I’m Dazzled!

Yesterday was my 35th birthday. In the early morning of December 6th, 35 years ago, my mother went into labor and, after a long painful time, she eventually disgorged me from her body. (Okay, that was sort of disgusting, and I hope my mom doesn’t read this blog, and if she did, I’m so sorry; no woman should have to relive childbirth.) At times, I feel a little guilty for putting her through that, especially considering how I turned out, but I’m sure God wouldn’t have given me existence if he had known I was hopeless. ^_^

Anyways, for this momentous occasion, my mom gave me a nice peppermint ice cream cake that, while the cake part is dry as a rock, was delicious. We went to one of my favorite restaurants, Rudy’s BBQ, whose special sauce is sold by the local megamart…and I got a couple of nice presents. (Considering that my parents expect me to be budget-minded, and I can’t fulfill their fondest wishes on their special days, I sort of understand why they wouldn’t give me everything I wanted. Besides, Christmas is three weeks away, so any SUPER-expensive gifts I want will usually be secretly purchased by them during the Advent season. ^_^)

One of those gifts was something called the Dazzle Platinum Creator. This little device connects your computer to either a digital camcorder or VCR and allows you to rip video from those devices so you can put your favorite TV moments or your family videos on the computer in digital glory.

However, my reason for wanting one is attributed to a guy who only goes by the username Cloud8745. When I saw his awesome video game walkthroughs on YouTube(and since YouTube is a video hoster, you should know that they aren’t your usual walkthroughs) with his witty commentary and excellent intro blurbs, I had found my destiny…to create amazing video game walkthroughs. After checking it out, I found it was easy to connect – the device uses an AV cable, and I had a TV which could accompany it(I had to borrow a huge behemoth of a monster TV that was rotting in the barn we use for a garage to use my Wii, which is stubbornly restrictive and demands that hideous three-prong cable to connect it), it should be no problem, right?

Wrong!

When I installed the Studio software, my computer started hiccupping in protest to this new alien software being injected into it. It was acting like the Shanti Virus. Worse, when I tried to run it and capture some video from my TV, it whined that there was no input signal and it refused to show the TV content on the preview screen.

After checking it out, I found the problem. The connection I thought was an output connection was labelled “In.” For you techno-newbies, that means that those sockets only allow for the transfer from something to the TV, not the output of the TV to anything else.

Checking around the videos on YouTube which told you how to connect the device, I found that you need to have the Dazlle connected to a socket which says “Out Monitor” or something like that, but my Dazzle was connected to something labelled “In.” I’m pretty sure that socket was a backup socket for connecting your devices like game consoles to the TV. Either way, it wasn’t working.

So, sadly, my birthday present was a bust, at least until I can find a compatible TV to connect it to, one which would also allow me to connect my game consoles to it. However, I have an idea on a solution. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll just find another way. Either way, I am not giving up. I WILL start recording video game gameplay to my computer even if it’s the last dang thing I do! >_<

And when that happens, I certainly hope you visit my YouTube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/DragonChef4105.