I have been using Pinnacle Studio 8 for over a year and now Studio 9. I use Studio to manage my video productions and create the final MPG movies. From VHS and High 8, I use a Dazzle (USB 2.0) to capture the movies directly to Studio. From my GL2, it works seemlessly via direct firewire. Studio (8 or 9) handles the incorporation of images relatively well. The one negative thing is that you cannot preset the image time, therefore all images import at the same time interval... not a problem for a few pictures, but it is for several hundred. Studio 8 works much better if you change the image size for TV use prior to using them... you don't need 6MP images in your movie. I like the graphical interface of Studio.. simple enough, yet has power when you need it. I teach video production classes and use Studio as the primary tool. I don't care for it's DVD production tool (in 8 or 9). It does not allow for the freedom of production that I want. I use Sonic DVDit for the final DVD menu interface and build of the DVD files. Then I use Nero to manage the DVD writing. I have used PTE for many years. Unfortunately most customers want to see their pictures incorporated with Video on their DVD player. I don't get many requests for computer-based slide shows. Therefore, I use Nero Professional and turned my PC tower into a 4 DVD burner factory. A couple words of advice... * I run approx 1.2 Terabytes of storage. You will never be able to keep all the encoded video on a hard drive. I encode all video video Studio to MPEG files (not AVI) to conserve on storage space. * Make sure you have at least a 4x DVD burner as it will save you a lot of time. They are only $92 (You can get a LiteOn drive via NewEgg). * Copy all the original video and the Studio project files to one DVD, copy the final movies files to another DVD, then copy the DVD production files to a DVD. If you have to make more copies or edit the movie later, you will have stored all that you need. (note that you may be able to store all your files on one data DVD, but that is rare if you are producing videos with more than an hour of content). I hope this helps... RC