Dazzle is part of Pinnacle, a company known for its PC video products, so we were expecting good things from Video Creator. It's a USB video capture device that comes with the popular Pinnacle Studio video editor, now in its 11th version.
In contrast to the Magix product's understated appearance, the Dazzle looks like it's competing for its own glass case at Tate Modern. It's still USB powered, but its three composite AV inputs and S-video jack are presented along the curved front of a rather fine pear-shaped desktop unit. Pinnacle has decided not to include a SCART adapter, or indeed any cables at all, so you won't get it connected to your VCR without a quick trip to the cupboard under the stairs, or Maplins.
Installing Pinnacle Studio and the 'bonus DVD', containing extra content for enhancing your videos, annexed 4GB of our hard disk before we'd digitised a single video, and took over 45 minutes just to install. We could have skipped some of this, but worse was to come when we tried to run Pinnacle Studio and the Instant DVD Recorder software. Both crashed on more than one occasion during testing. During the short time we were able to get everything working, we found the audio and video rendering quality lacking compared with Rescue Your Videotapes. Not only did we find Pinnacle Studio less intuitive than the Magix software, we also found it more limiting in terms of the number of input sources it could accept. You can't capture video currently playing on your PC screen, for example. There are fewer preset movie templates on offer, and those that are included are less effective than those with the Magix package. The video preview window also had an irritating tendency to reposition itself when switching between screens.
Dazzle Video Creator is let down by its video quality and poor software. Although it's slightly pricier, we much preferred Magix Rescue Your Videotapes.
System Specifications
Inputs: Composite, S-Video
Ports: USB
Features: 2/5
Performance: 2/5
Value: 3/5
Verdict
Don't try this at home. Limited video quality exacerbated by frustrating software.
Author: Andy Zarkesh
Computer Buyer Online