help with hollywood dazzle bridge

[puar]

hey,

i'm not exactly new to the capture thing, with the exception of dv stuff. previously, i've been using my matrox rainbow runner g for my video captures (from tv) and then converting to svcd. i've used vdub to edit out the commericals and tmpgenc to convert it from avi to mpg2 in the past.

recently, in a quest to get higher quality (plus probably getting rid of the matrox card eventually), i purchased a dazzle hollywood bridge.

with capturing, i haven't had any problems (either using avi_io or premiere). however, once i capture this, i'm not able to edit it in vdub because of something to do with vfw codecs (or the lack thereof). if i use premiere to edit it and export it to a dv format, i can't use tmpgenc, because it recognizes it as an "illegal stream".

any suggestions?

thanks,
bobby

[Allan55]

Hi,

I use the MainConcept DV soft codec (which isn't yet part of the package... MainActor comes from them). With it loaded, VirtualDub works just fine for editing, filtering, etc.

I usually frameserve directly into TMPGE.

MainConcept is supposed to be releasing a new version of MainActor Real Soon Now (they said late April). I'm hoping the codec will be part of the new release because so far I'm only using the demo... which watermarks its output (when frameserving, the codec isn't used for output so no watermark)

try here: www.mainconcept.com

Allan

[EricB]

I tried the Hollywood Bridge last August and returned it due to spotty performance. I thought that it came with the MainConcept codec. It ended up on my system and I don't know of any other place I would have gotten it.

[Allan55]

Hi,

Two of us returned our original Bridges under warranty (1 was an 'A' model, one a '1x1'. We now have '1x2' models. They are static/power-surge sensitive but are otherwise rock-solid now. We've gone to great lengths to ground everything together wih 14ga wire (including the cable-TV cable). Note: I have 4-6 computers, 2 TVs (32" and 14"), 4 VCRs and assorted other stuff all inter-connected. Ground-loops and surges are a problem with this much stuff hooked together. Your environment is probably much less "cluttered"?!

DV Sequencer has a few bugs in it under NTSC that don't show up in PAL. We've documented them to MainConcept and Dazzle. MC has recreated these bugs so we're hoping for fixes in the upcoming release. We really like what we've seen of Sequencer!

This question of codecs is interesting. We were using the MainConcept release (trial) of the sw -- We gave up on the Dazzle release because it appears to be a mishmash of different versions of code.

With only Scenalyzer, VirtualDub, and TMPGE installed VirtualDub won't read Scenalyzer files. After installing the DV Soft Codec it will. If you have better information, I'd really like to learn more.

Allan

[Allan55]

Hi Again,

I forgot to mention that all my comments apply to Windows XP.

Allan

[EricB]

No I don't have better information. This whole DV codec thing is becoming more of a mystery to me instead of less. Everything works on my home system, but I think that may be a happy accident.

I've tried loading the stuff I thought I needed on another computer, and TMPGenc doesn't work.

I just pointed out the stuff about MainConcept because I thought the Hollywood Bridge was shipping with it. I'm glad to hear they have fixed the hardware. I really liked the unit but it didn't quite work. In the end, I was much better off for my applications buying a DV camcorder with passthrough.