Dazzel Dvc-80

[Safari]

I am a total newbie with some questions and am hoping someone can provide some help.

I am looking for a way to convert my analog Hi8 home movies to VCD. I have an older computer with the following specs: P111, 20 Gig HD,
500Mhz, 320 RAM, Windows 98SE. This computer does not have USB2, it only has the older USB1.1. It also has no DVD burner, only a CDRW ( that is why I have to make VCD's)

I was looking at Ebay and saw something called Dazzel Dvc-80. It appears to have some sort of device that I should connect to the Camcorder and then to my Usb port to download my movie to my hard drive. Is that correct? The item description explained that there is also some simple editing software that is included with the item.

My question is this. Since I do not wish to do anything fancy, will this suffice? All I wish to do is to edit out unwanted footage, import some mpg music to play quietly in the background while still allowing the narration to be heard and then burn a VCD.

I also saw something called----"ADS Tech" on Ebay. If someone can comment about this I would be very appreciative also.

Thanks for any help.

[dphirschler]

DVC-80 is a turd as far as I am concerned. It's not even capable of VCD quality (maximum 320x240). It's the USB bus's fault really. It just not a big enough pipe for that amount of data. Perhaps they've improved it somehow since I bought mine. Are the new ones USB2? It'd have to do at least 640x480 @30 FPS before I'd consider getting one.


Darryl

[b1tchm4gn3t]

Are the new ones USB2

I have the dvc-150 and it works well for me, and is USB 2

[Garibaldi]

Are the new ones USB2

I have the dvc-150 and it works well for me, and is USB 2

I'm glad it has worked for you. I have a DVC-150 as well, and it has been nothing but a huge problem for me. The Dazzle brand products capture into MPEG format in such a way that the mpeg they produce cannot be opened by other programs for editing or authoring natively. It must first be reencoded to another format, that is if you can get a program to open it.

At any rate it has only cause me much frustration. This last weekend I purchased a ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 series capture card/video card and I am just loving it. I would highly recommend it, I got it for the price of $150 which I believe is about what the Dazzle was going for, at least the 150 when I bought it

[b1tchm4gn3t]

well Pinnacle studio is what came with mine and is all I really need (although I know it sucks from what I hear). I gave $150 for my DVC 150 as well and I am actually happy with it because it does just what I bought it for. In a couple months I will build me a new PC and I will certainly check out the ATI 2006 cards for the upgrade. I have wayyy too much shit on my desk now as it is.

[jaxxboss]

Are the new ones USB2

I have the dvc-150 and it works well for me, and is USB 2

I'm glad it has worked for you. I have a DVC-150 as well, and it has been nothing but a huge problem for me. The Dazzle brand products capture into MPEG format in such a way that the mpeg they produce cannot be opened by other programs for editing or authoring natively. It must first be reencoded to another format, that is if you can get a program to open it.

At any rate it has only cause me much frustration. This last weekend I purchased a ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 series capture card/video card and I am just loving it. I would highly recommend it, I got it for the price of $150 which I believe is about what the Dazzle was going for, at least the 150 when I bought it

Exactly which card did you get? Im so frustrated with taping my tv shows that im going to upgrade my card( need to dump this nvidia mx4400 ) and instead of just getting a tv card, figured id kill 2 birds with one stone.

On that subject, ...duhh, on me.

[Safari]

Garibaldi stated:

"The Dazzle brand products capture into MPEG format in such a way that the mpeg they produce cannot be opened by other programs for editing or authoring natively. It must first be reencoded to another format, that is if you can get a program to open it."

Is he refering to the 150 or the DVC-80? Since I only have USB1.1 I believe I'm restricted to using to using the older version (DVC80). Anyway, I have vcdeasy and tmpgenc would these two tools be adequate for making my VCD?

I guess what I'm saying is my first priority is to get the Hi8 footage from my camcorder to my hardrive.

What I'm thinking is I can use the dazzle(Bridge/Link), whatever you call that doo hickey is to do that. Then if that process doesn't result in a mpeg file, I can convert it to one via Tmpgenc. From there on, I can continue to do my very simplistic editing consisting of nothing more than cutting out bad scenes, spliceing/joining the good scenes and putting some music in the bachgound.

If I'm on the right track please let me know.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

Is he refering to the 150 or the DVC-80? Since I only have USB1.1 I believe I'm restricted to using to using the older version (DVC80).

He was referring to the DVC 150, but Im sure the DVC80 is the same way. If you use the bundled software like I do, you should be alright (but dont quote me on that!) All I know is the 150 works for me for all of the editing I do which is exactly what you say you need to do. Oh and by the way...the DVC 150 I have says it will work on both USB speeds, but all I have tried is the USB 2 since thats all I have on my computers.

[Garibaldi]

Are the new ones USB2

I have the dvc-150 and it works well for me, and is USB 2

I'm glad it has worked for you. I have a DVC-150 as well, and it has been nothing but a huge problem for me. The Dazzle brand products capture into MPEG format in such a way that the mpeg they produce cannot be opened by other programs for editing or authoring natively. It must first be reencoded to another format, that is if you can get a program to open it.

At any rate it has only cause me much frustration. This last weekend I purchased a ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 series capture card/video card and I am just loving it. I would highly recommend it, I got it for the price of $150 which I believe is about what the Dazzle was going for, at least the 150 when I bought it

Exactly which card did you get? Im so frustrated with taping my tv shows that im going to upgrade my card( need to dump this nvidia mx4400 ) and instead of just getting a tv card, figured id kill 2 birds with one stone.

On that subject, ...duhh, on me.

I got the ATI All-In-Wonder 256MB AGP Blus 2006 Edition, that's the title on the box It comes with Studio 9

He was referring to the DVC 150, but Im sure the DVC80 is the same way. If you use the bundled software like I do, you should be alright (but dont quote me on that!) All I know is the 150 works for me for all of the editing I do which is exactly what you say you need to do. Oh and by the way...the DVC 150 I have says it will work on both USB speeds, but all I have tried is the USB 2 since thats all I have on my computers.

Yep, I have run my DVC 150 too at 1.1. Basically what you want to do is sound in priniciple, but you may run into problems with TMPGENC being able to open the captured file, I know I did on several occasions. Yes it does come with Studio 9 which is great software but I still think it would be better to get a different capture card that is compatible with other applications, like my new ATI. This way if you don't like Studio 9 or it gives you some grief, you can always switch to a new app. With Dazzle, it is not possible, there is absolutely no other program that can capture from it.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

This way if you don't like Studio 9 or it gives you some grief, you can always switch to a new app

yes...and thats EXACTLY the reason Im going to get an ATI!

[Garibaldi]

This way if you don't like Studio 9 or it gives you some grief, you can always switch to a new app

yes...and thats EXACTLY the reason Im going to get an ATI!

Yep, it makes life so much easier. There are things that you can't do with Studio 9 or don't want to do with Studio 9, and that's why its important to have compatiblity. Also so I can use it in linux!

[Mister Flonk-Flonk]

Oh and by the way...the DVC 150 I have says it will work on both USB speeds, but all I have tried is the USB 2 since thats all I have on my computers.

I'm sure it will. I used the Dazzle DVC-100 for a few years and got great results with it and it was a USB 1.1 device just like the DVD80. I gave up on MovieStar's crap software early in the game and only captured stuff using the free standing capture utility. Scene chops were made with MPEG-VCR and then authored with DVD-Lab and burned them to DVD using ImgTool Classic and DVD Decrypter. The only problem I had with the DVC-100 was the capture utility had like a 2 GB file size limit, but somebody hooked me up with a better version of it with a bigger size limit and that solved that. I never really had any problems with the MPEG2 files it created, but there were a few DVDs I authored that were a little too big and DVD Shrink choked on them, but that was a pretty rare occurance. I'm guessing it was usually something like a bad GOP or something from cutting them up with MPEG-VCR, but that's just a guess. It really didn't happen often enough to be a major concern for me. Usually I was close enough on the output size that I could re-encode the audio with a little lower bitrate to pickup the extra headroom I needed to make it fit.

[nwo]

* {Post deleted}

[jdizzy40]

I have one. PM me and I will mail the piece of crap too you. Then you too can loose hair and sleep like I did 4 years ago.

[Garibaldi]

I have one. PM me and I will mail the piece of crap too you. Then you too can loose hair and sleep like I did 4 years ago.

Yeah you can have mine too... lol I think redwudz also has one... he uses it as a doorstop now!

[jdizzy40]

Oh, don't bother trying to use the software that came with it. Someone mentioned ULEAD works though. Oh and plan on placing a big fan by it and maybe some ice too. The thing gets hot enough to cook an egg.

[b1tchm4gn3t]

Oh and plan on placing a big fan by it and maybe some ice too. The thing gets hot enough to cook an egg.

I have heard this by many people and I have kept an eye on mine and I can only feel a little heat from it.

[Garibaldi]

Oh and plan on placing a big fan by it and maybe some ice too. The thing gets hot enough to cook an egg.

I have heard this by many people and I have kept an eye on mine and I can only feel a little heat from it.

Mine didn't get hot either. I think though that if you are looking to purchase a capture card that it might be wise to just skip the dazzle experience entirely

[Safari]

Well, it seems the general consensus is to forget the dvc80. There are however some folks who seem to have had some success with it.

As I mentioned in my opening query. I am only interested in getting the footage from my camcorder to my computer. Since my computer is old, I am forced to use the outmoded USB1.1 port. Someone mentioned geting a capture card. I don't know what that is or what would be involved to install such a thing. I know that I do not wish to spend alot of money to just do cut and paste type editing along with a little music added. Can someone expand upon this a little bit?

Additionaly, If I did end up getting the dvc80, would tempgenc encode the file to vcd format?

What is this little piece of hardware of Dazzles' officially called? I know it was refered to as a turd, piece of crap and a door stop, but, I'm sure, those are slang words.

Thanks

[Mister Flonk-Flonk]

It's a USB capture device that hardware encodes on-the-fly. There is no need to re-encode the files it creates. They are ready to go, in-spec for VCD. The only thing you need to do is edit them with a decent MPEG editor. PLenty of applications will allow you to import MPEG video as source and manipulate it....make cuts, etc, but most of them re-encode the entire file when it outputs the edited file. You want to use one that makes frame-accurate cuts and only re-encodes the parts where you make the cuts. Womble's MPEG-VCR is excellent for this.

If the computer is that old, don't waste your time with installing a capture card. Especially for stuff like VCD when you don't even have a DVD burner. If you can get a good deal on the DVD80, my advice would be to go for it and give it a go. It's a USB1.1 device but that is really a non-factor if all you are dealing with is VCD. You should certainly be able to get a deal on one, as nobody is really doing much with VCD these days.

[handyguy]

Just get a dvd recorder. They can make you a very nice dvd. Cheapest I saw are refub Magnvox's for $83 at philips outlet online. Costco might have a Liteon on blackfriday for $89.