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Adaptec
video oh! DVD and Dazzle Digital Video Creator 150 Two solutions
that can help you turn your VHS videos into DVDs
Do
you know that you can capture and edit your own videos on a computer
or transfer them to DVDs. We look at two external solutions that
install in minutes and let you capture, edit, and output video in
a wide range of formats, including DVD, if you have the necessary
burner.
Both Adaptec VideOh! DVD and Dazzle Digital Video Creator 150 are
USB 2.0 devices and backward-compatible with USB 1.1. From there,
however, the products diverge completely, with Adaptec bundling
ArcSoft’s ShowBiz video editor and Sonic’s MyDVD 4.0
for authoring, and Dazzle throwing in a suite of homegrown programs
for the same basic tasks.
Both products are stable and perform well on several tests, including
a 46-minute capture to test sound synchronization, a frequent problem
area with consumer analog capture devices. When both tools were
used to burn several DVDs, including a slide show and a regular
video, and playback the result is perfect on all kind of players.
Adaptec VideOh! accepts S-Video and composite video and stereo audio
via RCA connectors, but it has no output, so you can’t get
your video back to tape. The bundle includes Sonic’s MyDVD
4.0 and ArcSoft’s ShowBiz version 1.1.
MyDVD excels at simple conversion of VHS tapes to DVD, letting you
set some basic parameters, roll tape, walk away, and return to a
finished DVD. Dazzle’s DVD Complete has no equivalent mode.
For more advanced DVD projects, MyDVD offers a great combination
of ease of use and utility. Once you choose a template, MyDVD builds
all menus, which you can customize with different background images
and audio or video for motion menus. You can also create motion
buttons for each video. Although the program doesn’t support
true branching, you can create submenus that link to other menu
pages, a useful compromise.
Slide shows are another strength. You can add transitions between
images and reorder images at any time, two options DVD Complete
doesn’t support. You can also set duration for each image
or insert a background audio track and let MyDVD automatically synchronize
the audio and images.
MyDVD can also archive your images on the DVD. It also supports
OpenDVD, which lets you re-edit DVD projects once you’ve burned
them.
On the video-editing front, ArcSoft’s ShowBiz is a competent
editor that’s generally more usable than Dazzle’s MovieStar
program, providing more configuration controls, better preview features,
and a much greater range of fun effects. Integration with MyDVD
is very simple.
The Dazzle hardware has stereo audio and composite and S-Video inputs
and outputs, so you can preview your capture on an NTSC monitor
or TV and write video back out to tape after editing. VideOh! offers
neither of these features, though outputting MPEG-2 encoded video
to tape isn’t optimal.
DVD Complete renders each time you load a file, often introducing
delays of two to ten minutes. MyDVD’s workflow delays all
file conversions until the rendering stage. It also renders menus
as it goes, so each time you change a menu item, it has to rerender
these as well.
With DVD Complete, you have to restart a slide show each time you
modify it. As with MyDVD, DVD Complete offers the optimal blend
of features, but it goes off the deep end with interface complexity,
offering controls that are much more complex than necessary for
most consumers.
That said, DVD Complete has some strong architectural bones. If
you follow the production wizard completely, you’ll produce
a fairly exotic DVD with little muss or fuss. DVD Complete provides
a near exhaustive range of navigational options, enabling great
control over the user experience, and the software’s exceptional
label editor produces DVD labels, jewel case inserts, and DVD dust
jackets.
Dazzle MovieStar 5 is disappointing in almost every production phase.
Capture is marred by the inability to hear the incoming video over
the computer’s sound system, so you’re never quite sure
you’ve captured the correct file. Though trimming and transition
tools are adequate, MovieStar has no configuration options for special
effects, and preview is limited. Titling tools are also limited
by the inability to design the title over the background video.
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