Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge

Fredster wrote on 12/13/2001, 5:30 PM

Has anyone had experience using the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge with Vegas Video 3.0 to capture A to D and master D to A onto VHS tape?
Does it work and, if so, how well? Problems? Workarounds? What about the Sony DVMCDA2 Analog to Digital Converter?

Comments

jyarb wrote on 12/13/2001, 7:44 PM

I currently use the DV Bridge. I can capture from my Sony Hi 8. Quality is great. I can edit and print to tape even from the timeline in VV3. Again quality is great. I have not been able to batch capture in VV3. I think this is due to my camcorder not writing timecode to tape. The time cide I get during capture is read from the LCD counter on camera thru the LANC cable connected to the DV Bridge. I have posted several questions regarding the DV Bridge on this forum but their does not seem to be many users. Over all I like the DV Bridge I can control my camera, capture clips, edit, and send back to tape. I also have a DVC2 that captures in , SVCD or DVD for real time compresion so I can burn to CD.I hope this helped.

Jason_Abbott wrote on 12/13/2001, 8:53 PM

I have the DVMC-DA2. It has worked as advertised. I don't use it for capture so much as export to SVHS, VHS or external monitor. One advantage it might have over Dazzle's bridge is LANC for Sony cameras. If you have a Sony camera then you can control it from VV using LANC through the DA2. I haven't tried this but others have said it works great.

David_DSS wrote on 12/14/2001, 12:22 AM

I have been using the DV-Bridge for a few weeks and am just now trying it out with VV3. I'm totally new to video editing so please take my comments with a grain of salt. You're getting the uneducated opinion of a raw beginner.
So far I like the DV-Bridge. It does everything it's advertised to do. I've transferred video from my VHS-VCR to my miniDV camcorder. Then captured from miniDV to computer. Then I've edited and output back to miniDV, and from there back to VHS. The DV-Bridge handled the conversions well. The only problem I had was when playing back a VHS tape, if there was a minor glitch in the tape, my miniDV camcorder would loose sync and stop recording. I would have to press the record button quickly to start recording again. I don't know whether to blame this in the DV-Bridge or the JVC camcorder. It only happened when there was an obvious glitch in the VHS output.
As far as software. I tried using the MainActor software bundled with the DV-Bridge. As a beginner I thought this was a pretty good package until I started running into it's limitations. The last straw was when I had worked for days composing a 32min video and then exported it to the AVI multi-file format. (To beat the W98SE 4GB file size limit.) When I went to use DV-Out to send the video to miniDV tape, the program wouldn't do it. No solution in sight from Dazzle or MainConcept.
So I went looking for replacement software and VV3 seems to be it for me. I downloaded the trial version and used it to piece my original 32min video back together and then did a print-to-tape from the timeline. The export was flawless. Later I did a batch capture with scene detect from miniDV. I was sold. I felt like the Sonic Foundry people had really earned my money. I ordered the full version a few days ago. It will probably take me a while to fully learn to use it but it looks like VV3 can do everything I want.
I considered Adobe Premiere but have spent too many years wrestling with Photoshop. From the posts I read Premiere is even harder to learn.
That's my two cents.