Snazzi III AV.DV Capture Card

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Snazzi III AV.DV

DV/Firewire
Analog VideoIn
MPEG1 hardware
MPEG2 hardware

Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP
Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux?
*based on user reports.

PCI

$250

7.6/10
5 votes

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Description (from the manufacturer site)

Since Digital Video swept into our world, Snazzi has been in an effort to produce an ultimate DV capturing device. Now the dream came true with the release of Snazzi*III AV.DV. It\'s a marvolous DV capturing media for the growing camcorders and non-linear editing markets. DVD is the fastest growing consumer format of All the times. It is the perfect way to keep treasured memories from video tapes for life long storage. For the first time ever, personal DVDs can be created right from your computer...Snazzi*III AV.DV allows you to do just that!

Snazzi Movie Mill and Snazzi DV Studio software are created to facilitate and speed up users task to help you make professional DVD creation easy.

Perfect For Home & Business

DV to MPEG real time hardware encoding.
Archive AV and DV camcorder tapes to real DVD now!
Record from any external video source to high quality, full motion MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
DV to AVI-DV file transfer.
DV I/O for mini DV camcorders.
Built-in multiplexer to guarantee AV sync.
Full D1, MPEG-2 MP @ ML, up to 10Mbps with adjustable GOP
1394 4000 Mbps networking with WinXP, Win2000 and WinME.
Add DVD quality video into your Presenter Studio to create professional multimedia CD-ROM.
Create Video Sales CDs with Product demos.

Visit manufacturer's site

Comments

6 comments, Showing 1 to 6 comments

Software is worthless.
I purchased the Gold edition and the software still sucks. Power Director has tons of sync problems with the mpegs created from this card.

Also, it seems that most software DVD Workshop, DVD Creator, DVDIt! etc... can burn the mpegs created w/o any problems. However, if you try and edit the mpeg files (just to trim the beginning and end, nothing complicated). Bad results, either the audio and video is out of sync or the software needs to re-render the mpeg, which defeats the purpose of capturing in mpeg.

You also, can't capture analogue in AVI only MPEG.

I feel like I got ripped off.
I suppose if all you want to do is copy VHS to DVD in a short time (no editing of the mpeg files) then you'll be happy with this card.

The quality of the mpeg capture seems reasonable on my 52" TV.

Comments posted by John Sim from Other, January 31, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 7 of 10.

This card is expensive in Hong Kong where I am. The card installed easily and was readily recognized by my system. The supplied audio cord doesn't fit my Sony DV cam very well, so high buzzing sound was heard when capturing videos. Problem solved when I use Sony's own cord.

Real time rendering is the reason why I bought it in the first place, but I am having some problems with a jagged line across the top edge, and a skewed line on the bottom edge when rendering AVI to MPEG 1/2. Does anybody else experience this? My video editor (Video Explosion Deluxe) can render perfectly, but at a much slower pace. Still talking to tech at Snazzi regarding a fix.

Comments posted by psk from Other, January 16, 2003:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: No rating.

Hardware = 10, Software = 8
Got the Gold Edition from ESBuy. Using it for analog to DVD authoring.

Running on WinME. System is a 1.333MHz AMD Thunderbird, 512MB RAM, SoundBlaster Live audio, ASUS AGP-V7700 Deluxe GeForce2 64MB graphics, 60GB UltraDMA HD, Sony DRU-5500 DVD +-RW/+-R hybrid burner, and JVC HR-S5911U S-VHS/VHS source.

The Snazzi I PCI mpeg1 was good in the past and I thought it was time to upgrade to the Snazzi III mpeg2. The PCI card installed with a conflict (got too much stuff installed). Switched slots and it worked perfectly.

First impressions on the analog to digital capture side. The card performed well on both short and long captures. No audio synch problems ... perfect synch with the SoundBlaster inputs. I captured an hour-long clip. Real-time mpeg2 encoding is a real time saver. No need to re-encode. No frame drops ... even on very busy action. The MovieMill capture software is very easy to use ... just like a VCR. Quality can be adjusted. Found that the default settings were inadequate. Custom Color settings allow generous tweeking of the Brightness, Hue, Contrast, and Saturation ... but no Sharpness (more on this later). The custom setting adjustment (for mpeg1 and 2) allows for very specific capture filters, bitrate control, and audio settings.

The authoring software that came with the Gold Ed is good, but lacking. MySonic DVD always forces a re-encode even though the source files are already mpeg2 and is very time consuming, but it does have animated menus. Nero 5.5 full version blows away Easy CD Creator. Cyberlink's Power Director has a nice handy feature called Smart Rendering. This allows authoring of multiple clips into a single master file with trimming, sequencing, added titles, animated transitions, and watermark. It then re-renders only new or changed parts! This is a definite time lifesaver, not to mention the capture quality stays the same ... I assembled and trimmed over 20 mpeg2 clips, added titles, transitions, and the finalize project took about 45 minutes to generate the master mpeg2 file. I did have to upgrade to Power Director Pro to get the Disc Wizard (not included with the standard Ed) to allow for menu, chapter selection and DVD/VCD image creation/burn. This also allows you to raw capture mpeg2, import it in, add chapters, add menus, and create a disc image ready for burning … which is nice if you just want to capture 1 long clip and author it. I recommend the Power Dir upgrade over using MySonic DVD. I also found a workaround for importing menu backgrounds instead of using the canned ones that Disc Wizard limits you to. It is also posted in the Snazzi forum below.

Back to the Sharpness problem … I contacted the gurus over at the Snazzi forum (http://www.spawns.dk/snazzi/index.php) and they came up with a registry hack to improve
Sharpness by modifying the low pass filter and other settings not accessible through the GUI. I did some experimenting on my own and came up with my own mods. Check over there for more details. What variable bitrate to use is the $100K question. Quality for quantity to fit on 4.7GB is a tradeoff. I found that VBR 7-8.3 MB/s got the quality that I wanted and fit about 1hr10min work of material on a single sided DVD. Just remember that garbage-in, garbage-out … the final product will never be better than the source. By bumping up the bitrate will also minimize pixelization during very busy captures.

On the Hardware side, it has 2 composite, 1 S-VHS, and 2 Firewire inputs. No outputs … but I use the ASUS AGP-V7700 if I need to go back out. The Firewire inputs allow for direct DV capture. To get the DV to mpeg2 is a two step/pass process where video is sent in, captured as raw AVI, and then a software to hardware bridge is used (via MovieMill to DVStudio). This takes the AVI file, loops it through the digital camcorder and back out to the Snazzi to real-time encode the AVI using the Snazzi hardware. Haven't played with this feature too much yet but will report back when I do.
:O)
--Eric--

Comments posted by Eric Tend from Other, December 22, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 10 of 10.

I don't think you should compare with ADVC 1394 cos' Snazzi has hardware encoder chip(Kfir2) on board to do real-time Mpeg 1 and 2 capture.

Comments posted by John from Other, November 08, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

The card installed fine, and it comes with very nice software, even the capture application. The card makes compliant VCD, SVCD and DVD files. The card uses the Kfir encoder chip, which produces average video quality. It's the only card that can encode DV video from the camcoder real-time and also encode a AVI file from the hard drive real-time via the encoder chip. The card has onboard audio and video encoding for good audio sync. The only compeditor to this card is the Canopus ADVC-1394.

Comments posted by Steve Kittelsen from Other, November 01, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98 Win2K? WinXP? Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 8 of 10.

This card couldn't capture MPEG(1 or 2) from a DV source ! It only have 3 FireWire port on it and is like a Snazzi 3.
I still look for a card which could capture Mpeg directly from a DV source.

Comments posted by Ali from Other, August 17, 2002:
Compatibility: Win95? Win98? Win2K? WinXP Vista? NT4? MAC? Linux? - Rated: 5 of 10.

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Feature
What kind of main capture features it supports
Analog VideoIn = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input
Video Card = If it is a Video Card/Graphic Card
Tv Tuner = Built-In TV-Tuner
Digital TV = Built-In Digital TV-Tuner
DV/Firewire = DV/Firewire/i.Link input
DV Converter = Analog composite or/and SVHS video input and converts to DV video
MPEG1 hardware = Capture directly MPEG1(VCD) video using hardware*
MPEG2 hardware = Capture directly MPEG2(SVCD and DVD) video using hardware*
MJPEG hardware = Capture directly to MJPEG using hardware*
MPEG4 hardware = Capture directly to MPEG4(DivX,Xvid) video using hardware*
* = Most capture cards can capture to this format using software but it usually requires a very fast computer, if it supports realtime capturing it uses the capture cards hardware and it doesn't require a very fast computer and you may get better quality but less options/settings than software capturing.

Compatibility
What Operating System our users have reported that it works on, Win95=Works ~~Win95~~=Does not work Win95?=Not tested This is user based.

Cnx = Connection
What type of connection the capture device has to the computer, PCI, AGP, USB1/1.1/2, DV or PCMCIA.

Price
The price in US dollar.

Rating
The first rating is based on a weighted rank (the true Bayesian), it requires at least 5 votes to get a weighted rating.
The second rating between the ( ) is a normal average rating.

Comment
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