Hi,

I hope this isn't repetitive but I have been trying to make a VCD using Dazzle USB and burning with Adaptec Easy CD Creator V 4. I capture using the VCD settings on Dazzle (from analog tape). I use Ulead Media Pro to create VCD compliant title and menu screens. I use Adaptec to burn to CD-R (also tried CD-RW). The CD-R sort of plays on my HP Pavilion 600 Mhz DVD drive. If I burn to CD-R, my Samsung DVD player says "no disc". If I burn to CD-RW I get a warning message from adaptec but the disc is recognized by my Samsun DVD player but the output is horrid. Extremely blocky video, stuttering audio, and random hangups. After years of doing analog video on my Amiga, I think PCs and video just don't mix. Or have I just made stupid hardware choices ?

P.S. The VCD files that play on my computer DVD are of very poor quality. What am I doing wrong ?

Anyone's thoughts will be apprciated.

-- wayne wisner (waynewiz@juno.com), July 09, 2000

Answers

Horrid quality using its built-in VCD templates is what anyone using Dazzle sooner or later discovers. No, you're not doing anything wrong; it's your Dazzle that's the thing you should rile at. All is not lost, though; if you go through the past entries in this forum you might read Doug's suggestions on how to squeeze the most out of that Dazzle. Basically, you choose a higher bitrate (2500 to 3000mb/s) for capture. The resulting *.mpg isn't VCD-compliant, but you then use it as input files with a s/w encoder (like Panasonic 2.x) set to VCD templates to get your VCD-compliant file.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), July 09, 2000.

This is my second attempt at an answer! Mysteriously I was disconnected from Internet before I could finish the last, in which I was talking critically, disapprovingly of Gateway! I too have had a very negative experience with Dazzle, which the Gateway people conned me into buying with this, my wife's first computer, and her toy. I had hoped to get into electronic photography, having been a serious amateur photographer 20 - 30 years ago. I hoped to use my 8 mm video camcorder to make quality still pictures, which the Gateway sales people assured me would be as easy as pie. It was anything but! Of course, this is our first experience with computers, and I certainly do not know the ins and outs of using computer - but the picture was terrible, no sound at all, and the people whom Gateway finally sent out to confirm I had hardware hooked up properly (I did) indicated that this was a "very very complex thing" I was trying to do, which I interpretted as their way of communicating to me that it might not work. I was (still am, in fact) extremely frustrated that Gateway would foist this off on me; especially when they then communicate that they "do not support" the product - which means that you buy it, then you try to muddle out how to fix it if it doesn't work, because they do not know how to make it work. Terrible way to do business in my opinion - if you sell something, you should back it up and stand behind it. At least Gateway did take it back with the promise to send me check for my money back. I'm writing this as catharsis for very negative and frustrating experience. Anyway, Dazzle did not work for me either. Hope maybe to have better luck and results with a digital camera. Anybody have any positive experience with digital cameras and coputers?

-- paul Loos (mapaloos@aol.com), June 01, 2001.