by Bern Solnik
August 29, 2001

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So, your cameras are up, lighting and mic’s in place, and the final changes to your PowerPoint slides complete. Feed this real life business presentation, given in a conference room, a courtyard, an auditorium, or wherever, into Pinnacle Systems' StreamGenie Presenter and you’ll wind up with a professional program, complete with wipes, dissolves, superimposed titles (e.g., “lower thirds”), special effects, and effortless switching between video sources. Presenter will also create a rich media Web page to display the program with synchronized PowerPoint slides, and stream live in RealNetworks and Windows Media formats simultaneously. The final program can be recorded on the Presenter’s hard disk and an external tape deck.

But the real world does not unfold like a press release. As you’ve probably noticed, it’s quite unpredictable. We took the StreamGenie Presenter out of the brochure, out of the box, and out of the office to find out how well it would deal with the demands of a professional production.

Exterior

The Presenter arrives in a terrifically helpful pull-cart nylon case; although sleek and compact in its matte black 17-by-13-by 9-inch rugged metal case, the unit weighs 43 pounds, which could be difficult to move about if not for the luggage-like packaging. Folding down the unit’s front cover reveals a 15.1-inch LCD screen and a computer keyboard with a built-in mouse. The keyboard can be separated from the case entirely for greater flexibility.

Internal Hardware

The Presenter contains dual Intel Pentium III 800MHz processors running on Windows NT4, with 256KB of RAM, an 18GB high-speed SCSI hard disk, a 48X CD-ROM drive, a 10/100Mbps network interface card, an Antex audio card (two balanced XLR inputs and outputs), a Soundblaster audio card (for playing audio files and music from the CD-ROM drive), a Pinnacle video capture card with onboard processing and a Pinnacle digital video editing card (equivalent to Pinnacle's Genie card, found inside high-end professional broadcast production equipment). There are six video inputs (three composite and three S-video), two video outputs (1 composite and 1 S-video), and a reference loop for syncing video to an external source such as "house sync."