What's so bad about DAZZLE HOLLYWOOD DV-BRIDGE?

[xpertnewbie]

it seems nobody recommends this piece of equipment.. what's so bad about it?

thanks
-andy

[deadmonty]

Poor synchronisation between audio and video streams.
Look for comments in the Capture Cards section.

Paul

[chopper20]

I've been using this device for 13 months now with no problems, once I had done the mod to stop it dropping off the IE 1394 BUS

[pbhalerao]

I've been using this device for 13 months now with no problems, once I had done the mod to stop it dropping off the IE 1394 BUS

chopper20 - I would be interested in knowing the "mod" you did to stop the device dropping off the 1394 bus. I have had nothing but problems with the device. I use Win2K and my OS/Firewire Card simply does not recognize the device.

I have done all the possible fixes - having the Camcorder Feed on before starting the bridge and before booting the PC. I have even changed the 1394 cable, but no success.

I feel that my $399 have gone down the drain and regret not having purchased a D8 Camcorder in the first place.

I do not recommend this product to anyone.

[chopper20]

Run a single piece of copper strand from the (-)/ground side of the power plug (just slide the copper strand in as you plug the power into the DHB and then just do the same with the other end of the wire to the 1394 plug, just slide into the side as you attach the 1394 plug. Do not use wire with more than about two strands as you will just short out the connection and nothing will work. Use a thick gage wire. Your basically looping the ground between the 1394 and the power supply (all connections are at the DHB.) This is it, I did not run any ground wire back to the socket/UPS/other components. I found it better to solder the link as you are sure to get a good connectionBelow is a link to where the answer came from hope this helps.
http://dazzleforum.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=392601346&f=185608286

[The village idiot]

Well, where should I start...

In the beginning, it worked fairly well. As time went on, the quality of the video went down. The video started picking up noticible grain.

They use cheap, and out-dated components. And yes I have opened mine up to verify this. Most noteably out-dated is the chip that is used to connect to the firewire buss. It was out-dated when they made them.


And tech support sucks!

[mcmse1]

I've used the Dazzle DV bridge quite a bit and it does a nice job after I figured out a few solutions to some of it's quirks...

In the beginning when capturing, I noticed that when the AC/heater fan in the house turned on the DV bridge would drop out and I would lose my capture. There is a hardware mod I've seen on the dazzle.com forum to fix this, but for now whenever I use the dazzle bridge I just turn off the ac/heater, unplug and replug the firewire connection, and that fixes the problem. (Once in the dead of winter I turned off the heater to do a capture and forgot to turn it back on afterwards. I woke up freezing the next day).

Besides the above problem the dv bridge works pretty good for me. The nice thing about the dv bridge is that it does the video processing and all the computer has to do is save the stream coming across the firewire to the harddrive. It hardly puts any load on the cpu and you don't have to worry about dropping frames during the capture.

Another option to think about... I've seen plenty of DV camcorders equipped with firewire connections that I think could take the place of the dv bridge. These units cost a few hundred more than the DV bridge but you also get a camcorder to boot. I'm not entirely sure, but you may be able to hook the camcorder up to a vcr and use the camcorder to convert VCR tapes over to dv/firewire.

-Dan

[Greg12]

I also noted that sometimes having a TI Firewire drivers when ur card sin't based on TI controllers will mess it up.

I loaded generic OHCI IEE1394 drivers and the probs stopped.

[dudewheresmycar]

I've been using the Hollywood DVD Bridge for some time now and haven't had any problems. You'll find that every encoder on the market will have some operating glitches whether it be product related or inadequate system requirements on the part of the user. My 5400 speed hard drive caused dropped frames and a jerky picture. The recommended system requirements from Dazzle are 7200. I upgraded to a Maxtor 7200 rpm drive and have never experienced any glitches since. I only have 128 ram but it hasn't been an issue. There encoding software (Movie Maker 5) isn't very good at rendering to MPEG 1 or 2. It's grainy and interlaced. Using specialized software like TMPG or Virtual Dub to render your finished projects will give you a clear professional glitch free product that is equal to or better than others I've seen!