Dazzle Multimedia DM-5400 Digital Video Creator 80

I opted to buy the Dazzle 80 because of its ease of installation. After a few weeks of reading web sites about creating VCD's I created an excellent VCD using this product. The only downfall was that it took me a few days to learn the ins and outs of creating VCD's,Compression,Codec's etc.

But it was definately worth taking that extra time rather than throwing away CD's.

I used VirtualDub for the capture with the DivX:Mpg4-low motion Codec, this worked great. I tested different Codecs. (Don't set the compression to high though). I then had to the split the file into segments because of the Windows 4GB AVI limit. I used The Dazzle software for the split. I then converted the 352X240 AVI segments to 720X480 using the Dazzle software, then I converted the 720X480 AVI segments to MPG1 using TMPGEnc. I then re-joined the MPG segments back together using TMPGEnc.

Then I used VCD-Easy to create the DAT file and burn to my CD. The file ran really well even on my DVD player. After much reading and studying about capturing, I thought it was excellent for a first attempt. I also learnt alot from: VCDhelp.com

If your budget is low or are only capturing small home movies and want to add titles or photographs I think this is a good buy. There are better products out their but you have to pay the price for them. If your new to capturing like I was then take the time out first to read up on compression, splitting AVI's & Codecs etc, its well worth the time.

It also worked on my WinXP no problems whatsoever.

The device does a great job of capturing the video. The key is to learn the different formats and understanding how best to work with the included software.

The software is fairly easy to use, but if you don't pay attention you get lower quality output.

The trick is to capture in DVD format ONLY; and adjust some of the quality settings to greater quality. It increases the size of the capture file, but the final product is great.

If writing to Video CD, again, capture in DVD format. Since the software to write the CD is separate from the capture software, the write software converts it again on the fly; quality drops, but starting from DVD quality is key.

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Unlike copying VHS tapes to VHS tape; DVD recording is a far more complex enterprise. I recently bought a DVD recorder to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD (a more stable format). After doing some research on DVD ripping, SVCDs, DVD-R, and MPEG vs. AVI formats, I purchased the Dazzle device and bundled software.

Bottom line: Its not perfect but it does a very good job if you are willing to spend some time messing with it.

First off, the software installed without any problems, as did the USB based hardware. I did have a problem with the recessed audio plugs. I had to shave off some of the rubber casing from my audio av plugs so that they would fit into the dazzle device properly. I recommend getting an adapter plug so you can simply use your computer's sound card (not that the sound quality will be any better) and using the S-Video plug on the dazzle for the picture signal.

I used the software to burn a DVD, using the other formats (like SVCD) did not interest me since the finished products would only be viewable on my PC. What good would that do?

The bundled software allows you to save the whole process in a project file. You can then go back and create a menu and chapters or have the program do it automatically, which I think is really cool. You do need a large hard drive (80 Gig or better), a decent DVD recorder (I have a Sony DVD-RW/R+ drive) and a relatively fast PC (2 GHz or better with at least 256MB of physical memory) to make all of this work properly.

How do the resulting DVDs look? Pretty good. The real work involves tweaking the recording settings, which adjusts how much can be saved on a single DVD. A high quality DVD picture will limit you to about 1 hour of recording time on a DVD. I used the medium setting so I can store almost two hours of film on one DVD. The picture was a bit pixilated in spots but the DVD played fine on my stand-alone DVD player.

The whole process produced very acceptable results and I did not have to mess with compression ratios and ripping procedures. I think all the critics of this system were looking for a "fire-and-forget" type of package; dazzle is not it. It takes some work but Dazzle is the most effective DVD authoring system for the price.

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I was looking for a shortcut around buying and installing firewire. I had heard good things about Dazzle's interface and it's software.

The picture quality sucked (on the rare times it captured the full scene). I would highly recommend buying yourself firewire and using it to capture video from you DV camcorder, since they both cost about the same. Maybe if you were using this with an analog source, the capture would be smoother, but not for the digital stuff.

This product seems too good to be true....because it is.

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Sir

The software that came with the capture device is not any good for recording anything over 16 min. You cannot capture a full lenghth movie with this product. My hard drive has about 94 hours of storage space on it. The reason that I bought this product, was to be able to convert my vhs movies to cd/dvds, but this product can't record that long of a movie. The soft ware program that came with it is MGI VIDEO WAVE 4 THIS IS NO GOOD FOR ANY THING. IT STOPS AT 16 MIN AND GIVES AN ERROR MESSAGE THAT THERE IS NOT ENOUGH DISK SPACE. I'AM USING A 60 GIG HARD DRIVE.