Video-Capture Reviews

I recently purchased a D-Link DVC-1100 to play with. I found its installation fairly straightforward. The price seems to be vary reasonable considering most of the video conferencing stuff out there seems to need monthly subscriptions for access. D-Link provides free connection services for anyone you wish to videophone (provided they have a D-Link videophone as well). They even provide two test phone numbers so you can evaluate your setup. Very handy.

The manual walks you through the process of setting up the unit with a home network, but doesn't really address the possibility of someone using anything but all D-Link products (not surprising). I use a Linksys 4 port router and a wireless access point for my home network. Configuring them for the DVC-1100 is easy if you know some basics of the home network system you are using (ie: how to allow various port numbers to be enabled and pass through the router or how to set up a DMZ port). The wireless version (DVC-1100) can be connected via a wired home network if you wish.

Once set up, the unit is controlled via a remote control (yet another one on my coffee table...I'm up to 7 of them now!). I connected the video and audio outputs through my A/V receiver by way of an aux. video port.

All in all, a nice piece of gear for the computer geek who wants to see who they're phoning.

I tried 3 different capture devices in one week, and this was by far the easiest to use and the most portable, with good quality images. Set up is simple, install discs, install Pinnacle Studio Version 9, which has a great instruction video for beginners on how to capture,edit and make movies. USB2 device, which I am using in conjunction with a laptop. Captured old analogue video images, and off many monitors at work with images I need to use for presentations. Reasonable price for what you get.

Heard about the product and it gives me the impression that its the best one available in the market for video editing. Want to buy one .

I had this card to make VCD from VHSs I shot
in the past two years. This is great. I have
video studio. The resolution is about 352x240.
Now I upgrade video studio, it will output
DVD quality video, more specificlly, SVCD.
The picture doesn't look good. One more reason
is my VHS looks pretty dark because I shot them
in room, not out under bright shine.
But overall, you got what you paid for.

The interface to PowerPoint is seamless and excellent. I especially like the "6 o'clock" button that blanks the screen (the "b" key on the keyboard--did you know that feature of PowerPoint??). There are billions of ways you can configure it, but it works great out of the box. The buttons it has are quite useful!

The laser is rather weak. If you have a white background, the audience cannot see it. The laser is well collimated, so it makes no difference if you are 1 foot from the screen or 30.

The flash memory key is a good idea on paper, but our group has only been hampered by it: Windows (by default) sees this device as an empty floppy disk, so if the numbskull that is giving the talk decides to reboot the PC, the reboot freezes until you remove the key/flashmemory/antenna. (It took me way too long to figure THAT one out).

I installed this card in my son's Dell Dimension. The TNT2 that was standard wouldn't display his new Sponge Bob game. This one installed with no problem and worked with the game. I do not plan to use it with a TV, but you should be aware that there is only one output on back, no TV out as stated in the description.

I was worried about spending 500.00 for a printer, which I knew nothing about, but after reading reviews on Google.com I felt comfortable about doing it. The quality comes out great. You can't go wrong with getting this printer. One thing I did notice, it left a scratch on my prints, when I printed 4X6 images. I have not had a chance to see if it was a one time fluke or what. I'm waiting for more paper to arrive.

Hollywood FX Plus for Studio 7.x or higher is an excellent add on product.

Studio 7 and 8 are notorious for being unstable but if you can get them to work right, the addition of FX Plus will make your editing even more enjoyable.

You have many new affects with FX Plus. Some of the effects rival the Video Toaster or even broadcast quality products. You just have to see them to believe it.

One thing to note: you will really need a 3D Graphics card to help out with the most complex transitions. The software rendering on slower machines just causes most systems to crash.

If you have Studio 7.x or higher, you MUST get this add on.

I have used my DC10 plus for about a month after buying it used for about 80 dollars, and the money was well spent. This particular capture card has a very good reputation on the internet because it was considered almost professional quality when it was released a couple of years ago.

My previous experience with video capture was limited to an ATI TV WONDER USB card, which was great for TV viewing, but was only reliable for capture using no compression (2 hours on a 20 GIG disk using virtualdub) or using the DIVX codec(fastest mode). This card is much, much better at video capturing, in fact, most times you will only get 0-6 dropped frames using a fast hard drive. Keep in mind that this card is not a TV tuner, and you will only be able to watch TV with it using a VCR as a tuner.

I should mention that AVI files have a size limit wich limits the amount of video you can capture. using FAT32 the limit is 4 GIG. Fortunately, both VIRTUALDUB and the PINNACLE STUDIO software can bypass the limit by recording your video in several files. PINNACLE's software even does this automatically. So your only limited by your hard drive capacity and some weird errors that pop up when recording long videos.

The card can only record using a hardware MJPEG codec, with good quality but it produces files that can only be played on your computer and are to large to share anyway. Fortunately you can convert the files using virtualdub or the included Pinnacle Studio software (virtualdub is much faster). You should capture with the included software, and don't be affraid to use the lowest premade setting if your intention is to make VCDs, the quality is still TV like and I can save more or less 6 hours on a 20 GIG drive.

Now comes the bad part, the card only has reliable drivers for Windows ME and 98, the card works with LINUX but I haven't been able to test it yet due to lack of software. WIndows 2K drivers came out recently but there very new and I don't considere them reliable. Also the card doesn't like to play well with other software, I can't use it reliably with virtualdub. I've used it with VIDEOWAVE 3.0 but the quality is just not the same as the Pinnacle Studio software. Even if you use the Pinnacle software you might get weird errors if you try capturing very long videos (more than 70 minutes) or try to do some editing on your captured file. I usually use STUDIO to capture and VIRTUALDUB to edit my videos.

The card is great and it only misses the 5 star mark because of Pinnacle's questionable software support.

This is one of top ten mixers on the markit it has many feturs. this mixer is good for stating and it gives you a lot of room to grow. The only down side is its price.