Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder and Studio 10 software

I have spent much of the last couple of weeks producing videos, movies and DVDs. It has been an educational, creative and often quite frustrating experience. When I searched online I found that there are many others who have had similar problems. So I thought that it would be useful to put some of my experiences and discoveries online.
(I have a many years of photography, software development and computer database experience. I am just learning about things like DVD burning, video codecs and MPEG versions).
I have some old Mini VHS-C videos that I recorded ten years old ago. I wanted to capture those tapes on my PC and create some DVD and YouTube movies. When I visited my local Future Shop store here in Canada I found what I thought was the perfect solution.
Dazzle DVD Recorder capture
They were selling a USB connection box called a Dazzle DVD Recorder from the Pinnacle division of Avid. The price was cheap, about $65 US, and it included software.
My first problem was deciding which version to buy. They have a regular and a platinum version. As far as I could figure out in the store, the only differences seem to be that the more expensive version had some sort of hardware compression that allowed use on older USB 1.0 computers. I thought that it was strange that the more expensive version seemed to be designed for older computers. I bought the cheaper red version. I later figured out that the more expensive Platinum version also includes the ability to create DivX and MPEG4 output. But those are only apparently needed if you are creating the most modern HD videos or trying to copy data with copy protection. In any case it seems like the same DivX and MPEG4 codecs are available for download at a later date.
Buggy Install
My next problem was the software installation process. I have HP Pavilion computer with 1 GB of RAM with a 1.5 GHz Intel processor. The install took hours if you include the time to download and setup the later 10.7 version from the Pinnacle web site. Instead of just providing just the required and licensed software they install everything and cripple the many features that are not licensed. Everywhere you look in this software there are crippled features that can be licensed for an upgrade fee. Because I am particularly fussy about photography I downloaded the Studio Plus 10 upgrade. That was needed to do even basic colour balance correction.
There are essentially no written installation instructions. Today, two weeks later, I noticed a file on the Bonus DVD-NTSC disk -- they gave me two copies (!) -- named Studio_us.pdf with a complete instruction book. I have not yet had time to read it since I only discovered it today.
There is another version of Studio (Version 11) but there is no clear reason to do an upgrade.
There is a software product included named Instant DVD Recorder. It is for basic copying direct to DVD. There is no editing options and there is not even the ability to capture more than one input into a single DVD. If you have a dozen MPEG files you can only record a DVD with the first one. There is an easy to use menu system but the only chapter option is to simply create a new chapter every few minutes. This is easy to use but feeble. I have not had much success with that and my remarks here are all about the Pinnacle Studio 10.7.
Studio 10 Capture problems
After a few tests I seemed to have the hang of the capture process in Studio 10. But I experienced frequent crashes when it was time to do the actual capture. After several hours finally figured out that since I had been doing database development work that I had the System / Performance Options / Advanced / set to best performance for Background Services instead of Programs. Ouch. I should have set things that way but the capture program should not have crashed without an error message.
During my testing I had to reinstall the Studio software. At one point I did a complete Uninstall and fresh Install.
My first video captures were saved in the provided compact MPG2 format. I checked a few times and was happy with the results and proceeded to capture nine video cassettes. I was in for a surprise though when I finally took a closer look at the results. Some of my captures started to get out of sync five or ten minutes into the video. In some cases the audio playback was more than two minutes behind the video. I finally figured out that things generally stayed in sync when I used the AVI option. These are much bigger than the MPG2 versions. For a 30 minute tape it requires close to 2 gigabyte to store the AVI capture.
So now I was into the Studio 10 editing process. It is slick and easy to create complex tasks. At one point I was trying to save some space. I found an innocuous sounding feature that allows a person to Delete Auxiliary Files. I could find no reference to these in the help files so I proceeded to do the Delete. I thought that they were some sort of temporary rendering file. Afterwards, when I reopened my old Projects, I found that all the video clip displays were replaced with pictures of a big Blue Exclamation Point symbol. Ouch again. I tried phoning customer support -- it was a Thursday morning -- but there wasn't anyone in the office. I eventually recreated all my projects from scratch.
Writing Final Files
Now we get to my biggest roadblock. I have spent much of the last week trying to get past the place in the program where it says 'Writing Final Files...'. This was particularly confusing since when I checked the Processes in the Windows Task Master it showed Studio using about 96% of the CPU and was constantly doing I/O Writes. I tried many options and many experiments. I finally figured out that all those I/O Writes were simply writing many repeating messages to infinitely expanding error log files. The Studio program was not actually doing anything useful. At one point I left it at this Writing Final Files stage running for 18 hours before I gave up and broke out of the program. It took me days to figure out if this was a problem with my system, a problem with my Project's design, complexity or size.
The Solution
I finally figured out that this big roadblock was due to the installed Menu system files. There is an option to upgrade to Premium Pack Menus but, since the installed Standard Menus don't function, why would I pay even more money for the extra Premium Pack? I finally figured out that all these hang ups were due to the funky menu system. As far as I can figure out none of the supplied Menus function. It is likely due to the strange folder setup especially for the buttons. Under C:\Program Files\Pinnacle\Studio 10\ I find folders with names such as Titles and Titles 16x9. Under the folders with 16x9 in the name, you find files with 16x9 in the file names. BUT while there is a Buttons folder that has some files with 16x9 in the names, there is no Buttons 16x9 folder. Judging from the error messages when opening projects the system as installed cannot find the proper Menu components.
So I created some Menus from scratch using the Menu Editor. And surprise of surprises, when using these homemade Menus, everything renders and I can create DVD images and burn disks. I should put some menus on the net somewhere and of course would do so if I get some encouraging comments.
I hope that all this will be useful to some other user. I will continue to use this Dazzle hardware and software ; especially since some of the alternatives are so expensive. There are plenty of other inexpensive options for the actual DVD burning such as Windows Movie Maker and Nero. There are few inexpensive options for the actual clip and menu editing.