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Which dazzle card is the correct one?

Trish's Escape from Hardware Hell Help Board » Hardware » Video Related Problems » Which dazzle card is the correct one? « Previous Next »

Author Message
danzig
Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2001 - 7:18 am:   

I want to copy my old vhs tapes to cd , but I was told I need a dazzle video card....but not wich card. Can anybody help?
Brent Hughes (Brenthughes)
Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2001 - 2:34 pm:   

There are several cards and devices that can be added to the system, such as the Dazzle, and they fall into two classes. Analog and digital. Although the computer is a digital device the sources of you video usually are not. Standard VHS is analog and therefore any card you get should have an analog video input. This facilitates getting the video into the compute. Be sure the card supports at least 24 frames per second and that you have lots of hard drive space available. Memory should be at 256mb minimum.

You will find that the hardware is really not the hard part, it is the software that you use that will limit what you can or cannot do with your video. Dazzle products come with a fine software setup for the beginner but I have found that heavy use makes me want a better piece of software with more control and features. Adobe's video software is what I use now with an analog board from ATI runnig on a Celeron 400 with 256mb and two thirty gig drives. I import rough clips onto the first drive and use the software to edit to the second drive and then export to either my Betamax (still the best!) or my VHS.

Remember the results are only as good as your source material so keep that good and you will get great results.

If you are just starting you may decide to go digital in your source such as a mini DV camera and a firewire board for your machine. This is awesome quality and allows you to route your older analog material through the mini DV for D/A conversion.

Going analog is far cheaper but digital (mini DV or Digital8) is vastly better quality wise.

Hope that helps.

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