ADS USB Instant DVD/Snazzi III USB2.0 DVD/ASUS V8200T2 DELUXE 64MB DDR?

[emre]

I have just bought Pioneer A04 DVD writer, I want to make DVD movies but I can not decide on video capture device. Please help me about these products:
ADS USB Instant DVD: The cheapest one (150-190$), uses USB 1.1 so little bit slower than Snazzi*III USB2.0 DVD Ed., and %50 of users find it difficult to use and install.
Snazzi* III USB2.0 DVD Ed.: The most expensive one (300-370$), use USB 2.0 so fast, but I can't find any reviews.
ASUS V8200T2 DELUXE 64MB DDR: ASUS authorized seller says that, if you want to make DVD movies, try to buy video capture card; ASUS's first aim is only to be a video card, not video capture card. ???.
Dazzle:Not using USB because of this I never think about it. Is USB factor so important when transfering video to PC.

So, what do you think? Please help me. Is ADS very bad

[FulciLives]

Hello :)

I don't have nor have I ever used the ADS Instant DVD USB device, but I have read many many posts on many different forum groups that seem to suggest it doesn't work very well.

It has two main problems. First, it is USB 1.1 so there really isn't enough bandwidth to capture at high betrates which is what you want especially if you are gonna make a DVD.

Secondly, it uses your computer's sound card to capture the sound and this has caused the sound to become unsynched very often for a very high number of users. The cleaner your source the better such as a DVD but any major picture glitch (like rolling lines on an old VHS) will cause out-of-synch sound.

I've been looking to get a capture card to do MPEGII with the end result being the creation of a DVD. Though I have never used a capture card I have read up on the subject over the last couple of years so I feel I'm very BOOK smart if you will on this topic.

I suggest if you want a USB device to get the SNAZZI III ... it must be fairly new, as I have not read hardly anything about it on the many A/V and Computer forums I visit. But the specs look rather impressive ... it is USB 2.0 so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem and it's nice to know it can capture both NTSC as well as PAL video signals. Most importantly it has a system that it supposed to keep the sound in synch and it can do VBR MPEGII recording, though since it does so in real time, I'm not exactly sure how it can do VBR ... I guess it does it on the fly such as the stand alone DVD-R recorders, like the popular E-20 from Panasonic.

Keep in mind that there is also a PCI version of the SNAZZI III called the SNAZZI III AV.DV which can do analog video capture AS WELL AS firewire capture. It's about $99 more than the USB version though.

If you want a PCI card VS a USB solution you might want to consider the PINNACLE STUDIO DELUXE. I've heard VERY good things about this capture card. It can capture analog and firewire and comes with editing software and DVD creation software. Please note this is designed to capture in the DV codec so you can't go straight to MPEGII ... so the capture will be in the DV codec and after editing this will have to be made into MPEGII via software ... a solution that can often be much better than MPEGII on the fly recordings, but also takes FOREVER. For instance I recently used a program to re-encode a DVD which I ripped because I wanted to see if I could made the file size smaller (while still keeping the picture quality decent) and it took nearly 40 hours to encode this 1h 48m movie on a P3 650Mhz with 256 RAM. And I was using a software MPEGII encoder that is considered not only the best, but also the fastest of the software encoders (CCE 2.5).

I'm about to make the plunge myself and I must say that even *I* am torn between the Pinnacle product and the SNAZZI III product.

Perhaps this will help you decide:

The Pinnacle product will probably give better results if for nothing else than for the fact that you can do SOFTWARE MPEGII which is almost always better than HARDWARE MPEGII real time options. Of course the trade off here is time. Even a top-of-the-line P4 or AMD Athlon XP will take probably the good part of a day to do software encoding (the pinnacle product) whereas hardware encoding is real-time (the SNAZZI III). Also bear in mind that if you need to do a lot of editing that this will probably be easier with the Pinnacle VS the SNAZZI and the Pinnacle will probably look better. As I understand it, DV editing doesn't re-compress the image where as MPEGII editing must re-compress at the edit points thus causing possbile picture problems since the picture gets worse with each re-compress. I don't know how big a problem that editing is with MPEGII but I have heard it can be a bitch and most MPEGII editing programs aren't 100% frame accurate either, which isn't a problem with the DV codec.

Anyways, it might be worth waiting a spell to hear from people who bought the SNAZZI III ... like I said I believe it is fairly new and that's probably why we haven't heard much user comment from it ... yet.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Skullworks]

First Point - The capture is the critical time. - Anything that disrupts the capture botches the whole deal - So this is where we want our reliabilty factor.

Once CAMs came equiped with 1394 output, having dropped frames became a mute point because that file capture did not rely on a real time capture.

Legacy capture - ie - analog sources such as VHS or other tape - again the capture is critical - but now your looking at bandwith & storage because MJPEG fills HDD space faster than almost any other process that a PC is used for. - You now have great source material if your hardware is up to the task, and you can use your NLE software to only encode the portions you want.

Software encoding - while it takes its time, will most likely produce a much higher quality final product.

Final note: - One thing also that you should weigh carefully is hookup - Capture packages which offer a "Breakout box" which can be upfront and easy access will quickly prove there usefullness - particularly if your "box" is not a dedicated video box. - The USB2 options would qualify also.