Alan Zisman on the Mac
OmniDazzle for Mac offers a set of desktop enhancements that include visual effects for aiding in presentations or just having a little fun while sitting at your computer. Even though most effects. Hey i was wondering if the dazzle dvc 150 is mac compatible. Or if dazzle dvc 170 will work on a mac. More Less aluminum macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.5), 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo 4gb RAM 250gb HDD NVIDIA geforce 9400m graphics chip LED backlit display.
Mac Os Versions
Dazzle is a handy and useful Mac OS X application specially made to meticulously scan your Mac for unnecessary files that might take up large amounts of disk space. Quickly remove junk files. Mac Pro systems tested with an attached 5K display. Prerelease Final Cut Pro tested using a complex 90-second project with a variety of media up to 8K resolution. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac Pro and iMac Pro. Motion templates available from motionVFX.com.
- 2009.02.02 (updated) -Tip Jar
One of the problems of our digital age is switching formats.
Dealing with file formats is one side of it - I've got documents Icreated in the late 1980s and early 1990s using Ami Pro,the first full-featured Windows word processor, predating Microsoft'sWord for Windows. It offered easy page layout features that stillsurpass anything Microsoft builds into any version of Word. But workingwith those documents today - whether on a Mac or Windows - is a bit ofa chore. (Thank you, DataViz, for file converter utilities likeMaclink Plusand Conversions Plusfor Windows).
Hardware formats also continue to evolve, leaving users in a bit ofa quandary. I've got data on 5-1/2' and 3-1/2' floppy disks, and on 100MB Zip disks. Music on 33, 45, and 78 rpm vinyl records, 8-track andcassette tape, and CD audio discs. Video on various camcorder tapes -analog and digital, VHS cassettes, and DVD. (There are lots of otherformats for these things - these are just the ones I have to dealwith).
Many of us end up with shelves of records, tapes, videotapes, andmore, along with stereo players, VCRs, and all the rest of the hardwareneeded to access the content that took us years and lots of money toaccumulate. But it gets harder and harder to get parts when that8-track player breaks down and pressure's on to downscale. Moreover,there's a lot that you can do with that old content if it's in new,digital formats.
When my daughter Kate (now 27) had her 8th birthday, she and herfriends performed as 'The Black Band', pretending to play instrumentsand singing along with their favourites, The MiniPops - a group ofpreteen British kids singing pop songs who were big in their elementaryschool that year. My wife and I videotaped The Black Band andeventually copied the footage onto a VHS tape that we filled with clipsof our family in that era.
Analog Video to Mac
Not long ago, Kate's best friend Molly, a charter Black Band member,asked if I'd posted the clips on YouTube yet. I hadn't - the delaybeing the need to get the clips from that old VHS tape onto my Mac. Asa result of her prodding, I purchased a Pinnacle Video Capture for Mac(about $99).
There are more sophisticated video capture devices for Mac users -for consumers, Elgato's EyeTV lineup, for instance, promises betterimage quality and features like a built-in TV tuner, useful forwatching TV on your Mac. (And, of course, there are all sorts ofpro-level products at pro-level prices). But the 640 x 480 outputpromised by the Pinnacle device is about as good a quality as I couldexpect from the old videotapes I wanted to digitize, and it's price ismore affordable that the more feature-laden alternatives.
The hardware is simple: a roughly triangular silver-plasticcase with four inputs on one end and a cable with a USB connector onthe other.
Pinnacle's Mac hardware apparently is identical to itsWindows-equivalent, the Dazzle DVC-170; it even has 'Dazzle' stamped ontop of the case. Only the software varies. I haven't tried it on aWindows system to see if it will work, but if you can get the Windowssoftware, that ought to be the case. Nothing on the outside of the boxmentions 'Dazzle', but that's how Pinnacle refers to the device in theReadMe file.
The connectors consist of an S-Video jack and three RCA jacks:red and white for audio, yellow for video. Connection cables are notincluded, but I had a 3-wire RCA cord in the garage, perfect forconnecting the Dazzle to my VCR.
A software CD is included; installation is simple - drag thePinnacle Video Capture utility to the Application folder, and you'redone. The CD also has ReadMe files in various languages that outlineminimum hardware and operating system requirements: Pinnacle suggestsat least a 500 MHz G4 and Mac OS X 10.4.10, iTunes 7, andQuickTime 7.2. The utility needs about 50 MB of drive space, whilesaved video files take about a gigabyte per hour.
The connectors consist of an S-Video jack and three RCA jacks:red and white for audio, yellow for video. Connection cables are notincluded, but I had a 3-wire RCA cord in the garage, perfect forconnecting the Dazzle to my VCR.
A software CD is included; installation is simple - drag thePinnacle Video Capture utility to the Application folder, and you'redone. The CD also has ReadMe files in various languages that outlineminimum hardware and operating system requirements: Pinnacle suggestsat least a 500 MHz G4 and Mac OS X 10.4.10, iTunes 7, andQuickTime 7.2. The utility needs about 50 MB of drive space, whilesaved video files take about a gigabyte per hour.
The ReadMe files also give a quick introduction to using thesoftware with the device - and a quick introduction is all you need.This simplicity is either a blessing or a curse, depending on yourneeds.
First, the software asks you to name your movie.
Bob the hitman mac os. The software will refuse to run unless it finds the hardwareconnected - and if it finds its device, it first asks you to name themovie you want to capture and to set a projected length, choosing fromlengths ranging from 30 to 120 minutes. The length you choose reallydoesn't matter unless, in a latter step, you choose the non-defaultoption to automatically stop recording at the end of that time.
Next it needs to make sure you have a video source connected.
Next, the software waits to make sure the capture device isconnected to a video source - in my case, a VHS video cassette playerconnected using RCA cables. If need be, it will wait patiently whileyou check your connections, waiting until you see that there's actuallya picture before you click Continue.
And then it needs to verify that you have audio input.
The next screen does the same for your audio connections - if youcan hear sound through your Mac's speakers, everything's workingcorrectly. It gives a visual indication of sound levels - if the soundlevel is too soft or too high, go to your Mac's System Preferences'Sound item, go to the Input tab, and adjust the Line In level up ordown. (It would be nice if Pinnacle mentioned this in its software - orincluded a button to take users right there - but they don't).
To the left of the video picture - both in this setup window andwhile actually recording - there's a tiny button with a speaker icon.Clicking that turns off the sound, which can be handy. When I wasdigitizing my tape, the sound came out of both my TV and my computer -with a half-second delay between the two. Turning off the sound on mycomputer did not affect what was being recorded.
Click the big red button to start recording.
Dazzled Mac Os X
Click Continue and you're ready to go - just click the big red StartRecording button, and away you go. There's only a single option -whether to automatically stop recording at the end of the length youset in the first window. Unlike more sophisticated audio and videoapplications, there are no file format preferences to set, there arenot even any choices to be made about where to save the files. In fact,Pinnacle's application has no preferences settings whatsoever, andwhile the menu bar has a minimalist set of standard menu items, none ofthem seems to do much of anything.
While you're recording, you'll see how much time is remaining fromyour original estimated length. (I would have preferred to see how muchtime had been recorded). The Start Recording button morphs to a blueStop Recording button. When you click that, your video file is savedautomatically, using the name you entered in the first window. It savesin MPEG-4 format into your iTunes Music Library's Movies folder, andthe saved movie file automatically shows up in your iTunes library,ready to be sent to your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV the next time yousync.
Simple and straightforward.
There is one oddity, however. Rather than simply digitize the twohours of video clips of my family into one large file, I wanted to saveeach event as a separate file. No problem - rewind the tape to thebeginning, fire up the Pinnacle software, and start to record. Stoprecording and pause the video at the end of the first clip. So far sogood.
But when you stop recording, the Pinnacle software closes its recordwindow. And even though the software's still running, there doesn'tseem to be a way to start recording again. All I can see is to shut itdown, start it up, and start all over again. (The ReadMe file promisesa window with an 'Again' option - I never saw that!)
Inevitably, the resulting video files will suffer from any flawsthat are in the original source material - many of the clips that I wasdigitizing were of pretty low quality: analogue copying from acamcorder to VHS player resulted in some pretty blocky video to beginwith.
Considering that, the digital files look as good, played back onto astandard TV, as the VHS original did. They looked even better on thesmaller screen of my iPod touch.
It would be nice if the device would work with iMovie; I openediMovie '08 but was unable to get it import video from the Pinnacledevice; after the clips are imported into iTunes, they can be used inan iMovie project. Since the Pinnacle Video Capture programautomatically adds the clips to iTunes, it's easy to put them onto aniPod or iPhone - making a video DVD was more of a challenge,however.
iMovie/iDVD ought to work, but frankly, I've never found either -and especially iDVD - as easy to use as Apple claims, though the MagiciDVD option sort of works if you don't need to fine-tune the clips.Maybe I'll be happier with iWork '09..
Toast, iTunes, and iDVD can all be used to record the video clipsonto a DVD.
Perhaps the quickest way to get a useable DVD was simply to createa data DVD disc. I could have used Toast for this, but I simply did itfrom an iTunes playlist, letting me print a nice mosaic-style cover. Iwas pleased to find that this data disc played just fine on my home DVDplayer hooked up to my TV, displaying a bare-bones menu letting mechoose between the multiple clips.
There's been some discussion online about the Pinnacle device losingsync between video and audio, especially in longer recordings. Idigitized a 60 minute video clip and didn't notice this, but yourmileage may vary.
You're not going to get HD or DVD quality out of this device, butthen you're starting with source material that isn't up to thosestandards. If straightforward digitizing of relatively low-qualityoriginals is what you want, this could be an affordable way to getit.
If you need higher quality or more choice in video formats and otheroptions, there are lots of other higher-priced options.
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Alan Zisman is Mac-using teacher and technology writer based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Many of his articles are available on his website,www.zisman.ca. If you find Alan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
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