Building a Digital Video Capture System - Part II

Dazzle Digital Video Creator II, Continued

Dazzle's included effects (note the consumer oriented themes such as vacations and birthdays).

Now the DVC II probably isn't going to be finding it's way into any commercial DVD-video production studios but $300 for a pretty decent MPEG-2 encoder is a lot easier to swallow than $3,000 or more.

Dazzle's MovieStar timeline pop-out panel.

The only other problems that I encountered were when the tape lost picture and sync. That seemed to confuse the encoder a bit and it stopped recording.

Overall, I would give the Dazzle Digital Video Creator II high marks for what it is. Installation was a snap. The software bundle is the low point, geared more for the casual consumer who wants to capture birthday videos, but it does that fairly well. The Sonic package is good although the documentation is nonexistent and it takes some playing around with, but again, it wasn't designed for professionals. Problem handling was fair. System requirements are minimal. But the bottom line is: the capture quality was very good. If you want to put videos on DVD, video CD, or do some light editing with few effects without having to buy a new PC, then the DVC II should do the trick. I'd give it a 3.5 or 4 out of 5 compared to the other systems I tested.

Ratings

4 = Capture quality
2.5 = Software bundle
4 = Ease of installation
3 = Ability to deal with problems
5 = System requirements
4 = Documentation
Overall rating: 4 out of 5