Can't Do the Basics
Written: Nov 18 '05 (Updated Nov 18 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Small external analog-to-digital converter; hardware seems stable
Cons: Flaky software has lots of features but is too unstable for any real work
The Bottom Line: Dazzle needs to offer this with simple, minimal software that will do the basics. The bulging software is too unstable to be reliable.
|
|
|
| pvreditor's Full Review: Pinnacle Dazzle DVC 90 (210100371) Video Capture |
Video capture and editing on computers is fraught with problems, despite the fact that products to do exactly this have been available for many years. I've experimented with several video capture products over the years and knew they were a crapshoot. Therefore, when it came time to work on a real project, I decided to low-ball it and get the inexpensive Dazzle DVC90. I think I paid around $90 about a year ago.
What It Is
The Dazzle DVC90 ("DVC" is short for "digital video creator," by the way) consists of two major components: a small analog-to-digital (A/D) video interface device that is about the size of a computer mouse, and a large software package to capture and edit video, as well as create video CDs and DVDs. The hardware says "Dazzle DVC90" on it, while the software is Studio 9 Quickstart from Pinnacle Systems.
The analog-to-digital capture device is in a small, attractive blue plastic case that has a USB2 wire coming out one side. On the other side of the case are input connectors for composite video, S-video and stereo audio. The device does not have RGB or component video inputs. The USB2 cable is about six feet long, so finding a location for the A/D converter is not a problem.
The software comes on two disks -- one a CD and the other a DVD-ROM -- and it's quite a large package. The CD contains the basic Studio 9 Quickstart program, while the DVD-ROM has an enormous file of effects that can be used with the editing software. Since Studio 9 Quickstart has everything I needed to capture, edit and create disks, I loaded virtually nothing from the DVD-ROM disk. However, you should know that there are LOTS of effects and DVD formatting templates on the DVD-ROM disk.
I believe the Dazzle DVC90 is for Windows-based PCs only. It is not for Macintosh computers.
Loading It All
My computer is a little more than two years old but still plenty powerful. It is a PC with Windows XP, powered by an Athlon 2800 processor. I have 1 GB of RAM and a 300 GB SATA hard drive that is mostly empty. All the computer's USB ports are the USB2 standard.
Windows quickly recognized the Dazzle DVC90 hardware and prompted me for the driver CD. As far as I could tell, this process went fine. Loading the software was a normal process; I had to stay near the computer to answer various prompts, so it wasn’t quite automated. When it came to the DVD-ROM material, I saw that it was nearly all special video effects and DVD menu templates, so I loaded almost none of it.
It turns out that the version of Pinnacle's Studio 9 that came with my DVC90 is Version 9.3. Almost immediately, the software prompted me to download the latest update, which is V. 9.3.4. I didn't do it at first but did upgrade once I started having some problems. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
I initially tried to load this system in my year-old laptop, which has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1 GB RAM. Although everything seemed to load properly, I could not get the system to display an image from the captured video source. In other words, when I pumped video into the DVC90 A/D converter, it did not appear on my laptop. I therefore decided to use it in my desktop computer, which seemed to accept it with no trouble.
Using It
I kept the DVC90 hardware continuously plugged into a USB2 port for the entire time I used the product. To launch the software, I clicked on the Studio 9 icon and the program comes up with an interesting user interface, sort of in the form of a storybook.
There are two common models for computer video editing: the storyboard and the timeline. The storyboard consists of pictures that represent video scenes, while the timeline is a graphical representation of all the scenes strung together on a continuous timeline. Pinnacle's Studio 9 uses both these models, with a large book-like palette at the top of the screen showing video clips as picture icons, then a timeline at the bottom of the screen where the final video is assembled and edited. Three tabs at the top of the "book" let you switch between capture, editing and burning a DVD. It's an interesting and fairly easy-to-understand design.
I needed to edit about 25 minutes of old 8mm films that had been recorded onto three VHS videotapes. With nearly six hours of raw material to work with, this involved a lot of time sitting at the computer and shuttling the VCR.
The first sequence that I captured and edited went quite well. It was a five-minute sequence, and the video and audio captured and edited with no problem. (The raw 8mm films had no sound but various 1960s oldies were dubbed onto the tape when the film was transferred to video.) The final edited video ended up as an AVI file and there was a quality selection to allow me to select the bit rate and final image quality. Considering how poor the original video was because of the ancient 8mm film, the quality was fine. There are even controls to easily adjust brightness, contrast and audio volume -- I used some of these a few times and they worked well.
Unfortunately, the second session of editing did not go as well. As I attempted to capture video, the image was continually locking up. Playing back what I had captured showed that the video was indeed full-motion, then locked on a still image. After looking at and adjusting everything that seemed relevant, I gave up for the night.
The next day, I updated the software to Studio 9 Version 9.3.4 and tried again. It was even worse this time. Any video that I attempted to capture immediately racked up hundreds of dropped frames in just a couple of minutes, meaning that the video was going to playback jerkily and possibly distorted. Again, no adjustments or settings seemed to help. After another day or two of experimenting, I gave up on Studio 9 and used Windows Movie Maker, free software that Microsoft offers to Windows XP users.
The Dazzle DVC90 hardware worked MUCH more reliably with Windows Movie Maker, with one exception. I could not get audio from the DVC90 A/D device. I checked all the settings and am sure that the sound should have been working but, alas, it did not. However, since I had to edit silent films and didn't really care about the oldies soundtrack, I completed my editing project using Windows Movie Maker. Other than the fact that it did not get audio from the DVC90 A/D converter, it worked perfectly for capturing video and editing.
Bottom Line
There are two discrete components to the Dazzle DVC90: software and hardware. My experience is that the software has more problems than a teenage runaway; the hardware is at least somewhat usable. In my case, I was unable to get audio through the DVC90 A/D converter when using Windows Movie Maker, but I could have tried to plug audio directly into the computer. (This was a choice offered by the Movie Maker software.) Nonetheless, audio should have worked through the Dazzle DVC90 A/D converter but it did not.
However, my project was all about editing video and I was able to use the hardware for this. Having an external A/D converter that plugs into a USB2 port is a major convenience and the DVC90 hardware showed that it works reliably... once it works.
As far as the whole package is concerned, I think it's overblown and under-engineered. It may work perfectly on some computers or it may never work at all on other computers. In my case, it worked perfectly for one day's editing, then crapped out for the next. Switching to different software allowed me to complete my project, but not without a different set of problems: no audio.
I'm going to give the Dazzle DVC90 package two stars for its small, convenient hardware. But it's just barely two stars. The software was useless, in my experience. Although it has a huge assortment of effects and a truckload of features, the Studio 9 Quickstart software failed miserably to do the absolute minimum that I needed: capture clean video and assemble the clips. I didn't want effects -- I just wanted productivity, and the Dazzle DVC90 package did not cooperate.
I do not recommend the Dazzle DVC90 capture and editing system.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.