How NOT to capture analog video: my experience with Dazzle Video Creator Platinum DVC-170

In the early 2000s VHS was the leading home video format. Five years later it was done for. VHS camcorders stopped selling in 2006. The same year, Pinnacle released a trio of teardrop-shaped analog-to-digital converters: Dazzle DVD Recorder, $49 (model number DVC-100), Dazzle Video Creator, $79 (model number DVC-130) and Dazzle Video Creator Platinum, $99 (model number DVC-170). All of these models accepted analog video via composite or SVideo input and output digitized video over USB.

Top: Dazzle DVD Recorder (DVC 100, includes Pinnacle Instant DVD Recorder).

The message from the industry was clear: analog video is dead, digital video is the future; convert analog recordings to digital or lose them as tape and machines deteriorate.

The red DVC-100, as well as its monozygotic siblings DVC-101, DVC-103 and DVC-107, which were also available in black and in white, output digital video in uncompressed form and require USB 2.0 High Speed or faster connection.

Left: DVD Recorder (DVC-100). Middle: DVD Recorder Plus (DVC-101). Right: Video Creator Plus HD (DVC-107).

The blue DVC-130 and platinum DVC-170 are different. These devices compress video while digitizing it, and send it over USB in compressed form. The bitrate and the resulting file size are an order of magnitude smaller compared to uncompressed, and depending on your delivery platform, you may not need to re-compress the video further.

DVC-130 and DVC-170 send compressed video over USB.

The DVC-130 can encode video with MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 codecs, the DVC-170 adds two implementations of MPEG-4 standard, so overall it offers four different compression formats.

Let me describe them in more detail.

• MPEG-1, a development of H.261 format, is useful for creating VideoCD discs. These discs use CD, not DVD media. Because CD capacity is just about 15% of DVD capacity, something got to give, so the resolution is just a quarter of DVD video, and the frame rate is limited to 30 fps with progressive scanning. The bitrate including audio is just below 1.5 Mbit/s, the same rate used for audio CD.
• MPEG-2 Part 2, a.k.a. H.262, is a versatile format that supports interlaced and progressive scan video, standard definition and high definition, intra-frame and inter-frame coding, and various color subsampling schemes. The MPEG-2 bitstream generated by the DVC-130 and DVC-170 is compliant with DVD-video format: standard definition with interlaced scanning and up to 10 Mbit/s data rate.
• Two implementations of MPEG-4 Part 2 standard are available with the DVC-170, one simply as MPEG-4, another as DivX.

Why would you prefer the DVC-130 or DVC-170 over the DVC-100 or over any other analog-to-digital converter that outputs uncompressed digital video?

• You want to offload the task of video compression from your computer’s CPU onto an external device — an important reason twenty years ago, but nowadays a software encoder can do it while you play a multiplayer first person shooter.
• You want to save on disk space. A worthy goal at the time when a 512 MB memory card was sold for $200, but today you can buy a 128 GB MicroSD card for only $20.
• You want to rely onto the hardware and bundled software to make a standards-compliant video file without bothering with zillion settings, especially if you don’t know much about codecs, containers, resolutions, aspect ratios and scanning types.
• You want to encode your video into an industry-standard format and burn it onto a CD or DVD without re-compression, saving time and avoiding generation loss.
• Oh, I almost forgot: you want to take advantage of the purported image stabilization features, offered by the digitizer.

For irregular HSYNC video sources, the GO7007SB delivers A/V synchronization with error resiliency. — from the WISChip feature list.

To me, this is the most intriguing option of this device in 2024, because you can deal with large file sizes of uncompressed video and you can navigate encoding settings, but a wiggly or shaky video is almost impossible to fix in post. The devices that are meant to stabilize shaky videos — time base correctors — have become increasingly rare and expensive, so any possibility to stabilize video for cheap should not be disregarded.

WISChip GO7007SB Streaming Media Encoder specs and features

It is important to note that neither DVC 130 nor DVC 170 can deliver uncompressed video, also to my knowledge neither of these devices can be used with third-party software. Luckily I have installation CDs, and my computer has an optical drive.

Minimum requirements for the driver and the bundled software is Windows XP. There is no mention of 32-bit or 64-bit versions on the packaging probably because consumer-grade Windows XP was strictly 32-bit. Hence, the driver and the bundled software are 32-bit only, you can verify this on Pinnacle driver page.

Long story short, I was not able to install the DVC 170 driver on a Windows 10 laptop, neither I was able to install it on a Windows 7 64-bit desktop.

Error message I got when tried to install the software.

I was able to install the driver on a netbook that runs Windows 7 32-bit, but the device could not be recognized, so I was not able to test it.

Drivers have installed on Win7/32, but the DVC-170 has not been recognized.

After my unsuccessful experience with the Dazzle DVC-170 I would rephrase the statement I made in the beginning of the video: analog video is dead, digital video is omnipresent, but the relentless pace of progress makes old digital hardware, software and file formats incompatible with new systems. You need to be on your toes to ensure your devices still connect, and your data is accessible and playable. ■