The Dazzle line of video recorders was introduced in 1997 by L.A. Vision, Inc., a
Silicon Valley start-up founded by Paul Jain, who had previously founded a string of
graphics card companies including
Paradise Systems,
Video Seven, and
Media Vision. The initial line of Dazzle recorders used an
MPEG-1 encoder/decoder chip by
C-Cube Microsystems to digitize the analog input, interfacing with the computer via a
parallel port cable. L.A. Vision had inked their deal with C-Cube in September 1997; Dazzle Multimedia was acquired in majority by
SCM Microsystems, a German-American technology company, in 1999. The first Dazzle recorder to support
USB was the Digital Video Creator (DVC) 50 and 80 models, first released in March 2001. The DVC 80 was capable of recording both video and audio via RCA and S-video, while the more inexpensive DVC 50 was capable of recording only video. Owing to their
USB 1.1 interface, these Dazzle video recorders captured video at much lower resolutions than contemporary offerings which used
FireWire, although they were still capable of capturing video at a stable 30 fps. Pinnacle was in turn acquired by
Avid Technology in 2005. The Dazzle was then sold under both the Avid and Pinnacle names across various products. In the late 2000s, Avid updated the Dazzle line to support
USB 2.0, allowing it to capture at native
NTSC video resolutions. In 2012,
Corel acquired Pinnacle from Avid. , Corel continues to sell products under the Dazzle family. == Hardware overview ==