Customer Reviews

AverMedia EZMaker DVD PCI

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Amazon had the best delivered price and I got it fast! This small PCI card is very easy to install including the software. The included software, when transfering,does not show smooth video (and it SAYS that right on the screen - it is not a problem) but the resulting conversion comes out fine. However, this card also works with other software, such as Pinnacle Studio 8, which often comes with DVD burners for free. That is what I use as it is a better software product. This card works just fine and a huge bargain. If you have VHS tapes to convert this is the ticket. Now if you plan to buy a DVD burner, consider one that comes with software such as I mentioned and you get even a better deal.

$43 dollars for a video capture card. What else you can ask for? This product is very good for home made video. I emphasized again, the quality is for home made video, not for industrial usage. I am very happy with this product, so I gave 5 stars. Now is the time to review this product. If you are looking for something can convert your old VHS to DVD or VCD, this is the best product with the lowest price. I read so many reviews about the external and internal PCI video capture card. I decided to try the avermedia EZmake DVD PCI card. Because the price is low and reviews are good. If it didn't work, I almost got nothing to lose. Well, my decision was right! It is a big surprise that this card really works. It converted my wedding VHS to high resolution VCD with no problem. The vcd is better than other MTV vcd. The following are some important information that you guys need to know in order to make your VCD and DVD sucessfully with this card.
1. Make sure you have a at least Pentinum 4 class machine. I don't care it is P4 1.0 ghz or P4 3.2 ghz. Just P4 minimum. Otherwise your system will crash. If you have PIII class, forget about any conversion or video capture project. Upgrade your machine first. I can tell you none of the video capture product can work in the market in the PIII class cpu.
2. You need at least 512MB Ram. Beleive me, although it is not the minimum requirement but it will save you a lot of time and make the conversion more smooth.
3. Get Nero6.0 burn or 5.0 ****DO NOT USE THE BUNDLE SOFTWARE TO BURN YOUR CAPTURE VIDEO IN THE HARD DRIVE****.
4. USE THE BUNDLE NEODVD SOFTWARE TO CAPTURE VIDEO ONLY. Convert your VHS to either VCD or DVD with the bundle software then use the Nero5.0 or 6.0 to burn on disc from the hard drive.
I made a perfect copy in 30 mins by using this method. I have P4 1.6G with 512MB Ram. The card cost me $ 43 with free shipping in Amazon, Video audio cable cost $ 8 total $ 51 to finish my project. Store charge me $ 60 to $ 80 to convert my wedding VHS to VCD. Now I spent only $ 51 and I have the card to do other project in the future. It worth ! I suggest any person have the same situation as me. Go ahead to buy this card.
Good luck !

This card is great! After reading a LOT of info online, I decided to go with the Avermedia DVD EZMaker PCI card. I read a lot of complaints regarding this product, but most of it appeared to be directed more towards the NeoDVD software that came packaged with the card.

Although I'm no stranger to PC's, this is my first time doing video capture. I tried the Dazzle 80 and ATI's TV Wonder card (both over $70) only to be disappointed with horrible audio and video quality, but this card has exceeded my expectations. I wanted a card that would let me capture my favorite shows from my digital video recorder and transfer them to DVD, and so far this product has done a superb job.

The most important thing to remember is to throw away the NeoDVD software right away and go with iuVCR or Arcsoft's Showbiz software. Right now I'm tinkering with Showbiz to get all of the settings perfect, and the results have been amazing. Using an S-video cable and the supplied audio adaptor I've been able to make flawless copies of my favorite shows! The neat thing about Arcsoft Showbiz is that it recognized everything beforehand for me, I only bothered to tinker with the settings in order to get the best possible quality. I'm able to record at the card's max resolution(720x480) in MPEG2 format without a single dropped frame!

This card is a steal at $50(I got mine at OfficeDepot), especially if you've tried any of the competition(don't get me started on Dazzle, or the ATI TV Wonder!). The only thing that's keeping this product from utterly DESTROYING it's competitors is the terrible NeoDVD software.

In closing, BUY THIS CARD, you won't regret it! Don't listen to whiners that only used NeoDVD and gave up too early, or picky videophiles that are looking for $300 performance in a $50 card. The fact of the matter is that this is the best product out there for 90% of the video capture community, and it's quality is only surpassed by products twice as expensive.

I read these reviews after I bought this setup and so I opened the box with some trepidation. Wow, was I surprised.

1. EXCELLENT capture quality from Hi8.
2. From breaking the shrinkwrap to capturing first video - 20 minutes. This stunned me. NOTHING (except maybe USB peripherals) gets up and running this fast.

One caveat - I have a fairly powerful system (P4 1.6 OC'ed to 2.4Ghz and 512mb RAM with 360gb RAID 0 array). This card has no onboard MPEG2 encoder, and so you really need a pretty fast CPU and (especially) HDD subsytem to get good results.

Nevertheless, highly recommended over the more bloated (and way over 50 bucks)capture solutions out there.

I have years of kids video's on VHS-C tapes. I wanted a product that I could convert these to DVD disks and this fit the bill. Installation was very easy. The software was very good and I did not need to read the manual to operate. I saw some negative comments about the software, but I have no complaints. I'm a technical person so I after a little experimentation I was able to control the DVD menu's to my precis liking and set the video quality and sound to the best possible settings. A not so technical person should be able to master this but will require some learning curve.

In the end it all comes down to quality. No sense spending your time doing something a getting poor results. The DVD's produced by this product are simply spectacular. The video and sound quality is superb. My entire collection is converted and we find ourselves watching the DVD movies (laughing and remembering) whereas we never watched them in the VHS-C format. Wonderful product and you can't beat the price.

This inexpensive video capture card installed effortlessly on my Compaq Presario 8000 under Windows XP. Capturing video from my Sony Hi8 camcorder through the s-video port was equally effortless. Although the video looked jerky in the preview window, the final product played smooth as silk. At the highest quality setting, the captured video looked just as good as the original recording. This product produced much better results than the Pinnacle DC10+ card that I was using before, and with much less effort.

This card is a great product for me. I'm using it to convert old low quality VHS videos into DVDs. I don't intend to improve the original quality. I'm converting also from PAL to NTSC in the same single step!!!
Instalation was fast and easy. Actually I didn't have to do anything after installing the hardware. Drivers were recognized automatically by XP.
I agree with other users about the software. You should use it just to capture video. I'm using Roxio Easy Media Creator to edit and burn DVDs with no problem.
The mono audio doesn't deliver high quality but it's not important for my project. Audio is always well synchronized.
I have a Vaio Desktop, P4 2.4mhz and 512Mb memory.
This is more than I expected for $30.

I am running a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz with 512 MB RAM. I defragged my drive with Diskeeper. Still, I had audio sync problems and dropped frames. Also, the captured video even on the best setting was very pixelated compared with the analog source. I'm returning this and looking to invest in a better product with hardware conversion. You get what you pay for!

The package that I bought from Amazon included the AverMedia EZMaker DVD PCI card and a CD with the driver and the capture/editing application, called "neoDVDstandard version 4, 5, 1, 518 L000015" (I've never seen such a long version number).

The PCI card lacks component video inputs, but is otherwise quite satisfactory. I'd rate it at 9/10.

The software package, however, was quite a disappointment. I would rate it at 1.5/10, in part because of the following specific problems:

1. There seems to be a huge difference between the "better" (middle-quality) and "best" (highest-quality) recording modes, both in terms of quality and file size. The "best" mode produces enormous files (more than 3 GBytes per hour of video). The "better" mode produces much smaller files, but at much lower quality. There really should be an intermediate quality level between these two modes.

2. One can set the path to the Output File as many times as one likes, but the program does not remember this setting, i.e., one must specify it again every time the program runs. There should be an option that allows one to permanently set this output path.

3. Regardless of what one specifies for the total capture time, the time shown under "Maximum Capture Time" doesn't change. This is confusing.

4. When one is recording, there is no indication of elapsed time.

5. It would be really handy if the documentation gave some guidelines for the relationship between file Video Quality setting and the size of the output file. For each Video Quality setting, there should be some simple relationship between the number of minutes of video and the typical output file size.

6. When I click on the Tutorial button, it brings up my browser (Netscape Navigator 7.2) and I see a replica of the launcher interface with the text "Click on any module to begin". If I click on the Capture button, I then get a screen with 10 numbers in red circles. It looks as though clicking on these buttons is supposed to provide more information, but nothing happens when I click on them.

7. After editing an MPEG file to trim out just the part that I wanted, I wanted to save the edited file to disk as another MPEG file, but it appears that there is no way to do this.

8. During editing, it should be possible to speed up and slow down the playback. Without the ability to speed up the playback, it takes too long to find the chapter boundaries. Without the ability to slow down the playback (to less than real-time speed), one cannot accurately set the chapter markers.

I was pretty sceptical that this would work; but it actually does. Easy to install and use. I capture the video from my Cannon 8mm with an s-video cable and the sound through the mic jack of the sound card. There's no loss in quality when you burn your tapes onto DVD.