I recently got my hands on a Pinnacle MovieBox USB. It’s a capture card with Composite and S-Video input from the mid-2000. It looked very sturdy as a device and would have been handy in a few art projects. If I could get it to work that is.
Here are some resources I could find on the internet.
Manual: https://manualmachine.com/pinnacle/movieboxusb/10304172-manual/
Here’s a Youtube video that shows it in use in a Windows 10 setup:
So far I have not been able to get it to work on any of my machines. I am documenting my attempts here with the hope that someone else can do better.
Windows Drivers
I came across this official Pinnacle page with a bunch of legacy drivers. As far as I can see there are only drivers for 32-bit setups, up until Windows 7.
https://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportFiles/Hardware_Installer/readmeHW10.htm
I could not get these drivers to work in Windows 10. This forum post seems to confirm that they would not work.
My second attempt was to setup a Windows XP machine in virtual box. That didn’t seem to detect the MovieBox at all.
Third attempt was to install Windows XP on an old laptop I had lying around. After installing the drivers, my MovieBox actually came to life and the fan starting spinning! Good sign! However, I could not get any input from the device. Most software would just crash or show a black image as input.
Linux Drivers
Found a Linux driver in Sourceforge. Need to build it yourself though and it seems quite out-of-date.
If you are comfortable with C and willing to fiddle with old Linux kernel versions, this is probably your best bet.
Accompanying software
Archive.org has a ISO of the “studio” software that you can use to capture and edit: https://archive.org/details/pinnaclestudio8
It requires a 10-digit activation code and I was able to brute-force it in just three tries. Didn’t write down the code unfortunately.
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