Has anyone used Dazzle?

[Ayushima]

I doubt anyone on here has used Dazzle because there aren't already topics about it, but still I have to try.

Dazzle is a USB plug in that has video and audio adapters, ideally i should plug the dvd player into it and it would play on the capture screen but it isn't. I've installed it but other than saying that the device has been installed, my computer doesn't recognize it's existence, saying there isn't a capture device hooked up.

Has anyone ever used one of these successfully?

[Kai Stromler]

Yes, but not their USB gear. Dazzle went downhill in terms of both device reliability and available capture quality after the DVC II, which despite using it for three and a half years I cannot thoroughly recommend. I know Scania is using Dazzle gear, probably USB, but if you want less pain in your source acquisition experience, you should do what I did and buy a DVD-ROM already. Except for certain video games and the few titles solely available on VHS, you don't really need a capture card any more.

For now, you should try capturing on both S-video and composite, and check to make sure in the utility that you're using to capture that the right input variety is selected. Mixing Dazzle capture hardware and someone else's software leads to nothing but pain; use the utility that came with the gear instead of using Virtual Dub if you're doing that. For the PCI devices there was a trick involving some system file to resolve this situation, but this probably won't -- and really, shouldn't -- apply for the USB gear. Dazzle's PCI stuff will also just flat not work with WinXP, though they ought to have solved this for the USB side if they want to stay in business.

hth, though probably not,

--K