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Dazzle Digital Video Creator 150

Dazzle throw everything except the kitchen sink in to their video capture/editing product

Dazzle have been producing video hardware for some years although they were bought up by Pinnacle last year with much of their product range disappearing. The DVC150 was one product that survived the culling. The Dazzle DVC150 combines a video capture device with a set of software tools. The result is a complete solution for anyone who wishes to capture video footage from a range of sources, edit it and then either burn the results to disc or output it back to another analogue device. As there are still copies of the old version out there as well as the current one, we'll look at both here.

Hardware

At the heart of the bundle is the DVC 150 itself. This features composite, s-video and right/left audio inputs as well as outputs. It connects to the PC via USB and whilst USB 1.1 works perfectly well, for the best results it is recommended that a USB 2.0 connection be used.

The DVC 150 takes whatever video is fed to it and converts it in real-time to MPEG2 format. Using USB 2.0 it offers full resolution DVD quality capture and because of the MPEG2 format, you’ll save a lot of disk space compared to DV or AVI type formats. Even using USB 1.1 it still captures full resolution PAL or NTSC video but with a slightly lower maximum bit rate.

The bundle also includes a full set of AV leads and a USB cable so you really do have everything you need out of the box.

Software Bundle

The software bundle consists of three main packages. The core was originally Dazzle MovieStar 5 but recent versions have replaced that with Pinnacle's Studio 8 (quick start edition). This is where the video acquisition and editing usually occurs. Dazzle DVD Complete used to handle the DVD or CD burning duties but these are now also handled by Studio 8.

Installation

On the old version, installation was interesting. The installation CD loaded all the software automatically but did not let you choose the destination drive which is a major oversight. Oddly, if you ignored the integrated installer and loaded each program using its own installer, you did get a choice of destination drive. It probably makes sense on some level if you want to put different parts in different places but a slightly smarter default system wouldn’t have gone amiss. Luckily, the current version with Studio 8 is somewhat more friendly in this department.

Before you start using the software in anger it is advisable to download and install the latest patches and updated drivers. Failure to do so will reduce the overall reliability as the patches fix certain shortcomings ‘out of the box’.

On the old version, updating involved downloading the file (where you had to enter the serial number in a different way to the install routine), telling it to uninstall the original software then running the update a second time to install the new version before finally copying further files manually from the original CD. The driver update was even more fun. This used to crash out with a memory error in IKernel. The fix was to uninstall Windows Hotfix Q328310 (Windows XP only). Happily this solves the problem. Needless to say, the current version has no such problems.

In use

Once properly set up, video acquisition is fairly painless. On the old version, MovieStar 5 is used via a series of project templates. These are based around the final output such as webcast, DVD and so on. However, the amount of adjustment to capture settings that can be done within MovieStar 5 is minimal. A better way is to use the supplied test tool which just grabs and plays back footage but does let you set average and maximum bit rates as well as other useful parameters. The capture quality is surprisingly good given the price, especially as it is done straight to MPEG2.

One further oddity is that the resulting footage is stored as MPEG2 but with an unusual audio format which few non-Dazzle editors can handle properly. You can get around this by manually converting footage using 3^rd party tools but it’s not as convenient as it could be.

The current version with Pinnacle's Studio 8 is altogether more pleasant to use with the one program integrating all the functionality under one roof.

Old version only - MovieStar 5

The core software is MovieStar 5 and it is here that most of the work is done. Captured footage, audio and other elements can be loaded in to a project and dropped on to the timeline. There are a range of special effects and transitions and you can add extra audio tracks but not much else. With a bit of imagination you can usually coax it to do what you want but as editors go, it is rather basic compared to its peers. On the plus side, some of the special effects and transitions are actually quite funky. I particularly liked the rain effect which whilst obviously fake, is still a useful tool. MovieStar 5 is also very easy to use so is ideal for a beginner to get to grips with. I did find the trimmer tool slightly odd and had to resort to the manual for help but once I’d worked out what it was, it worked well.

Now for the biggest problem. MPEG2 isn’t the best format in the world to edit in. MovieStar 5 makes a good stab at it and in the main works well enough but all too often there were minor stutters in the video when dissolving from one scene to another. At the risk of a slight drop in overall quality, it would be better to transcode any MPEG2 footage in to DV format for editing them convert back at the end. This is very time consuming but does ensure the editing process produces much smoother results.

A neat trick is the background rendering function. Whenever you create a transition or add titles, MovieStar starts to render the footage in the background whilst you edit. The result is that by the time you have finished editing, almost all the rendering will already have been done saving a lot of time when outputting the final movie.

Old version only - DVD Complete

DVD Complete has been recently reviewed in its deluxe form on Practical PC Online so check out that review for more information. Essentially it lets you design and burn your own DVDs using a variety of video clips. It works and it works well.

Old Version only - onDVD

The final piece of the jigsaw is onDVD. This lets you take a selection of digital photos and optionally a soundtrack and turn them in to a slide show for display on your TV via either a CD-R or a DVD. This works well enough but is again fairly basic.

New version only - Studio Quick Start

Pinnacle's Studio Quick Start uses a drag and drop interface to build up the scenes of your movie. You can apply 2D and 3D effects and transitions and add voice-overs and background music. Music can be imported from CD or MP3 and some royalty free examples are included. Once completed, you can output the movie in a variety of ways including to DVD using the built in DVD creation tools.

Conclusion

The MPEG2 capture is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it saves huge amounts of disk space compared to DV but it does make editing somewhat trickier. That said, it does depend on your quality threshold and whilst it wasn’t perfect, the results are good enough for most peoples needs. Certainly, when used as intended, I wouldn’t be ashamed to show the resulting videos to my friends and family. One thing to watch for though is that on some systems, lip sync can suffer during long captures. As long as you capture your footage in smaller chunks you should be OK though. To be fair, this is common to almost all consumer level MPEG capture kit.

You get a lot for you money and it really is an all in one solution and as such deserves consideration. Just be aware of the limitations if your video aspirations are more upmarket.

Iain Laskey

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