Dazzle OnDVD Software

Discount Price: $2.49

Customer Reviews:

Ditto on review by Stephen Terrell [Posted on 2003-07-19]
His review was dated December of 2002. The exact same situation still exists in July 2003. I got the original bare-bones software with my card reader. I wanted to be able to sort albums easier and according to the info on the box, it was what I wanted. Loaded it and it was the same bare-bones program. In fact, I started looking and found the part number on my old disk matches the part number on the new disk. I do not understand how they can get away with advertising one thing and inserting another. The example screens promised on the box are not the ones on the disk. The instruction manual is the right one for the box but not for the disk they put in the box.

And Stephen is correct again about customer support. Worse than non-existent. They promise the world and deliver nothing.

I will never by any product with this company's name again.

Bare bones, patience needed [Posted on 2003-08-14]
My wife got this for me last Christmas. I was expecting more and got less. I did get it to work and I did create a VCD format CDR but I would recommend a more powerful program. Some of the drawbacks I found
1) Music can only be MP3 (I had to find a program to convert my WMA's and other formats to MP3)
2) Limit of 200 pictures is actually 100 unless you do some crazy workaround, I don't remember how I FINALLY got it up to 200 (which isn't nearly enough for me to do a year's worth of picrues)
3) The preview mode is cheesy. In order to view the pictures and music together you have to play from the beginning every time, you can not preview from 1/2 way though the presentation.
4) No way to sort and store photos
5) Not everyone's DVD supports the VCD format that this program burns to.
My advice: Get a DVD burner and software to burn DVD format, don't mess with the VCD or SVCD.

High hopes [Posted on 2004-06-03]
Initially I thought the editing process was easy to use with the drag and drop timeline and individual picture advancement setting. It also made the addition of audio easy to coordinate with pictures. Preview process always looked great but I could never get the final slideshow to advance on DVD player. It was a waste of time and countless CDs just to try to get a slideshow to work. As far as tech support, the company is non-existent. Get it if you want to be frustrated.

Patience, young Padawan... [Posted on 2004-06-17]
I got this software free from purchasing a Dazzle 10 in 1 reader/writer.

I do agree with one of the reviewers about requiring patience in using this software. It does work once its quirks are discovered.

1. Slideshow does not advance - I had this issue and I think the cause of this is that the first frame gets inadvertently highlighted before burning the CD. In effect, this makes the frame/picture, the only one viewable. Now, I make it a point that no frame is highlighted before burning the VCD by clicking out of the timeline.

2. 200 picture file limit - When pictures are imported into the project, a physical copy of the picture file is brought over into the project directory. My workaround to ensure that 200 files were actually being used was to actually copy the files physically into the project directory.

3. Writing VCD - After a few coasters which seemed like finished products, I slowed down the write speed on my DVD writer from 16X (max speed of my writer) to 8X. This produced good VCDs that actually play to completion. The coasters do not play to completion and on my DVD player that plays most every format, it just does not play at all which was surprising to me. This hinted that something was amiss with how the VCD was burned.

The downsides of this software:

1. Pictures cannot be moved in blocks when in the timeline. Pictures have to be moved one by one.

2. Auto arrange cannot be applied to a certain block of pictures with respect to audio. It's all or nothing.

JUNK [Posted on 2007-09-29]
I installed this software and when launched it didn't even get past the splash screen before "encountering a problem and needing to close". I'm really glad I bought this through Marketplace and only paid a penny for it. I guess you get what you pay for.

Click here for more details and discount information...