Ab Work Outs: Dazzle Digital Video Creator DVC-90 Video Capture Device and Movie Maker Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased the Dazzle 90 product to convert my 8mm cassettes from an older Sony Camcorder to DVD. I have made about 6 DVDs now, and I am pretty happy with my purchase. The software is fairly simple to use, and the end product looks good. I do not notice any drop in quality. If you simply want to covert your tapes to DVD, with no frills, then I would highly recommend this product. A few notes after using the product...
- It takes alot of disk space. Just installing the software that comes with it took 7 gig (you could probably get by with less by not installing all features?). You can get about 60 minutes of high quality film onto a DVD, and this takes up about 7 gig. Also, the software requires space on your harddriver to burn the movie to the dvd. I kept getting a message that I did not have enough space. It was annoying that it would not tell me exactly how much space it required. So I cleared off space, and did not get the message to go away until I had about 12-14 gig of free space. For this reason, I would suggest doing a defrag before starting.
- One thing to be aware of, there is a mention option to remove a captured video and free up space. But if you have burned the movie(s) to dvd, you can also build up a great deal of space in My Documents/Pinnacle Studios/Auxillary Files. I was running out of space again, after burning numerous movies, until I found this directory and how much space it was eating up. I then found there is a menu option for deleting these too (when you are in the edit option)
- You can create the movies in mpeg rather than avi, and this takes about half as much space. But I did this once, and thought the quality wasn't quite as good as the avi. It was very close, but I am going to go with the avi.
- The software comes with the basic features and some extras. If you want to do more fancy things with the movie you create you need to upgrade your software. If you pick certain features that are not available with the base software, you will get a popup box asking if you want to upgrade.
- This is not a fast process. The movie converts to your PC in real time. So a 60 minute tape will take 60 minutes. Editing the movie does not take any time at all (if you are doing the basics and once you get the hang of it) Then the burning it to DVD takes awhile. I have not checked exactly because I let it run and come back later, but I would guess it takes at least 4 hours for 60 minutes of tape. This time is much shorter when burning mpegs rather than avi.
- I have not had any crashes or major problems. But I have had a couple problems with getting the menu screen to work when editing. But I just start over, and can get it to work the next time. Note. If you don't see images in each of the menu chapters, do not proceed. I made this mistake and waited forever for a movie to burn, before realizing it was stuck trying to make the menu.
- Overall it has proven to be a good product. I have had wanted to get my precious memories off of the tape and onto DVD for a long time. This is MUCH cheaper than having it professionally done,and I did not need anything fancy, just the tape onto dvd.

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Product Description:
Dazzle Digital Video Creator 90 (DVC 90) is the ultimate video connector for camcorders.The DVC 90 captures video from a camcorder, VCR or TV and uses the PC's USB 2 port.The DVC 90 includes Studio Quickstart software.The DVC 90 also lets you make video CDs, DVDs and Webcast video across the Internet.