Features Capture video and still images from DV camcorder to a notebook computer. Plug and play CardBus PC Card (PCMCIA) with Firewire™/IEEE1394 port. Edit DV videos with software editing suite. Add special effects, transitions, titles, and audio tracks. Record edited DV videos back to DV camcorder, DV VCR, or CD-R. Add videos to an Web page, e-mail, or PowerPoint presentation. Convert DV video to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 format to reduce file size.

Here's a low-priced product ($99) that's so dirt-cheap anyone with a newer notebook computer and DV camcorder should be able to afford it. It includes a CardBus PC Card (PCMCIA) for capturing DV footage via 1394 (FireWire), a 1394 cable and a crippled version of the already-weak Ulead VideoStudio 4.0. For the same $99 price, Dazzle also offers DV-Editor with a PCI card for Desktop PCs.

For this review, I used a 700 MHz Dell Inspiron 5000e notebook with 256 MB of RAM, running Windows 2000. Installation was as easy as could be, where I hot-plugged the PC Card into the slot on the side of my notebook and Windows 2000 immediately recognized the card and loaded the Win2K 1394 driver. Now that's plug and play!

Next, I loaded the Ulead VideoStudio 4 LE software. After a quick restart, all was ready to go. At first, I tried using the software without reading the documentation -- a good way for me to see how easy an app is to use. But I soon needed to dive into the instructions. VideoStudio is not as easy-to-use as I would have hoped, this being a software application that's for home users.

It uses a step-by-step approach to editing, starting with capturing, going on to storyboarding and then adding effects, and finally finishing the presentation by either sending the movie back to tape or into an MPEG file for Internet distribution. Even though you'd think the step-by-step method would be a snap to use, it's not easy at all. With each step comes an entirely new set of menus, which add up to a lot to remember, especially for a first-time video editor. Then there's the nonstandard interface of the software. Even (or perhaps, especially) advanced users will feel lost in this pretty skin of an interface, which looks a bit like some of the obtuse offerings from Kai's Metacreations packages. It's a challenge even to figure out how to close down the thing.

Screen Shot: Ulead VideoStudio LE software (Click for Larger Image)

For basic editing and effects, the VideoStudio software squeaks by, but if you want to do something that's even slightly advanced, you'll want to upgrade your software. For example, I edited a sequence where my subject was talking to the camera, and then began talking about a machine that I wanted to show while she described it. This would require the ability to execute a video-only edit. I then wanted to edit another piece of her audio under that cover shot as she described the machine. This is almost impossible to do with this software without a heroic workaround -- far beyond the ability of casual users. The software allows you to do a voice-over that you record as an audio file or place music under, but there's no provision for using just the audio track of a video file. This is a major omission.

Overall, don't expect this software to be easy to use, especially when it's time to output your final production to MPEG for Web or email use. Unless you're well-versed in compression techniques, the software will leave you out in the cold. For example, press Email and the compression default is 30 frames per second at 720x480. Ouch. That would not make you any friends if you sent that as an email attachment -- even a short movie clip would be more than 10 MB and wouldn't be smoothly playable on most machines..

But Dazzle doesn't manufacture that awkward software, and heck, it's thrown in for free, so I guess you get what you pay for. And what you're paying the $99 for here is that PC Card, which works well. Although the capture process dropped a frame or two on one pass, I was able to capture the footage again without flaws. After the editing's done, you must render the movie, which takes a frustrating amount of time, but that's not unusual with 1394 cards.

Even with its slight deficiencies, I find it remarkable that for $99 you're able to capture and edit video with high quality and precision, at the level of a $10,000 editing system just five short years ago. That fact in itself is enough to justify the product's name: Dazzle.

 

Score (out of a possible 10) Hardware: 9.5 Software: 3

System requirements:

For more information about this product, visit Dazzle's Web site at dazzle.com.