Video Capture Device (Devices)

Dazzle DVC120 Digital Video Capture and Authoring Device

1 stars (I will never buy Pinnacle again) - This product never worked OK. I tried all patches / updates. Stay away from Pinnacle products!!! 1 stars (Dazzle DVC-120 F.O.D.) - This is a piece of FOD (Foreign Object Debris--destroys jet engines) installation was heinous and never worked even after the 67MB patch download. DON'T BUY IT!!!! AMAZON...LOSE IT! 1 stars (Terrible product) - This product died on me 2 months after I purchased it. I called tech support 3 times in which I waited up to 55 minutes then gave up. I called customer service and got an answering machine. No one ever called back. ...
Pinnacle Systems :: Encoding :: audio :: Music :: Editing :: Effects :: Composting :: Hardware Bundles :: Video :: Computer software (programs) :: Video Capture Device (Devices) :: :: Dazzle DVC120 Digital Video Capture and Authoring Device

Pinnacle PCTV USB2 210100387 TV Tuner and Video Capture Device

3 stars (Does what it says, but...) - As a TV tuner it functions OK. It isn't anything spectacular, but when one considers the comparatively high resolutions that computer monitors produce (as opposed to traditional PAL/NTSC televisions) the quality is rather good. A previous reviewer claimed that the A/V inputs were not functional. That is absolutely false. I currently have my Xbox plugged into it and am playing it windowed on my PC. My complaints are that 1) There is a video lag with the inputs, 2) The provided software is sketchy at best, and 3) Pinncale demands extra money to 'unlock' different encoding methods, (i.e. Mpeg-2, Mpeg-4, VCD, etc.) In short, it does what it says, but that is about it. 1 stars (It's only a TV port, NOT a capture device - BEWARE!!) - If I could give it NO stars I would. IT'S A RIP-OFF!! Those reviewers who found this product OK are only using it as a TV device, not for external video capture. Sure, it works adequately as a TV device (so the one star is probably justified after all) but it is emphatically NOT a video capture port as supplied. Pinnacle's own bundled software does NOT support video input (neither for live display nor for capture) via the temptingly-annotated Composite or S-Video ports. It only 'sees' inputs on the UHF (TV) antenna input. Pinnacle have been promising to include this functionality for over 6 months but, so far, NADA!! Of course, the only way you can get to see the deluge of negative feedback this generates is to purchase the product to gain access to the support forums. The public aren't allowed in... Here's kicker #1 - if you're prepared to spend the same money again Pinnacle will sell you their Studio 9 application which (I THINK) supports these external (non-TV) video inputs. Now for kicker #2 - alternatively you can buy (again for a comparable ADDITIONAL cost) a third-party app called ShowShifter which has absolutely no problem seeing, displaying and capturing the extra inputs in this Pinnacle-...
Pinnacle Systems :: Editing :: Effects :: Composting :: Hardware Bundles :: Video :: Computer software (programs) :: Video Capture Device (Devices) :: :: Pinnacle PCTV USB2 ( 210100387 ) TV Tuner and Video Capture Device

Pinnacle Studio 9 AV-DV

3 stars (Video editing is not as simple as it looks like.) - Video editing is a little more complex than one thinks. Video and audio will go out of sync no matter what software you will use. What happens is that quartz clock on sound card fluctuates in frequency. More expensive sound cards are more expensive for a reason. Those sound cards have better components and sync problem is minimized (not eliminated) resulting in smaller audio video sync problem. One can notice audio sampling rate fluctuations when capturing video in great program called virtualdub (virtualdub.org). It happens to be free. Using sampling rates when capturing video is also important. My sound card works better using 48kHz than 44.1kHz sampling rate. Operating System is important too. Windows 98SE (I assume the same applies to ME) is not suited well for video capture because audio video sync problems were the worst by far. Same hardware, same applications running on Windows 2000 rendered much better results. XP behaves as well as W2K. If this is just driver issue or not - this is another issue, which I cannot confirm. I am leaning though on opinion that OS made such a difference. Win98SE(ME) is not true operating system such as Linux, Unix, Windows 2000/XP/NT (computer science graduates will agree with me knowing those OS internals - I am talking about kernel here). Solution: Don't capture video in huge chunks. I usually record maximum 20 minutes. I stop capturing when new scene starts. I rewind a little bit before this scene and start capturing (this will result in seperate capture file). I also prefer using NTFS file system (2000,XP), which allows me to have huge capture files (larger than 4GBs). I compress using Huffyuv codec (almost lossless compression). It shrinks file size by 2.2 factor. Capturing 720x480 without compression will bring any HD to its knees resulting in dropped frames. Defragmenting HD is also important before capturing. I have devoted partition for video capturing. ...
Pinnacle Systems :: Editing :: Video :: Computer software (programs) :: Video Capture Device (Devices) :: :: Pinnacle Studio 9 AV-DV

ADS TECH INSTANT VIDEOMPX USBAV-708

4 stars (Great for the money) - This product is great for the money, however keep in mind a couple of things. It comes with Video Studio 8 VCD which is not the full version of Video Studio 8 -- you can only make VCDs with it, not DVDs. That is a hugh limitation. If you only care about VCD, make sure you get the patches for VS8. But since you have VS8, you can upgrade to VS9 (full) for $50 which is a very nice product. I am able to do everything I want with VS9 including ripping scenes from DVDs as well as the VideoMPX capture device. Going this route, you save $50 on VS9 and get the DIVX encoder for free (a $20 value) which means the VideoMPX essentially pays for itself. Whether you decide to go with VS8-VCD or VS9, make sure you get the new VideoMPX driver from ADS Tech. The one it ships with has issues. After I got the new driver, it works great. 1 stars (it's awful) - I spent hours upon hours trying to get this program to work-no luck. Support line staff was of little to no use. I'm returning it. ...
ADS Technologies :: Encoding :: audio :: Music :: Editing :: Effects :: Composting :: Hardware Bundles :: Video :: Computer software (programs) :: Video Capture Device (Devices) :: :: ADS TECH INSTANT VIDEOMPX ( USBAV-708 )