Videotape has pretty much bitten the dust now – it's no longer easy to buy video recorders in the high street, and VHS films languish in the bargain-bins in branches of Blockbuster Video (which, itself, is all about DVDs nowadays).

Even so, there are still plenty of people who own non-digital camcorders, or who have collections of VHS tapes that might benefit from transfer to DVD.

Pinnacle’s Dazzle Video Creator Platinum is designed with that task in mind. The package consists of a small silver video capture box and two pieces of software.

The capture box plugs into a USB port on the PC, and has composite and s-video connectors built into it, which allow connection of an analogue camcorder or VCR. The box then converts the video signal into a digital form that can be stored on the PC’s hard disk.

If you’re feeling lazy you can use Pinnacle’s Instant DVD Recorder software to quickly copy old videos straight from the tape to a blank disc (assuming, of course, that a suitable DVD writer is connected to the computer). Alternatively, the Pinnacle Studio Quickstart software can be used for some more extensive editing work on video projects.

Studio Quickstart is a good video editor for beginners – it's nice and easy to use, with a reasonable range of transitions and other effects. However, it’s annoying to see that a number of useful effects have been disabled in this version – when you try to use them a message pops up saying that it's necessary to pay extra to activate them.

In addition to its basic editing features, Studio Quickstart also includes options for designing DVD menus and for converting video projects into the new formats used by handheld devices such as the iPod and Playstation Portable.

The missing special effects are annoying, but the Dazzle package is still quite good value for money. And if you’re not interested in features such as the extra format support you can opt for the basic Video Creator model, which costs £10 less.

Vista compatible: Yes