or other compatible USB drive. How well does the Pinnacle Video Transfer work? Let’s find out.
Review continued below…
The Pinnacle Video Transfer is a very well designed device that does one thing and does it very well. Using it is quite simple. Pretty much if you can plug in a video jack and follow a few other very simple instructions you can use it. It makes it quite easy to transfer movies from a DVD player or even an old VCR to your PC, iPod or other storage device. The Pinnacle Video Transfer great for committing those old camcorder tapes to digital video.
A quick glance at the technical specs reveals that the Pinnacle Video Transfer records to MPEG-4 encoding in H.264 at up to 720×480 NTSC resolution, ie your standard US television format. It has inputs for S-Video, Composite Video and stereo audio. The output is USB 2.0 only and it does not have Firewire support.
Overall, the capture that the Pinnacle Video Transfer does is good, depending on the quality of the source recording. For older tapes from recordings made in the early 1990’s the quality wasn’t that good but neither was the original. This is an analog capture so you will need to manually start and stop the recording process and it will take as long as the source material takes to run. This makes it a bit time consuming so you may want to pick and chose what you want to record using the Pinnacle Video Transfer device. You may also want video editing software to chop the source material down later.
The bottom line is that the Pinnacle Video Transfer device is a good and cheap way to move video onto your PC, iPod, PSP or other digital video device. It is bare bones, no bells and whistles here, but it does its one job very well.
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Hi Frank, Great Review! I figure that anything with Pinnacle in its name has to be a great product, whether it’s Pinnacle Video Transfer or Pinnacle Trade Show Displays. I think each system “does one thing and does it very well” and with each one, “using it is quite simple”! So if you want to transfer video, go with the Pinnacle Video Transfer device. If you want trade show displays, go with Pinnacle Trade Show Displays.
~ Steve
PS. I saw Pinnacle and just couldn’t resist!
Hi Steve,
That’s the Pinnacle of stuffing keywords into a comment.
Perhaps we should attempt to make certain that every comment on this post includes the word pinnacle. In that way. This post will thus become the pinnacle of achievement on OpTempo. There, I’ve made a start.
All kidding aside, it looks as if the Pinnacle Video Transfer would be a very useful device for transferring some of my old VHS tapes into digital format. I understand your point about the quality not being particularly good, but as you say, none of the originals are so great either. I do have some old tapes that I would like to retain and I think the Pinnacle Video Transfer might be a good solution for them.
The Pinnacle Video Transfer sounds pretty good, although a Firewire port would be nice too.
But even without that, it will be useful when I dupe some old family movies that I have been wanting to digitalize for ages.