Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge??

[kingoflubrication]

i was thinking about getting this device. it connects to your firewire and lets you capture analog video through the firewire then converts it to digital. anyone have it? is it any good? any feedback would be much appreciated. thanks. also, here is a link: http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=280111

[kingoflubrication]

anyone?

[Dragonsf]

It a nice product with only a few drawbacks. look at the mainconcept forum to learn about some troubles. As a standalone product it works well and if you know how to circumvent some sync problems, it does what it should do with good quality. I burned more than 20 SVCDs with HW Bridge from old VHS tapes.

[humdinger]

beware this product if you have a VIA chipset... I have a KT-133 and when using the bridge, it will randomly lock up my computer. My DV cam works fine through firewire, its just the bridge. When it does work though, the quality from digital sattellite is amazing Dazzle support confirmed my Mobo as the problem, so in the end i gave up and bought a mac for my firewire needs. it's amazing how much more reliable they are....

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

The DV-Bridge is a good A-D solution at this time. This comes with a few caveats:

-Older versions of the hardware have problems with playback. Make sure your DV-Bridge's serial # has a "HW1X2" or "HW1X1" in it. Those are revision #s.

-Requires you to purchase a 1394 card.

-If you have problematic source, then you definitely need a TBC. Otherwise, the audio tends to drift (aka A/V synch problems). In general, any capture setup should have one (like the DataVideo TBC-100).

There are some competitors you should consider as well. Sony makes a very popular DVMC-DA2 product. Canopus is also coming out with a A-D product that has a lot of potential.

[Dragonsf]

The Sony Mediaconverter works only with NTSC (AFAIK), but the Bridge has both POAL and NTSC:
I have 2 VIA KT133 boards, no problem with computer lock up encountered so far.

[EricB]

First, apologies to all Dazzle owners whose units perform "perfectly". To me, Dazzle products are frustrating because they almost work great. My personal experience is that the DV-Bridge would capture with occaisional dropouts. I would have to go through and edit out these glitches. When playing back to tape, it would lose sync at times and just output blocks. Their software is legendary for being marginal.

For me, a much better solution has been to buy an entry level digital camcorder with analog passthrough. The Sony I got works perfectly (no glitches in capture) and has one great benefit over the DV-Bridge: it provides storage for the captured DV files which are huge. Thus if I ever want to edit again, or re-encode, I still have a digital version of the original. The unit is worth the extra money even if you just use it as a converter / storage unit.

[kingoflubrication]

when doing "passthrough" do you first record to mini-dv, or do you just let the analog play through the dv cam while "capturing" through firewire?

[EricB]

Either way works. I have a D8 camera (as opposed to MiniDV). I can just passthrough to firewire, or record to the camera if I want a digital backup. I also have a lot of material on Hi8 format. You can put that tape directly in the D8 camcorder and capture out the firewire. Pretty neat system.

[fishgod1010]

I have had if for about 6 months. Only drawback is I get a vertical mis-alignment from some VHS tapes. I have not been able to rid the problem as of yet.