New system for home DVDs and such

[ahartman]

I'm building a system that will be mainly used for creating DVDs of home movies as well as general use (games, web, etc).

Here's what I have so far:

P4 2.53
Gigabyte 8IEXP
1 G PC2100 RAM
2 7200 WD 80G (SE - 8M buffer) hard drives

I'm not sure what vid card to get, maybe an ATI 9700?

I'll be running XP Home and recording home movies on a TRV27 or TRV25.

A couple of things I'm not clear on:
- would a 3rd HD be useful (1 reg, 2 in RAID 0)
- DVD-RW/-R or DVD+RW/+R or VCD?
- do I need software to edit the movies or does XP provide that?

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

[Rob100]

Re: New system for home DVDs and such

Originally posted by ahartman
A couple of things I'm not clear on:
- would a 3rd HD be useful (1 reg, 2 in RAID 0)
- DVD-RW/-R or DVD+RW/+R or VCD?
- do I need software to edit the movies or does XP provide that?

Yes, strongly suggest a seperate HD for video work although you may not need RAID for doing "simple" DV work.

I say DVD-R. I have a Pioneer 104 and using Datasafe Gen 3 and DVD Master Gen 4 media I have had great results. I tried some White Label Gen 3 media and compatability was "iffy".

XP does come with some crappy editing software, but you can do much better with Ulead Video Studio, Ulead Media Studio Pro, Adobe Premiere etc - all depends how much you want to spend and what your requirements are.

Rob.

[lecter]

I say DVD-R/W as well...cheapest media, wide availability and right now the standards are still 50/50, also, Pioneer units are really good.

[Brian Ellis]

I agree with Rob. You will need a DV card and this will probably come with a bundled lite editing software which would be better than anything Gates could offer. It will give you an entry into the upgrade path which will provide a cheaper way of reaching the level you require in the short or long term.

I use Ulead Media Pro 6.51a and MovieFactory for burning DVDs on a Pioneer DVD-R/RW DVR-A03 system. It gives great results for the price. I do have a RAID 0 60 + 60 Gb but this may be slight overkill for just DV. I suggest you reserve your second 80 Gb drive for video, at least initially, and see how you get on. You can always add a RAID array later, if necessary.

[ahartman]

Thanks for the replies! I was planning on capturing the video via Firewire, so do I still need a DV card?

I'll pass on the RAID for the time being. I was planning on using the 2nd HD for video only. I figured I wouldn't need the full 80G, but I'll start out that direction.

I'll also start looking at the Ulead software.

Is the system overkill for relatively simple video editing?

Also, any suggestions on the video card? I'm certainly willing to look at the Parhelia, but a lot of people seem to be willing to wait a while for performance to come up a bit. I love my G400 and am not drawn in by the "sexiest vid card" syndrome.

Thanks again.

[Brian Ellis]

If you have a so-called Firewire port or, more correctly, an IEEE-1394 one, then you don't need a DV card (sorry, I should not have used that term, but it's easier than saying an IEEE-1394 card, which may be used for other things besides DV capture

The ULead Video Studio is possibly a good place to start and you can pick up CD-ROMs for next-to-nothing (often bundled with IEEE-1394 cards costing $30 or 50).

I agree that Parhelia is probably big overkill for video editing (you can probably buy a computer for less! ) but you talk about gaming. This is much more graphics-card-sensitive than video editing, so go for the card you would like to buy for that. I'm not an expert in this field, but I hear good things about GeForce cards, but cannot advise you.

[Patrick]

Good program for someone new to video editing

I suggest you check out Pinnacle Studio DV version 8

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage.asp?Product_ID=577&Langue_ID=7

It comes with a versatile video editing program and an authoring program for producing DVDs. It can be bought with or without the 1394 (DV) card included.

[MPR]

I have been very pleased with my Pioneer A03 DVD-R/W drive.

[John Wray]

Re: New system for home DVDs and such

Originally posted by ahartman
I'm building a system that will be mainly used for creating DVDs of home movies as well as general use (games, web, etc).

Here's what I have so far:

P4 2.53
Gigabyte 8IEXP
1 G PC2100 RAM
2 7200 WD 80G (SE - 8M buffer) hard drives

I have the same motherboard with a P4 2.26 and 512M RAM. It's very stable, and I highly recommend it. Plenty of features (Promise RAID, firewire, USB2.0).

I'm not sure what vid card to get, maybe an ATI 9700?

I'm using a Matrox G550, mostly because of the TV-out quality. If you think you might occasionally want to output to tape, you might want to consider keeping you G400.

A couple of things I'm not clear on:
- would a 3rd HD be useful (1 reg, 2 in RAID 0)
- DVD-RW/-R or DVD+RW/+R or VCD?
- do I need software to edit the movies or does XP provide that?

Unless you're thinking of adding analog video capture, you probably don't need RAID. I have an 80G system drive and two 40G drives as a RAID0 capture array, but you shouldn't need that for DV.

I'm using the Panasonic DVD-R/RAM combo drive, and am very pleased with it. I don't really see a need for -RW, since -R is fine for burning DVD videos, and DVD-RAM is much better than -RW for data use. The DVD-Rs I've burned are completely compatible with my JVC set-top player.

I've been using TMPGenc to encode to MPEG2, and then DVD MovieFactory to author DVDs ($50 each). MovieFactory crashes frequently for me and is very, very slow at moving through video when defining chapter points, but if I save my project after every change I can live with it. For editing, I use Ulead Media Studio (the SE version that came free with my RR-S); there are plenty of other choices.

John