Dazzle Hollywood Bridge

[lilhobo]

i as lucky enough to have received this as a present. Does anyone have an opinion on this product.

I also would like to know the limiting factors to capturing high quality videos thru firewire. i am assuming that the transfer from any DV component is independent of the CPU but is dependent on the speed of the Hard drives to receive the data.

thanks in advance for tips

[bb]

Any harddrive can easily handle much more than the required 3.6 MB/s nowadays. So the HDD is not a limiting factor.

bb

[lilhobo]

then what is???

i guess the main thing from DV is to convert it to a size-manageable format like mpeg2??? which is more CPU-dependent.

[bb]

AFAIK the "Dazzle Hollywood Bridge" is a bridge for converting and editing analogue and DV video (without a PC, if you want). Don't know if it has hardware MPEG2 encoding. If so, the requirements for capturing the MPEG2 stream to your HDD are even less than for capturing DV. Thus HDD speed still isn't the limiting factor.

bb

[lilhobo]

no it has no hardware mpeg2 encoding, just analogue-DV/DV-analogue conversion.....

so all i need is a quick, large capacity HD and i am set

i get to save pure lossless home video for editing

[Tedyp]

@lilhobo,
I intend to buy a Dazzle Hollywood Bridge....
I have now a Pinnacle DC 30+ and it's the worst card I met...
Only the Pinnacle service is worst than this card...
So, I'd like your feedback on Dazzle Hollywood Bridge...
TIA
tedyp@bezeqint.net

[blahblah9]

hi,

I was also looking at getting the dazzle bridge. Is it appropiate for capturing of a old hi8 camcorder and possibly a VCR sometimes? As the bridge does all the converting I assume that the video going into the computer is one format (ie not interlaced, some standard resolution?) The reason I ask this is because I have a asus8200 (bought for gaming , not capping) but I have been trying for days to get a good cap out of it. So far I havent. I dont really have time to play about with different settings and stuff like that. So is the dridge simple to use and produces good results at the same time?

Thanks in advance

[caveman]

i have the bridge and swear by it but you have to work out the quirks of the machine you are using before you will be happy the way i do captures from vhs is through microsoft movie maker for capturing then compress /apply filters and get excellent results if you are compressing using vdub you will need main concepts codec to use it
it is on the software disc that you get with the bridge

[blahblah9]

thanks, sounds like the product for me

[jmes]

I am quite happy with the Dazzle Bridge. I must say that it is my THIRD bridge. The first one had some problems capturing and then died. The second one had similar problems and when it was finally replaced it works fine. (I had the 1st bridge too long to take back to the store I purchased it - I had to deal with the SCM RMA procedure)

I should also say that Dazzle customer service SUCKS! I had to call long distance to the east coast (I'm in California) every time even though they would route me to their call center which is less than 10 miles from my house - they wouldn't give me the local #. Every time I called them, I had to give the same info - couldn't just give a case # and move along. They gave me suggestion after suggestion as to things to try - things that WOULD fix the problem - they didn't. They told me that a Microsoft hotfix WOULD fix the problem - it didn't. Also, there is NO way to talk to a level 2 support person - it is all email - trying to resolve problems via email is very difficult at best. I don't know if anyone else had this experience, but the bridge works well for me .. just hope that u don't have to deal with their customer support. :(

[leisuredoc]

I also have the Hollywood DV Bridge and would recommend it to anyone that wants to convert from analog (VHS tape playback, television, etc.) to digital format that is fed into the computer, edit it on the computer then send it to an analog or digital recorder, or burn it to CD-R or DVD-R.

My primary use is to convert old VHS tapes to DivX formatted CD-R's that I can play on my Dell laptop (it has a firewire port). The trick is in the software. The one that Hollywood includes, Movie Star ver. 5, is a joke unless you have a DVD burner which I don't. You are stuck with VCD (good only for small-window streaming video clips on a website) or SVCD (better but get huge files and inferior quality to DivX).

So I downloaded a 30-day trial of Ulead Systems' Video Studio 6 from their web site at www.ulead.com after reading another thread about video capture using Ulead's software on this forum. At the end of the month, it will cost around US$100 for the software and, even with the DV bridge, I'm still under the cost of a DVD burner. Video Studio allows you to change the codec that you render (convert) the video to DivX format, among others. It's not quite as flexible as VirtualDub as far as available filters and screen sizes, but it looks pretty good. The rendered video file can be burned to one or more CD-R's (I use RipItAll/SyncSplit/Split AVI to choose where to sever a 1300 MB AVI file into two CD-R's).

Sorry for rambling on but hope I helped someone....

:D

[Tedyp]

Thanx a lot for your efforts.
I'm convinced now to buy one, and I'm sure that it'll work properly
as you wrote. The Pinnacle DC 30 plus is just a catastrophe....
Thanx again,
Tedy

[lilhobo]

i am sorry i havent replied sooner. i have been busy and really have trialed the bridge yet.

as far as the DC30 is concerned, it was revolutioanry for its time i guess, but the drivers did always sucked. Sorry to hear you had so much difficulties.

i too am trying to convert family shots with the bridge, what filters are you using and with what software. i intend to use the bridge with sonicfoundry's vegas video, and vegas also has the mainconcept codec mpeg2. u can test drive their software from their site.

However, i intend to do a two step process.

1. capture to DV and then do editing on DV (easier to edit in dv than mpeg2)
2. convert to SVCD for DVD players (CPU limited to p3 933).

Its nice to do a Divx convert but i need to play on normal DVD players.

one thing i need to ask though, i read somewhere that if you capture straight to DV-1 (normal firewire capture) then you cant convert to mpeg2??? i think you need to convert to DV-2 (vfw). is this correct??

PS. it makes me nervous to hear about the Dazzle :D , would love to get the quality ( and price) of the Canopus. But them are the breaks

PSS. if you need to know more about vegas video, feel free to email me. i will be trialing the premiere6 as well. But any help would be appreciated

[Tedyp]

I'm on video editing about 2 years, tried almost all software on market, mostly Premiere and Ulead, in both DV and analogue mode.
The Vegas is real good, but it has not many transitions. The Ulead Video Studio 5 is looking much better for beginers and semi-pro. Media Studio 6.5 is much better, begining to look as a "pro" software, very easy to learn...but you are stucked a little with their effects and transitions.
THE PRO software is Premiere - full version. It's not easy to learn all its features, but knowing even 30%-40% of it is enough for a PRO editing, in both DV or Analogue, not speaking about endless plug-ins and transitions.
It depends what you are looking for: a clean, nice work, without spendig time and too much money - take the Video Studio 5 - most of my friends use it for editing and tell me that is very good.
I'm using Premiere 6 (and now going to buy the 6.5 version), and I think that for me, that I'm editing with a lot of masks, plugs etc...even if is a little more hard to learn (well, much more than other software) is the best choice.
I'll be very thankful for your opinion about the Dazzle Bridgh, as I want to ask a friend to buy it for me from Germany (about 300$) as in my country it costs 600$... but after the feedback I got about their service...I don't know if it's not better to buy it from a local dealer, pay 600$ but have someone near to complain or calling for service
tedyp@bezeqint.net

[leisuredoc]

Tedyp,

I don't know that much about Premiere but it sounds like a top-end video editing application. Hollywood DV Bridge can detect any plug-in board or, in my case, the IEEE-1394 firewire port, as a device. I have only used mine for about a month and had no problems - maybe lucky or they have the bugs out of it. You can go from analog (VHS, television, etc.) to digital (handycam, computer, etc.) or the other way around, or direct pass-thru (analog to analog, or digital to digital), so if you wanted to record from a handy-cam to VHS or the other way around, you don't even need a computer. There are RCA-analog video & audio inputs & outputs, firewire inputs & outputs and S-video inputs & outputs on it so it's quite versatile. About support - I haven't needed it and I don't know how well they support their product in Europe. Sounds like Germany is selling at about +50% of the best price in the US, but then Mercedes sell for about +50% of Germany's price in the US.

Wishing you luck!
:o