I'm perplexed.  A few years ago I bought a Dazzle Digital Video Creator.  The DVC was - and still is - an amazing device, even though at first glance it doesn't seem like it does much.

The purpose of the DVC is to convert video from a VCR or camcorder into digital video.  The DVC itself is a box that plugs into a USB port on the computer.   The box has inputs and outputs for video and stereo audio.  So far, nothing here is remarkable.

Here's the essential bit that makes this box special:  The signal that is sent from the DVC to the computer is compressed MPEG-1 video.

"So what?" you ask.  Well, that's the issue that spawns this story.

It's been a long time since I bought the Dazzle, and I have since upgraded all of my equipment.  My camcorder has a firewire port on it, and two of my computers (including my notebook) have firewire ports.  In the amazing age of Digital Video, all of the pundits would have me believe that getting the video in my system from my digital camcorder should be as easy as plugging a firewire cable into both my camera and the computer.  And it is.

But the resulting files are enormous.

For example, I recently captured about 12 seconds of video of Abby in her Flower Girl dress (video shown is compressed) from Mary Ann's wedding.  The incoming DV stream saved to 4 MB.  4 MB for 12 seconds of video.  That's insane.

For comparison, look at the MPEG-1 compression provided by the Dazzle DVC.  About 64 minutes will fit on a 640 MB CD.  That's about 1 MB per minute, or 1 MB for 60 seconds of video.

In the space that the DV format used for 12 seconds (4 MB), I could have fit 240 seconds of video.  That's 20 times the length.

Granted, the quality is nowhere near as good, but it's possible to fit an entire DV tape on the hard drive in MPEG-1, whereas in native DV, it's very much not possible.

So I've been looking on the net for a solution to the problem.  Basically, what I want is a PC Card solution for my notebook that has a firewire port on it or uses my internal firewire port.  I want it to encode my incoming video stream in real time so that the video doesn't hit my hard drive unless it's already compressed.  The compression format I'm looking for is either MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, preferably both.  It would also be nice if it could encode asf or DivX, too, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

As far as I can tell, nothing like this exists.  Dazzle sells new hardware now that "digitizes" video, but it doesn't seem to do much beyond what my USB device already does (which is, "not work with Windows XP", as far as I can tell) or it simply "bridges" the firewire into the computer.  Actually, we have one of these devices at work, and I can't see what it does at all aside from possibly offering a two-port firewire hub from a single source port.

If you know where I can find such a PC card (not a PCI card, but a PC Card for a notebook), please leave a comment, as I will be very grateful.