(You will of course need to buy a DVD-burner and these are slowly trickling their way onto the market.) Pinnacle Studio Deluxe comes with Studio 7 (an intuitive video editing software package) Hollywood FX Plus (sound effects) plus Pinnacle Express (so you can rather elegantly burn DVD discs that can be played back on a set top DVD player.) Suggested retail price: $299.

Called Pinnacle Studio Deluxe, this brand new software and hardware combo gives you a video capture card that takes both analog and digital video inputs and software to turn your video into a DVD or high-quality video CD.

Fortunately, Pinnacle Systems, which makes high end editing equipment for the broadcast industry, now has an end-to-end solution for the PC. We've been so busy singing the praises of the iMac's video editing and DVD creation software it's only fair to look for these capabilities on the PC. Basically, it's a stripped-down and simplified version of Photoshop, available for about $90 list price (but we found it nearly can be obtained FREE, thanks to rebates.) I like this program especially for taking images and making them useful for posting on my web pages. If you're not up to spending all that on your software, consider Photoshop Elements.

Adobe photoshop elements price alerts