Dazzle Fast DVD.master and ADS Tech. USB Instant DVD

[new_age]

Hello!

Do anyone have any experiences with one (or both) of these cards?

regards,

New Age

[new_age]

nobody?

[caliburn]

Just bought the ADS Instant video today. Also, bought an 80 GB HDD to upgrade my system.
I'm going to try and use it to capture video off my satellite.
Got to get all those Bugs Bunny cartoons off Cartoon Network!
I'll let you know how I make out.

Caliburn

[Mosaic]

I have the ads and i am getting sync probs after making the title set VOB's..

the mpeg capture file is fine ...but after u author with MYDVD the sync is off and gets worse the more you play the movie.

I tried to author in Spruce up ...but Spruce shoes the sync probs in its simulate mode....so no go either.
wmp plays the mpg in sync though

[disturbed1]

Fast DVD Master is the same as the Dazzle DVCII.

You can read a review here http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm

And there's also a forum here http://stop.at/dazzle2

[new_age]

thanks for the info.

NA

[caliburn]

I've read tons of negative reviews about the ADS Instant DVD over on vcdhelp.com.
Glad I didn't even open the box 'cause it's going back.
Gonna spend the money on an AIW 7500 instead.

Caliburn

[new_age]

Originally posted by caliburn
Gonna spend the money on an AIW 7500 instead.

What is this AIW 7500?

NA

[Darksoul71]

It´s a short form for the ATI All In Wonder 7500.

Read here:
http://www.techtv.com/products/print/0,23102,3374007,00.html

But I would stay away from the AIW family in general, because they only provide softwarebased MPEG realtime encoding and every new GeForce3/4 with WinCoder included provides the same level of quality.

-D$

[disturbed1]

I own a DVCII (Fast DVD Master across the pond). For mpeg2 captures it's great. But it's pretty much useless (IMO) under 4000 VBR. Many people have problems with sync issues, and getting the device to initialize. All of these problems are with VIA chipset mother boards. But not all VIA boards. If you want to do click and burn DVD authoring, the DVCII is a great choice. Check the Dazzle forum (www.stop.at/dazzle2)to see if your system has problems.

For anything other than DVD (VCD, SVCD, XVid) I use my mirro DC30, or my Pinnacle P-Motion Pro cards. Which are mjpeg/rgb capture cards. There isn't enough quality difference between the Dazzle card and software encodes to warrant the time needed to capture mjpeg, then encode to DVD. But the Dazzle just sucks at low bitrates.

So.... If your doing DVD only, the Dazzle card is great. If you have interest in other formats, the ATI All in Wonder, or the Geforce cards listed above maybe a better choice. I've heard great things about ATI's All In Wonder cards.

You can download some test clips from a DVCII here http://www.spawns.dk/svcd/ click on "Test Clips" in the left menu.

[new_age]

Hello!

Thanks for the answer.

I do not understand you. If you want to capture with good quality the first time you must capture with largest possible (how many space you have on hdd) quality and later to compress any kind of video (avi, mpeg1, mpeg2). So at first time the best way is to compress above 4000 VBR.

Currently I use my asus deluxe card but I'm not satisfied with the quality of picture and asus drivers have a lot of problem capturing under winxp.
Currently there are two ways that I can capture
1) use Win9xMe with asus official drivers and asus capture driver -> nice quality
in this case I can use asus video codec or any kind of codec to get better result
The drawback of this method is that I've to have an Win9xMe on my computer

(I can use nVidia WDM capture driver but I'll describe my problem below with this capture driver)

2) use WinXP (preferred) and use technogarb's hacked asus drivers to get nVidia WDM capture driver working (asus drivers with asus live and asus capture driver don't work under xp with my asus 6800deluxe card)

In this case I can use any kind of codec except asus codec.

But I have a problem with nVidia WDM: somehow it fucks up the image quality (eg. bright colors have darker lines inside of them) meanwhile asus capture driver shipped with asus alive doesn't do that.

---
So the reason why I'm planing to use DVD.Master (DVCII) is to capture with hw "acceleration" in the best quality and then recompress into any kind of media fileformat. (Perhaps It would be very nice if I can capture in realtime into SVCD with good quality)

regards,

New Age

ps. I've downloaded some samples and they are in great quality!

[sebus]

For a capture always use (if possible) uncompressed avi in right end size or with a compression ie. Huffyuv that does NOT loose any info from the frames
Or capture via DV bridge to DV format

Seb

[theReal]

and every new GeForce3/4 with WinCoder included provides the same level of quality.

If a Geforce provides the same quality, I'd go for ATI. For anything except 3DMark, ATI is the better choice (and hey, the 8500 isn't even bad for 3DMark!)

[Darksoul71]

@theReal:
If a Geforce provides the same quality, I'd go for ATI

but I wouldn´t because of some reasons:
1) ATI´s drivers are (almost always) buggier compared to those of NVidia. I have had some experiences with ATI cards as well as NVidia and when it comes to compatibiliy NVidia plainly rules. They (Nvidia) had also some serious driver bugs in the past but since GeForce2 their drivers are rocksolid. For ATI I really don´t want to comment.

2) ATI´s Video In has serious problems with capturing Macrovision protected material. You can use registry patches to get rid of this but neither my MSI GeForce3 Ti200 VTR nor my old Asus V6600 Deluxe had any problems with Macrovision protected stuff. And worst of all: This macrovision protection sometimes even recognizes Macrovision when there is none (like for old VHS tapes).

3) ATI doesn´t provide real hardware MPEG2 encoding. I dunno why this mistery is still there but ATI doesn´t have any hardware based MPEG encoding. Not even half hardware supported MPEG encoding. Listen: Every GeForce with VIO out there can produce MPEG2 streams in the same quality. Believe me ! I´ve seen MPEG2 samples from an ATI AllInWonder RadeOn captured with 8 MBit from satellite and my samples captured with Wincoder at 8 MBit look nearly the same.

4) ATI is WAY too expensive. Take the new Ati 8500 DV for example. Performance wise it´s somewhere between higher range GeForce 3 cards and medium range GeForce4 cards. In Germany where I live a 8500 DV costs around 500€ while you can easily buy GF3 / GF4-4400 cards with VIO around 300-350 €. Quite some diference. Wouldn´t you agree ?

My 2 cents: Ati cards are not bad but still too expensive for what you get.

and to come back to the thread:
@new_age:
I really can comment on an Asus V6800 under Deluxe but in your position I would try to use the latest WDM capture driver directly from NVidia and Virtual VCR as capture program. This works fine for my MSI GeForce 3. I can easily capture 720x576 Huffyuv without drops.

And for recompression you should stay away from any realtime hardware solution. Esp. the ones connected to USB1.0.

They support only up to 8 MBit and for a good raw quality MPEG2 has to have at least 10-12 MBit.

So a graphic adapter with VIO, a capture card or a Analog to DV bridge is the way to go and nothing else.

At least if you´re serious about quality.

-D$

[new_age]

So the "only" best way is Dazzle Fast DVD.master (in USA: DVCR II).

NA

[theReal]

darksoul,

I don't know about all the AIW issues, I can only say I don't have problems with my Radeon 7500 (not AIW). Drivers are good, performance is good, the picture quality is really good, and it wasn't expensive!
I personally wouldn't buy any of those >200 Euro cards anyways, so...

What I was thinking about was when I compared the TV-out capabilities of a Geforce 2MX and a Radeon VE (both budget cards, the ATI even more so), the tv-out of the Geforce 2mx wasn't more than a bad joke while the tv-out of the Radeon was a high quality connection with which you could even replace your monitor.

[Darksoul71]

@theReal:
Well, then you´ve really missed my point here. I was talking about Wincoder and Software MPEG capture abilities. What has this to do with TV Out ???????

Or, to quote my answer above again:

But I would stay away from the AIW family in general, because they only provide softwarebased MPEG realtime encoding and every new GeForce3/4 with WinCoder included provides the same level of quality.

That´s what I was refering to.

But for TV Out you´re somewhat right. GeForce2 MX is/was crap. In general NVidia doesn´t have some necessary features like Dual Head, cloning, etc.

At least they don´t provide the same functionality that Matrox or ATI provide.

But again: In the higher price range ATI has nothing to give away. You have to buy their "Top Of the Line" product (although the All In Wonder is still somewhat slower compared to the normal 8500) if you want Video In & Out. For NVidia you can buy any "No Name" Taiwan GeForce 3/4 that has VIO, download their WDM cap driver and get lucky.

For ATI drivers I´ve seen problems all over the place in different games. Look at many games updates in their fix list. You´ll find more "fixed ATI issues" than "fixed NVidia issues". Just ask John Carmack on the quality of the OpenGL driver from ATI. <lol>

And for the 200€ price range you can get either the MSI GF4 MX460-VT with VIO or even lower the MSI GF2Ti Pro-VT for around 140€ street price. Show me an ATI card in the same price range with VIO and the same performance level.

just my two cents,
D$

[theReal]

I thought you say the AIW has the same capture quality as any new Geforce 3/4, and then I thought ATI was better because the other features (like tv-out) are better.
I missed that you meant the ATI card was too expensive for this quality.

I haven't looked closely at newer graphics cards since I bought the 7500 (and that was when it came out), so I'm not up to date anymore, I guess...