Video capture/editing hardware

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:02 pm

BogoSort wrote:Right, my point was that if one really wanted to get every single bit of quality out of the source footage possible, one could presumably still do that. What I was more concerned about is editing flow. If you save half the time in the rendering of previews, you've massively increased the amount of work that you can do while editing. Actually, yes my current video editing method involves picking through the AVS file and exporting lots of little Huffy files of the clips that I see potential in using.

Well as I said, with DV source, you can preview quite a bit in real-time and it's pretty convenient. Assuming most of the things you want to preview are transition points, rubber-bands and other basics, you should be good. Obviously hardware-intensive effects will still require a render, but it still cuts down on a lot of previews IMO.

ZeroSSJ999 · Post by **ZeroSSJ999** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:24 pm

i use the winTV Pro card, seems to work, not well, but it works =\ i hook my dvd player to it and my vcr =\...and my comcast digi cable

(pr0n)

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:29 pm

No no, Lee you can't just use 1 AVS file and pick through it making Huffyuv files.
You'd have to make an AVS file for EVERY huffyuv clip you make, i.e. if you wanted frames 1100-1200 from an AVS file, and you wanted to make a clip of it, you'd need to make a new AVS file with Trim(1100,1200) in it. Otherwise, you can't just replace the clip files with pointers back to the AVS file.
This is if you'd want to replace the DV sources with the original VOB sources. You'd need to make an AVS file to replace every DV file with. That's way too much work.
And as I said, I may not have realtime renders anymore, but my preview renders are much shorter, and I get previews on a real NTSC monitor so I can account for overscan and interlacing.
For something like Iron Chef,realtime rendering is mandatory. The thing is they do all the footage preparation ahead of time, and with a DV system like that, the preparation takes a lot of time, so it's a trade off.

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:34 pm

I think we're misunderstanding each other. I'm just saying that my current editing method just involves me ripping out a bunch of Huffys using an AVS file. Theoretically it should be loseless, but I think there's a colorspace conversion in my current process. Still good enough for my purposes.

If one were to construct such a system, and ripped out little DV clips, it's definately not worth the effort to make little AVS clips. There's no point in constructing a DV setup if you're not using DV for editing. At that point, you're better off just picking up faster processors/more harddrives and whatmot.

You mentioned mpeg2 cards earlier, do you have any suggestions to take a look at?

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:47 pm

I used to when the DC1000/DC2000 were still supported by Pinnacle and they worked in Premiere. Now I don't know. I will take a look at Matrox's website and get back to you.

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:12 pm

First up:

http://www.dc1000.org

is a website I used to visit for info about the DC1000 and DC2000 cards. You can still get a hold of one of those cards, and if you don't mind using Premiere 6.0 you'll get realtime MPEG2. Use Quu's guide on this site to convert ripped MPEG2 streams to streams readable in realtime by Premiere.
You might be able to find one of those cards pretty cheap on eBay or something since I think they're technically no longer supported, but I'd do some research into it first or ask Quu what he thinks.

Neither of the current Matrox RT products support MPEG2 for realtime editing. One allows capture of MPEG2, and both allow outputting in MPEG2, but neither one allows you to edit in MPEG2 natively.
I even checked their Digisuite series of products even though they're probably way out of any of our price ranges and a couple of them support realtime MPEG2 <i>I-Frame</i> editing, which means they capture all keyframes, so if you just took an IBP stream and dumped it on your drive it wouldn't work.
So unless Canopus has a product that'll do it, it looks like you have to go to Pinnacle's older products, since none of their current consumer products will do it.

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Sat Dec 13, 2003 1:32 am

That seems to be about what I gleamed from their respective web sites too. I guess the big push nowadays is DV this and DV that, since DV is the biggest video buzzword out there. Did I forget to mention about how many DV cards there are on the market?

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Sat Dec 13, 2003 3:58 am

Have you guys heard of the MPEG editors from Mediaware Solutions? Quu pointed me to these several months ago. I don't know what his experience is with this, and I haven't been motivated to check it out myself. The pro version of M2-Edit is expensive ($1500).

Here's the link:
http://www.mediaware.com.au/framesets/3m2editprop.html

The editing suite seems to be very limited. Maybe cuts and splices would be adequate for AMV purposes. The transcoder (M2-xcode CL) may be useful, too.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:57 am

I went ahead and ordered the ADVC-100. With luck it'll be here before the Xmas break. The ability to cancel Macrovision was a deciding factor.

If it helps, I ordered from Newegg for $269 & free shipping. B&H was a bit cheaper, but they charge for shipping.

BogoSort · Post by **BogoSort** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 1:52 pm

Sweet, you'll have to tell me how that works out. I think I'm leaning in that direction myself, since I don't think there's a video editing card out there that really meets my requirements, and that my money would be better spent on more HDs and faster processors.