What our customer's say!

"Horrible Software ", I purchased this product to replace my earlier version of Arcsoft DVD. The product has crashed repeatedly and has yet to perform. You cannot get any technical help from Arcsoft at any time except their online question and suggested answers. Do not buy this product for any reason

"Works Great!!", I downloaded the trial version of the product first to create a DVD for my church's 85th anniversary. I had to learn how to use the software because I did not have a hard copy of the user manual. Once I figured out what I was doing, everything works great. I suggest that you use DVD/RW media until you get the DVD movie just the way you want it. This was my first foray into DVD authoring, and have been pleased with the results. I also tried using Windows Movie Maker, Photostory 3, Nero, and Power Director, but found that I did not have enough control with Nero and Power director is good but I had become more familiar with Showbiz. Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story would not allow me to place all of my pictures in the movie. I had over 300. I agree with a previous reviewer that said your media must match your DVD burner or there will be problems. Overall, I really like using Arcsoft and recommended it to my school for use with its DVD photo slideshow. That is working out well also. We have a DVD slideshow movie with over 800 pictures with music and transitions. Needless to say, I purchased the software.

"You Must Read Me Before Buying.", Before I bought this product I read the reviews. More reviews were negative than positive. I had an older version of ArcSoft ShowBiz and I liked it. I bought this product, installed it, and it worked beautifully EXCEPT it would not burn a DVD. What a disappointment. Like the other reviews, the technical support wasn't any help. Now I didn't physically call them, but I contacted them through e-mail and I read their FAQ's. Not any help there. I called the Online company, J&R Music and Computer World, where I bought this program wondering if I had the latest version. Oscar, J&R's live technician, was so helpful to me. He told me to check the disc I was using to burn with. I was probably using a disc that was not compatible with my burner. He was so correct. My computer could not handle the 8x or 16x DVD's. I needed to either purchase the correct disc for my computer or upgrade my drivers. I chose to buy the correct disc for my computer. Everything now works GREAT. The program did write a DVD which I can play in my DVD player. Before you pull out any more hair from the tops of your heads, check to be sure that you are using the correct DVD's with the correct speed for your computer. Good Luck, and Thanks Oscar, your products and services is exemplary.


"Works Great for Me", I was surprised to see some of the negative feedback on this product because I have been successfully using it for about 2 years. I've easily been able to download video (mini DV), and make DVD movies that include background music, chapters, and special effects. I've tried using other programs such as Nero, Pinnacle 8, and MS Windows Movie Maker, but I keep going back to Showbiz because of its ease of use.

"Appaling customer service", This seems to be a common complaint but I'd just like to confirm it from my own recent experience.

Sure ArcSoft provide a demo trial (15 day) version for download. Sure, the software is easy to install and seems easy enough to use, except for DVD authoring, which I haven't tried yet due to "hitting a brick wall" in the editor. Try getting ANY support from their people if you dare, though. While their website has a searchable FAQ knowledgebase, it's impossible to contact any humans at ArcSoft. You just get the "canned" email response asking you to search the FAQ. I have tried numerous ways to get one of their staff to answer a couple of simple pre-sales questions and have been totally ignored.

Appaling customer service. It's almost like they DON'T want to sell their software and makes it difficult to trust the company behind the product.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Great Product but..", I have used this product for a few days now. I was able to capture, edit and burn a 20 min DVD complete with video effects, audio dubbing, photo slide shows and DVD menus - DVD played with stunning clarity on two dvd players without any problems. Excellent product for the price I paid (nothing - came bundled with the dvd burner). However, when I attempted to burn an hour long video, all the hell started breaking loose.

1. Despite saving the project, storyboard/timeline does not remember all the clips and transitions added to the movie. I'd to repeat this cumbersome and time consuming process every time.

2. I think as the # of clips grow (not 100% sure, Arcsoft is yet to get back to me), I started getting an error. Tried several alternatives but no avail. No word from the online tech support after 3 days.

I gave up and now am using MS Windows Movie Maker for the editing purpose. Will still use the DVD Maker portion of Arcsoft.

This is a great product for amateurs/prosumers (especially for the price you pay). Too bad that the support sucks. There knowledge base is very primitive and almost good for nothing.


UPDATE: After a week, I still haven't heard from the technical support. I have switched to MS Movie Maker for now and considering to buy a different product with real support.

"BUYER BEWARE!!!", If I could I would give the software itself a 10 star rating, however, if I could, I would give the support at Arcsoft a minus 300! ShowBizDVD is a fantastic product that does what it is supposed to do as long as you buy the physical version of the software and NEVER need support for it. I purchased the downloadable version of the software from Arcsoft, which costs the same as the physical CDROM copy of it, and have regretted it ever since. The support on Arcsoft is laughable. Along with two of my co-workers who also bought the downloadable version, I have received the runaround with the various problems I have had with the software. The downloadable version has some limited capabilities from the physical version. I know this because my company bought the physical version and I did a comparison. I have for the last month tried to solve this problem through ArcSoft's so-called support to no avail. They have asked the same questions repeatedly, they tell me over and over that the downloaded version and the physical version are the same, they are not, I have proven this through a side by side comparison. The other individuals in my company that also bought the downloadable version have had the same problems, have noticed the same differences, and have had the same responses from "support", if you can really call it that. Unfortunately I may have to take some legal actions to get the problem solved. If you buy the physical version of the software, you should be okay as far as the full-functioning version of the software is concerned, but good luck in getting any support out of Arcsoft! So that's why I say it's a great product that does some amazing things, but --- BUYER BEWARE!!

"Not Ready for Prime Time", I got this software bundled with an HP DVD Writer and wasted hours upon hours of my life that I will never get back. Here is a short list of problems:
* I wasted days trying to write a DVD and never got a single one to play properly on my DVD player.
* Crashes. I have found 5 reproducible crash bugs. 5.
* The controls are non-intuitive. Try clicking one of them and discover that they Un-Do all of your work. It is cruel.
* Importing. I have tried for the last three hours to work around this bug, but I can't figure it out. Trying to import a scene from a DVD, it plays fine on my DVD player and my computer, but importing it into Arcsoft truncates the 20 minute video to 11 seconds. What is that?
* Editing scenes vs Editing chapters. I wasted hours editing scenes... But the work is all lost when you go to create chapters. What is that all about? What a waste of time.

I have no idea what other software to buy, but I can tell you that Arcsoft is not it. Plainly, it stinks and I won't buy any of their products ever.

"Very capable, professional results", Please believe me. I do not work for Arcsoft, but I am giving this package a 4 star rating. The quality of dvd's it produces rate 5 stars, but the learning curve to master this software is a little steep, and the documentation for using the package a little hard to find. Hence only four stars. This software came bundled with the HP MCE computer I purchased, so my only documentation were the help files. If you were new to the dvd generation business (as I was), the instructions are a little daunting. Then I found a link in their help files to a tutorial, and instruction manual that they maintain for registered users on their internet site. Ah soo, said the blind carpentar as he picked up his hammer and saw! The tutorial opened my eyes to the new terminology, and walked me through a typical project. It also explained how to make a slide show of my images that did panning and zooming and added music in the background, and rendered it to a dvd that will play in any standard dvd on the family room TV in stunning clarity of resolution of picutre and sound. One minor gripe: the slide show module is hidden in the "create" module as an option there. It should be on the "file" menu option also, to lead you there.

But the software does more than allow you to make professional slide shows. I have learned how to take the dvr files of recorded show, movies from my hard disk, edit them (throw out all those nasty commercials) and render them to dvd's that have commercial dvd quality, dvd's that play in any standard dvd player in your own family room. Of course, the signal I get from my cable company is superb (Astound), so the recorded TV files I capture to hard disc are of very high quality. (I have my compter media recorder setting at "good", not better and not best, to keep the files of mangeable size.) The really great feature of the software is the ability to edit the dvr file to excise all those nasty commercials. The program reads dvr files right off the disc, and "transcodes" them to mpeg2 dvd compliant files. Now I "copy" and "paste" the mepg2 file (right click edit options) to multiple clip sites on the editing page. Each clip then can be edited by a starting marker and an ending mark around the movie content avoiding the commercials. Repeating this for each movie segment you wind up with multiple clips of movies content only, in sequence. Now its time to "create" the dvd. The create module has many options as to bits per pixel, variable bit rate settings, but the most efficient is to select "smart rendering" and the software chooses the best options for highest quality picture, in the least amount of time. I find that a two hour movie shorn of it commercials yields about 1 ½ hours of video time and about 4g of file data (recording at the "good" level). The rendering process takes about an hour for a 1 ½ edited movie file. (Much less than other packages I have read about) This renders nicely to a single dvd of excellent video and audio quality that will play in my standard dvd player in the comfort of my family room. Arcsoft has provided us with the power of the video director (more accurately, the cutting room director), and dvd creator with commercial quality, right on our own MCE computers. Bravo Arcsoft! (Of course, I use these dvd's only for my personal use, legal under the "fair use" doctrine)


"easy to use but with issues", It's easy to use. You capture, you edit, you export the movie to the format you want but... in capturing, if you want to indicate you want to capture more than 2,5 hours... you can't (and for the half hour you have to download a patch or you'll only have 2 hours max). And for recording to DVD you better have another software because this one only allows 1,5 hour!