Pinnacle Expression review

11 November 2003 21:22 GMT / By Stuart Miles

With digital cameras and DV digital camcorders becoming more and more common in the house, Pinnacle hopes to meet some of the demand in making it easier to show others your memories.

Pinnacle Expression is a simple package that doesn't offer much outside of its main aim. The back of the box claims three simple steps to creating home movies to share, and low and behold that's exactly how long it takes. With so many packages trying to do so many different things, you can see that Pinnacle has decided not to confuse the issue. And guess what, it works.

After installation and the title screen has opened you are presented with step one. Here you have to choose whether it's video, AVI or still images you are wanting to start with and you must select accordingly.

Then, without even time to make a cup of tea, it's onto the layout page and Pinnacle has a number of different formats that will be displayed on screen to suit most peoples needs. These are a little contrived, and consist of love hearts, gardens and workshops, but none the less enough to get by with.

Then it's onto the burning process. Simply save your work and burn away. Once the CD is burnt you can play it in any compatible CD-ROM player and most DVD players as the final result will be a VCD.

All that's left after this is to invite yourself around to the family's house and bore them senseless with whatever you've chosen to make.

Included in the box is a Fellowes CD labelling kit to give your disks that little more pizzazz out of the box and this is a fairly simple device that needs no real instructions on how to use it.

Verdict

In a word, simple. This is a product that tries nothing clever, but gives you the results quickly and easily. It's nice to see every so often, even if as a reviewer it gives you little to write home about.

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Review Recap

Made by: Pinnacle
Price as reviewed: £25
The good: Does what it says on the tin
The bad: You may want more than VCD format but that’s it
Quick verdict: Unless you already have more complicated editing software for once this is a simple program you won’t necessarily outgrow once you know more.
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