Hey everyone I'm looking to purchase an analog to DV bridge. I'm not looking to spend more then $200 though. But I'd like to get one that will do the job. This is for personal and not professional use and i'll most likely be reselling it after I transfer about 20 tapes.

I'm looking at the Datavideo DAC-100($199) and the Pyro A/V Link($190). Possibly also the Dazzle Hollywood DV bridge if I buy it from ebay. The others would be bought from B&H photo.

I'm looking for user opinions on these. Is one better then another and how?

A lot of the tapes I'll be transferring were films I shot while in high school some as old as 11 years ago. Some on poor quality VHS or Video8 tapes. So I'm not overly picky about exact color or anything like that. I just don't want out of sync sound or pixelized edges. Things that would be noticable to anyone.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

I've used the Dazzle a lot in the past few months. It's not the best solution IMO; it's great in the sense that you can go from anything to anything, but it can be very finicky sometimes. Also, I don't know if this is just because of an isolated problem with a VCR but I've noticed when capturing analog to DV, the picture jumps out of frame a bit.

Dazzle works great going analog to dv but the other way it becomes a hassle and you loose so much on the account of a crappy VHS player. You might want to hold out and buy a nice dual deck system rather than a converter. I have heard good things about JVC's model.


Rob:D

You could just get an analog capture card. If you play games or do 3D work, it looks like it's time for an ATI all in wonder :P
You might be able to use virtualdub (free) to capture and encode in DV in real-time.

Canopus is good, but it's $400ish.

I tried the capture card route and got fed up with them. I have a creative Digital VCR card and it captures but drops frames and the sound is out of sync.

I just bought a pyro A/V link today from Circuit City. It doesn't work. The picture looks fine but it drops 62 frames every 7 seconds from a good VHS tape. Even worse with a bad tape like teh kind I'm trying to transfer. So I'm going to return it.

I'm considering getting the Canopus box but I'm a little afraid it won't work either. The video I'm trying to capture isn't from very good quality tapes.

BTW the Canopus is $300 here in the states.

I have a TV Wonder VE and it's great. The capture quality is fine, I haven't tried capturing off a VCR before but I've captured off an analog video camera and there seemed to be no loss in quality.