Review: Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder

Shooting vacation videos? Watch them right away.

Product: Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder

Company: Pinnacle Systems

Web site

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Product: Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder

Company: Pinnacle Systems

Web site

Price: $49.99

Description: The Dazzle DVD Recorder is a piece of hardware that links a video source (VCR, camcorder, etc.) to a PC via USB 2.0 cable. With the bundled software, a user can transfer videos to the computer, or directly onto a DVD (as long as the PC has a DVD burner). The piece of hardware includes two video inputs (composite and S-video) and composite audio inputs. Bundled software includes Pinnacle Studio 10 QuickStart and the Instant DVD Recorder software.

Why it's a Toy of Summer: If you take a lot of videos while on vacation, the Dazzle device offers a quick and easy way to convert the videos into digital format onto your PC or directly onto a DVD (especially if you have friends or relatives who are begging to see videos of your kids at Disney World). We also thought of another fun use: When you're on vacation there's no better time to grab all of your old home videos collecting dust on videotape and begin the conversion process to digital.

Quick Review: The hardest part of trying out this device was finding a computer that had a DVD burner, as well as digging for some composite cables to connect to the device (a downside: Pinnacle doesn't provide video cables). After we found some cables, setup was quick and easy, connecting the Dazzle device as a bridge between our VCR and PC via the USB 2.0 cable. Once connected, the QuickStart software let us capture video from the VCR and provided a decent video editor that let us add transitions, title screens and edit which clips we wanted to use (we could create scene breaks or just capture as one big video file). After editing the video, the software let us convert into several video formats (though several formats, such as conversion to an iPod or Sony PSP, require an upgrade to Pinnacle Studio 10).

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