My laptop runs on Vista. I imported a clip through Windows, but when I try to open it in Pinnacle, the file is there, but it won't open. Then, I tried capturing the video again with Pinnacle open through Pinnacle, but I can't deactivate the webcam, so that it only wants to capture through the webcam, not my camcorder. I need help. thanks.

Mr. Photo,
according to all the info I have read (and I did a lot of searching), Pinnacle 9 is NOT supported by Vista. Pinnacle says that only Studio v.11 will work with Vista.
I ran into a similar problem. Captured video shows only black in the preview screen, no matter which format it was captured in (DV/AVI/MPEG...). The only time you could see anything in the preview window was when video was being captured in DV mode via Firewire.
But then when you played it back, it only showed black screen. If you dragged the window around, it would display the video but in a stroboscopic type effect.
I'm seriously thinking of wiping the hard drive clean and installing XP-Pro on my newer desktop, I bought the PC to do video editing (well, one of many things I want to do with it)

Matt

__________________
Matt the PI
DCR-DVD405
DCR-DVD301
DCR-TRV340

Pinnacle 9 also will not edit or work with AVCHD format files. I had it on my older laptop and it just barely crawled through one HDV project.

If dealing with AVCHD files Pinnacle Studio 12 Plus or Ultimate is the way to go. If mrphoto has the any previous version install disk, Pinnacle offers a discounted upgrade to version 12.

www.pinnaclesys.com for details and for minimum computer specs.