Pinnacle DC10+ v Dazzle DVCII

[JacquesDeRipper]

Hi there everyone,

I have been making VCD's for a couple of years now both from DVD Rips and from my 8mm Camcorder. I have had excellent results from DVD's using the SmartRipper / Flask / Panasonic-Plugin combination, but have never really been that pleased with my Camcorder VCD's for which I use the Dazzle DVC USB.

I capture at the highest possible video rate and at an appropriate audio rate then re-encode using the Panasonic Standalone. The audio is fine, but the video is always blocky. Using the Dazzle VCD template is even worse.

My question is, of the Pinnacle DC10+ and the Dazzle DVCII which am I likely to get the best results from when capturing from my 8mm Camcorder and outputting to VCD?

I understand that the Dazzle is an MPEG1 / MPEG2 card and that the Pinnacle is a MJPEG card and that therefore the Dazzle can go straight to VCD on the fly, but the Pinnacle would require using the Panasonic Standalone to get to VCD.

Has anyone got experience of either or both of these cards?

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks

Jacques

[BuzzLightYear]

Hi Jacques,

I have now been using the Pinnacle DC10+ for about a year, at I work just fine.

I use it mainly to copy Hi8-video tapes to VCD. The DC10+ has an excellent direktor software included, so its just fine.

As you mention there is only one little "but" it saves the files in AVI. However it is very easy to convernt them to MPEG-1 (it takes some time, so it is a nice night job for the PC).
BuzzLightYear

[JacquesDeRipper]

Hi BuzzLightYear,

Thanks for your reply.

Do you turn your AVI's into MPEG's? Specifically do you turn them into VCD? If so, what do you use to re-encode?

Thanks
Jacques

[Methanoid]

I doubt you'd tell much difference in the end...

Source to DC10 to VCD takes a lot longer and re-encoding MJPEG is not a great idea but slow encoding might give better results.

Source to VCD (using DVC2) is quick and end result about the same.

Hence why I sold my DC10 and DC30 and am very hapy with DVC2 which also works properly in Win2000... DC's dont!

[JacquesDeRipper]

Hi deuteros,

Thanks for your comments.

I wonder about the quality of DVCII VCD purely because the DVCI USB VCD quality is very poor indeed.

Also, you say re-encoding MJPEG is not a good idea, I take it that this is from experience, do you say this mainly due to the extra time taken? Or did you experience poor results this way?

I have to say I am torn between these two cards AND a third card - the Pinnacle DV500, I say this because I am planning to move to a Digital 8 camcorder in the next year or so....

Thanks
Jacques

[disturbed1]

You can use the DC10 to make great VCD's. It has a max capture rate of 6000KBYTES/sec @ 604x464, it crops out unwanted edges without removing video information,640x480 uncropped. The editing package is pretty good too. Any capture above 320x240 is interlaced, I just inverse telecine with TMPGenc, converts to 24fps progressive so your video is higher quality. My TV caps are just as good as DVD rips. For $70 it's a pretty good deal. The capture software Pinnacle uses was improved by Markus Zinng (AV_IO) so there isn't any A/V sync problems, and it splits at 2gigs for you. But encoding from MJPEG is slow, I guess that's the trade off for high quality.
Most hardware mpeg encoders don't make quality standard VCD's, why spend alot of money on an MPEG card just to re-encode it anyway? I too had to choose between the $300 DVC II and $70 DC10 Plus. Both have draw backs, but my main concern was quality and price, so I got the better of both.