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"The Hollywood DV-Bridge is one of those devices that comes along every once in a while and just
makes you wonder why all peripherals can't be like it."
Hollywood DV-Bridge by Dazzle
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"The Hollywood DV-Bridge is one of those devices that comes along every once in a while and just
makes you wonder why all peripherals can't be like it."
Hollywood DV-Bridge by Dazzle
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Introduction
The Hollywood DV-Bridge is a device from Dazzle that lets you connect your Mac via a Firewire cable to analog (and digital) video equipment. This is particularly useful if you have an older camcorder that isn't DV capable, or wish to output video to a standard VCR, for example. You get what equates to a stylish "breakout box" with video input and output via RCA or S-video jacks as well as stereo RCA jacks for audio input and output. A plus if you also use a DV camcorder, there's an additional pass-thru Firewire port on the front. Three LEDs indicate the mode you're in, which can be manually overridden, but is normally fully automatic. The three modes are digital to analog, pass-thru and analog to digital.
Installation and Set Up
The Hollywood DV-Bridge is one of those devices that comes along every once in a while and just makes you wonder why all peripherals can't be like it. From taking it out of the box to trying it out took all of as much time as it took to plug it into the wall and connect a few cables. No software to install, no drivers to mess with... Truly the definition of "plug and play."
Yes, that's really it!
Okay, here are a few more details. The unit itself unfortunately is not powered from the Firewire bus and so requires a transformer, right into 110VAC. I'm not a fan of these "wall warts" by a long shot, and because this device is so small, would've been ideal for use with a laptop. Oh well. The only other connection needed to the computer is the Firewire cable, and there's a six foot grey one provided in the box - it's of the six-pin type on both ends. The desktop G4 and TiBook both have the six-pin Firewire port, so it's a straight fit.
Personally, I used Belkin gold-plated Firewire cable, and it happens to match the see-through cabling of the Mac itself. I just like that it's gold-plated and visibly shielded and when you're doing video, you can't cut corners anywhere if you want the best results. Therefore, I also got three, three foot RCA type cables specifically for video and the two stereo channels which are gold plated, heavily shielded and quite ironically (not) they match the same see-through cabling as everything else. ;)
This set up allows me to connect to my older 8mm Sony camcorder, which unfortunately only provides video and "audio" out - the audio not being stereo. To save some work on the Mac with the audio track since it's mono, I got a quality, gold-plated "Y adapter" which essentially splits the mono into two channels, one for left and one for right. Now I don't have to do anything else when importing into say, iMovie or Final Cut Pro. We like time-savers!
Putting It to Work
Once the very simple connections were made, I fired up iMovie and loaded up an old tape in the camcorder. Simply making sure that the little blue slider in iMovie was on the "DV" side, I saw "CAMERA CONNECTED" in the monitor window. With a little back and forth action on the camcorder and quick work of the "import" button in iMovie, I had a few video clips at my disposal to play with. In very little time, I had a short arrangement to dump back out onto tape, this time to a high-quality VCR with S-video and stereo audio. Again, I picked up a heavily shielded, gold-plated cable for the connections into the VCR. Exporting to tape in iMovie, the Hollywood DV-Bridge automatically changed modes as indicated by the LEDs on the front of the unit and I recorded my brief test out onto video tape.
The results were very, very good indeed. The video quality seemed nearly indistinguishable from the original recording. The editing work with a few transitions and a stereo soundtrack made all the difference, as well. Truly painless, self-explanatory and the quality was excellent.
Occasional Glitch
Update: In the few months that I've been using the Hollywood now, I've really only encountered one issue, and that's when interacting with your source (e.g. video camcorder) during the import phase. Every once in a while, like if you're rewinding the tape or cueing it, the Hollywood DV-Bridge might lose track of the proper mode to be in. It's fully automatic, but sometimes it gets a little confused. This is evidenced by the video being locked somewhat between frames or other similar oddness. The fix is extremely simple - just diddle the mode selector on the Hollywood DV-Bridge until it's at the correct setting again. Good as new!
Conclusion
If you have a large collection of video footage in an analog format that you wish to bring into your Mac for video editing, the Hollywood DV-Bridge is hard to beat. The price falls in line with similar devices on the market, but it's size and feature set make it very attractive. Smaller than the Formac unit and sleeker than the Sony, among others, in my opinion. Granted, you don't get the video and FM tuner that you do in the Formac, but I got this unit for video and prefer it's simplicity and straight-to-the-point design. I'd be worried that the additional components might add noise to the design and hence - your video. The LANC capability of the Hollywood DV-Bridge I think casts the final vote in it's favor if you have a SONY or some Canon camcorders that feature LANC support, which enables camera control from within your video application, like iMovie.
It should be noted that this product works with both MacOS 9 as well as with with MacOS X. I tested it with Final Cut Pro v1.25 as well as iMovie. Nice.
All in all, I'm happy with this product, and would definately recommend it to others looking for a solution to analog video on their Mac.
Images
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