Dazzle DVD Recorder - Old Version

Dazzle made perfect sense: an inexpensive peripheral that would pipe video directly into a USB port so it could be edited and burned onto DVD. But in fact it's a disaster. People who gave it a five-star rating must be blessed somehow: My experience matched the one-star ratings.The software that comes with it isn't Vista-compatible. Pinnacle's website doesn't make it obvious where the upgraded software can be found. The upgraded software is 211MB for the DVD recorder (never mind the "Studio" editing software). Good luck if (like me) you use a dial-up connection.The upgraded software crashed the system (blue screen of death) during installation. When the system came back up, the drivers for the DVD drive had been corrupted (fixing this requires going into the registry editor). Once I got it running, the resulting video was unsatisfactory -- fuzzy around the edges and had interference patterns along the bottom.Perhaps there are ways to fix all this, but the point is that it's not the easy-to-use, plug-and-play, amateur-friendly device it claims to be.So: I returned "Dazzle" (the first time I've ever sent something back to Amazon) and bought an entry-level regular DVD recorder for only about $30 more. My time and aggravation were worth at least that much. The DVD-R was easy to set up and worked perfectly the first time out. Sorry, Pinnacle, but I strongly recommend that course of action instead of buying Dazzle.

Wow, thought it wouldn't be good, and man was i wrong. Setup was easy and only took a few minutes. No problems. After everything was installed I took it for a testrun. Turns out you can record full quality (the quality your actually watching on the television.) It's perfect. Also few for people with not much hard drive space. Don't worry about it. The editing software that comes with it will make all the space taking movies turn very small after youedit them. This product is perfect. BUYERS - DON'T BEWARE!

Works well, but I'd probably only recommend it to people capturing VHS/DVD content. I think anyone capturing from a variety of consoles or other mixed sources may have to spend a lot of time fiddling with settings, but for straight video transfers you can set things once and forget about them.You'll need to download the drivers from the Pinnacle website. Search for ""Hardware drivers for Pinnacle / Dazzle* Studio video devices" and it'll come up. The drivers labelled as being for Windows 7 work fine on 11. Be sure you choose the correct installer, either 32-bit or 64-bit.Pinnacle Studio works but is somewhat limited in digitizing capability because it caps the framerate at 30fps. With OBS Studio it can capture up to 60fps if you do the settings correctly. There are videos on Youtube that can help.

...Because you are actually rating two separate components: the video capturing function (from a VCR or camcorder), and the DVD creation function. One works well, the other one is TERRIBLE.First though, I'd like to make a note for Vista users. Right on the Dazzle package it says its compatible with Windows Vista, you can download the patch at Pinnacle's website. The problem is, when you go there, there are MANY patches, and its very hard to figure out which one or ones you need to download. The patches should say something like 'patch for Vista'; instead they say things like "Studio release patch". Studio Plus is the software that comes with the Dazzle recorder, but Pinnacle has other software called Studio (like Studio Ultimate). Which Studio program is the patch for? Is it for Vista? Do I need to download other patches first? Who knows? It took me an hour to figure out all the patches I needed to download to get the software to work. If you are missing one patch, it doesn't work at all. Oh, and don't look to the manual for help. There is NO paper manual with the Dazzle, only a VERY POOR and undescriptive online manual, and it doesn't help at all.Once I finally got it installed, I tested the video capturing from my VCR. It worked great, and was easy to use. Intuitive design, you won't have a problem figuring it out. So, with my video ready to be transferred to DVD, I launched into the DVD creation software, Studio Plus.... WHAT A NIGHTMARE! This is the absolute WORST software for DVD creation. its is EXTREMELY buggy, almost to the point of being useless. It crashes often. Here are some of the problems I encountered:- THE MENUS: When editing one of the pre-made menus (such as "Corporate Function" or "Our Wedding"), the software will tell you you can't edit it because you can only have one menu per project. Nevermind that its the ONLY menu you chose for the project. You have to just keep hitting cancel, go back in to "edit", and keep trying until it finally allows you to edit. Sometimes, the menu background will simply disappear for no reason. When this happens, you have to delete the menu and start all over. Also, its SUPPOSED to allow you to choose a thumbnail picture to be displayed for each chapter on the menu. There is even a "set thumbnail" button. The fact that IT DOESN'T EVER WORK makes you wonder why the button is there. Simple: its there to INFURIATE you. So you eventually end up with menus with black boxes for each chapter instead of thumbnails. If you are thinking of creating a menu from scratch, forget it- there is no such function included. Ok, so you FINALLY got the poor-man's menu ready to go. Time to burn the DVD!-BURNING: The fact that only about 40% of my attempts to burn a DVD have succeeded should give you pause. 60% of the time the program crashes. Now, if you are burning at say 4X speed, an hour DVD takes about 60 minutes to burn. It usally crashes right towards the end, so now you have a useless DVD and you wasted an hour. While the video captures are still in the system, your menu you struggled to create IS NOT, so you have to recreate it all over again, then try burning it again (with the same 40% chance of success). Sounds like fun, huh???The Dazzle does give you the option to simply burn straight to DVD from the source video (in other words, the DVD will be a straight transfer from the VHS tape- no menu, and no chapters). I tried this, and it worked perfectly, but really, who wants a DVD with no menu or chapter stops? If the video is more than 10 minutes long, you are going to want to be able to fast forward by using chapters.Overall, the Dazzle does a great job at capturing video from a VCR or a camcorder. The software that comes with it is CRAP, and deserves a negative star rating. If not for the software, Dazzle would have gotten 5 stars from me. As it is, the 2 star rating is only because the video capturing works so great. The bottom line is- USE A DIFFERENT PROGRAM to create your DVDs. Avoid Studio Plus like the plague!!!! Shame on Pinnacle for releasing such buggy JUNK software with an otherwise great product.