After reading all of the epinions posted here on this product I bought the Dazzle Digital Video Creator (USB). I have waited about 6 weeks before writing an epinion because I wanted to be as fair as possible.

Well here goes. Out of the box this thing is a disaster. It was very difficult to get it to work properly with my system and still is not 100% right. But it is more-or-less useable. I have spent many hours with Dazzle's very helpful service staff but I still have the following problem. The audio will only work during the preview OR after the edit but NOT during both. It is frustrating because I need the audio to find the input cue AND I would like to hear it after the edit. I have still been unable to solve this problem and have gotten-by, by using an additional pair of speakers. I will not attempt to explain how this set-up works (or doesn't).

The product I bought came bundled with editing software called Movie Star. Definitely should be "Home" Movie Star.

I completed a rather important (to me) project which was about 15 minutes long. The editing went fairly easy and if you have some experience with editing you will find it intuitive. Also the transitions are nice, and easy to implement. The problem is that the output though decent for the web or computer viewing is not really acceptable when recorded back to videotape. It's okay for home use but nowhere near acceptable for commercial use. In addition I had an irritating problem with synchronization of sound. The final product looks a little like a bad foreign film.

I have a PC100 ViaGra motherboard with 120MB of memory. Also I am using a Panasonic PV8000 as my source deck with analog out. In all fairness this may be the root of some of my troubles. I think 120MB is bare minimum also I think others may have better results using the S-VHS option and a camcorder source.

Some other problems I encountered with "Movie Star" is the titling option which I still have not been able to make work and I had to adjust my screen display to 1024 X 768 in order to get the program to display properly on my 17" monitor.

There is a need for a low cost video editing option and Dazzle is promising but it can be very frustrating. I do not recommend this for someone who knows nothing about video or computers but if you're willing to play around with it some people claim they are having good results.

I have not given up on it entirely but neither can I recommend it wholeheartedly. Approach this one with caution.



Recommended: No