Snazzi III DVD Creator experiences?

[xsfo]

Can anyone comment on the new Snazzi III encoder? Not the USB one but the PCI ones. What sort of peformance have you had with it?

This card is fairly new, so I haven't seen too much about it. Even on this site. It looks fairly good. It seems to capture both video and audio on the same card. This might minimize the audio sync issues that the Dazzle Video Creator II has.

[FulciLives]

Hello :)

Is there a web site for this?
Not a place to by so much as an official web site?
I'd like to find out more about this product.

- John

[xsfo]

You can read the marketing info at:
http://www.snazzi.com/newsite/pages/products/snazziIII.asp

The same info is also available at:
http://www.snazzishop.com/pages/snazzi3.htm

[FulciLives]

Hello :)

I checked out the specs page and it does sound interesting BUT I noticed that the sound sampling frequency is 41.1Khz only

Now if I recall VCD and SVCD uses 41.1Khz but doesn't DVD use 48Khz sound? Since I would assume MOST of us would be interested in using this to make a DVD-R or DVD+R wouldn't we want something that can do 48Khz?

Just a thought.

- John

P.S.
Plus please note that the sound is a mini-plug headphone type connection whereas the better analog capture cards actually have the seperate left/right RCA-type Stereo jacks.

[FulciLives]

Hello :)

Well I was looking over the SNAZZI web site and found this product which is different from the one discussed above:

http://www.snazzi.com/newsite/pages/products/snazziAVDV.asp

It's called the SNAZZI III AV.DV

What makes it better?
First of all it has both analog input/output as well as Firewire 1394 input/output ... the other card doesn't have Firewire 1394.

Secondly this card has the following for the sampling frequency:
32Kbps or 41.1Kbps or 48Kbps
The other card mentioned above only does 41.1Kbps

And last but not least:
Built-in multiplexer to guarantee AV sync

So, this SNAZZI III AV.DV PCI card looks VERY interesting.
It can handle both NTSC and PAL in full resolution (720x480 for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL) and has a way to keep the sound synched up which other similiar products of the past, such as the ADS USB INSTANT DVD, did not have and would often go out-of-synch.

It would seem that this might be a very kewl product to archive more or less ANY video/audio input directly to MPEG II for the creation of a DVD.

For anyone interested the GOLD EDITION (basically comes with more software than the regular DVD EDITION) can be bought for $399.00 at the following web site:

http://www.esbuy.com/

Direct link = http://www.esbuy.com/snaziiigoled.html

I've been thinking of getting some sort of capture card to capture analog video/audio with the final solution being to make a DVD and this product is very kewl would love to hear from anyone that has actually used it.

- John

P.S.
The only thing I don't like about this card is that it still only has a mini-stereo jack for audio instead of left/right stereo RCA-type jacks.

[FulciLives]

Hello again!

Just thought I'd note for those that are interested ...

There is a SNAZZI III USB2 version.
It appears to work exactly like the SNAZZI III AV.DV with all the same features except it is a USB 2.0 device.

Here are some links:

Official Link
http://www.snazzi.com/newsite/pages/products/snazziIIIusb2.asp

Purchase Link (General)
http://www.esbuy.com/

Purchase Link (Direct)
http://www.esbuy.com/snaziiiusgol.html

The SNAZZI III USB2 comes in a regular GOLD edition for $300.00 making it $99.00 cheaper than the PCI version (the SNAZZI III AV.DV)

Also the USB version has a nice looking breakout box that has left/right stereo RCA-type audio jacks whereas the PCI version only has a mini-stereo headphone jack type input/output.

More food for thought!

- John

P.S.
I should point out that the USB version doesn't have Firewire 1394 support like the PCI version!

[xsfo]

I'm pretty sure that the Snazzi III can sample audio at 48KHz and not just 44.1Khz.

I believe the specs are being presented sloppily. In other words the person making the Snazzi web pages did a real bad job of copying the specs for the product. :rolleyes: For example 41.1Khz is NOT any sort of standard audio sampling rate. It's 44.1Khz.

On some pages 48KHz is presented as a sampling option. The ESBuy.com specs page for instance. Look under AV Audio Specifications. It lists 32KHz, 44.1Khz and 48Khz (for DVDs).
http://www.esbuy.com/snaziiispec.html

So you can be pretty sure that audio sampling rates will not be a problem.