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**Technoid** · 10 September 2000, 05:39

The rig will be powerfull enough.
But you should use the bigger HDD as secondary master because funny things usualy happens when you capture to the HDD where the OS resides.

**kefoo** · 10 September 2000, 05:40

It sounds like you're all set to go as far as hardware power. A few recommendations on how to set it all up... Stick with the AWE64 sound card, or use another ISA card. PCI sound cards can hit the bus pretty hard and interrupt the flow of video data which leads to dropped frames. Don't install anything on your capture disk. Use it solely for capturing. You'd be amazed at how much trouble Windows can cause with a single hit to the disk during a capture. The capture disk should be alone on its IDE cable. On the DVD front... the Creative PC-DVD DXR3 is a nice piece of hardware. It uses a loop back cable to run the output of your video card through it, then the monitor connects to the DXR3 to superimpose the DVD image onto the screen, so it's compatible with any video card. I've heard about people having problems with signal degradation caused by the loop back cable, but I haven't had any problems with it. The output quality of the decoder is excellent. Hope this helps!

Kefoo

**Riddek** · 10 September 2000, 10:46

It sounds like a bad idea to have Win'98 installed on my capture HD. That poses a small problem... I neglected to mention that I also have a Zip drive and a CD-ROM, so my PC is maxed out with IDE devices.(removable HD, CD-ROM, CDRW, Zip)

So, I could either disconnect my Zip drive or upgrade to a motherboard that supports more than four IDE devices in order to install a secondary HD for Win'98. Hmmmmmm...

I heard the Abit BE6 ver.2 is a good, reliable motherboard and supports more than four IDE devices. Has anyone had any pleasant experiences with this mobo? Or should I go with the almighty Asus? They seem to be one of the industry leaders when it comes to motherboards.

You know, if I go this route, I might as well get another case and power supply. That way I can pull my PII 300 CPU off the shelf, move my Millennium G200, 6Gig HD and CD-ROM into the new box, pick up a bit of RAM and voila! I have a 2nd PC.

Are all cases created equal? I know I've had a heck of a time with this case, having to bend some of the metal to get things to fit. Should I go with a 250 or 300 watt power supply? Is there a certain case manufacturer that builds really well designed cases as far as cooling and accessibility go?

Man, I can already feel my credit card starting to heat up.....

**Riddek** · 11 September 2000, 02:58

OK, I've checked out a few hardware review sites and it seems that the "Mother of all BX Boards" is the Microstar BXMaster. Anyone out there have a BXMaster and a G400Marvel? Do these two kids play well together? Actually, I guess at this point all the BX mobos are practically flawless anyway.... nevermind.

**CMB** · 11 September 2000, 02:58

Hi,
I have a Be6 ver 1.0 board..
and had a heck of time ..
on the tihrd one o got all was well...
and admittedly all my pals had no problem..
but once i fiddled around with manual irq settings all is well.

2 ide channels are udma 33 and 2 are 66 they way i have mine set up i have 12gig as a 33 boot drive.. and 16 as my secondary and my dvd on ide 2 channel

for the 66 channels i have a a 20gig udma 66 to both... I use drive f for my windows tempe file cos its very fast access and everything seems cool.. i think i dropped 1 frame in a 50 min capture.....

**jeff b** · 11 September 2000, 03:17

I use a Promise Ultra 66 to add IDE channels on my system. I've been using this, on and off, for about a year with no problems. This gives me a total of 4 masters and 4 slaves on my system. Right now, I have 2 30gig masters and 2 10 gig slaves on the promise card, all dedicated to video. It works just peachy!

Jeff B

**bastioned** · 11 September 2000, 08:15

If you want to really have a good rig to make some video capture, forget about IDE devices and get a real HD, that is SCSI hard drives. I have 2 U2 9 Gb Seagate Cheetaa, 4 Gb for the Op.System and the rest ( 14 Gb) for video files. Believe me it´s the best bet for capturing, I can surf the web, burn a CD while capturing full screen input ( 704x576) keeping a sustained 10MBs . Of course my CDR and CD reader are SCSI too. I know it´s a direct hit to your credit card but it´s the best choice.

Sorry I forgot to mention that I own a dual PIII mobo with integrated U2 SCSI controller and 256 MB RAM.

[This message has been edited by bastioned (edited 11 September 2000).]

**Eric VanHeest** · 11 September 2000, 11:15

SCSI is nifty, but you really have to ask yourself what you want to do with a machine before investing in SCSI (which will involve a new card and expensive drives). If you can build a second machine for less than the cost of the SCSI drives (which I suspect), then you can designate an entire machine for video capture, which can definitely be IDE-only and not drop any frames even at 15 MB/sec or higher capture rates (if you have your DMA settings correct). I have a little Celeron/IDE machine with a WinTV sitting right next to the VCR for capture and for playback to the TV (and to play MP3s out to the stereo, which requires incredibly few system resources can easily be done while capturing).

If you really want to be able to do other things while capturing video, SCSI is probably the way to go, but if you are like me, you don't like to touch the machine while capturing video, so this wouldn't be an issue.

(Now, if you were going to use an IDE RAID setup, that could be used in just about any circumstance, the same as SCSI, but a fasttrack and pair of drives puts the squeeze on the budget fairly well too).

It all comes down to the final product. If you create a setup that does what you want, and are happy with it, then it's perfect!

**Riddek** · 11 September 2000, 13:27

Hi guys.
I haven't had near enough caffine today, so bear with me. If I get a mobo that supports UDMA 33 and 66, should I have my OS drive connected to the 33 channel as a master(with my other IDE devices) and my capture drive by itself as a slave on the 66 channel? Did I get that right?

Eric, you have a Celeron dedicated to video capture? If I build a second machine, do you think my PII 300 is powerful enough to run my Marvel to do video capture? How much RAM would I need? (ps- "nifty"? It looks like we're both children of the '80s )

Jeff B, are you running all your HDs under UDMA66? Is your OS on one of these HDs? The BXMaster mobo I mentioned earlier uses a Promise UDMA66 controller. It sounds like it working fine for you, so I may go for that mobo.

Bastioned, my God man! I want to capture video, not take over the world! It sounds like you've got quite the system. I never even thought of a dual processor setup. Hmmmm..... No, I'd better be realistic. I wouldn't have a clue how to set that up and the Marvel Win2K drivers are still in beta so that would be asking for trouble.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. I'm hoping that with your help I can come up with the perfect solution for yours truly.

**bastioned** · 11 September 2000, 15:07

Sorry Riddek, your right, but I sometimes let my SCSI fever rule my mind ! The other guys are right, you can buy a whole system based upon IDE tech for the prize of a pair of SCSI HD plus the controller, and it will serve you well. I have my system primary based on SCSI just because at first I didnt have to buy everything, you know, I just bought thing by thing, part by part.
Definitely go for the low cost solution, get IDE.

**jeff b** · 11 September 2000, 16:05

Riddek,

I'm running a 10gig for system drive C (master on IDE 0 on mobo); an HP8200 CD writer as slave.
I've also got 2 10 gig drives on IDE 1 on the mobo.

Then I've got 30 gig master, 10 gig slave on channel 1 of promise ultra66; then another 30 gig master with 10 gig slave on the second channel of the promise ultra66.

I had, at one point, a promise fastrack66 RAID setup with 4 10gig drives, but found that I really didn't need to have that kind of speed. Also, it was a bit cumbersome to deal with whenever I wanted to upgrade to a larger drive. The last drive I bought was the second 30.7 Western Digital for a mere $106 (USD) at a computer show a couple of weekends ago. With larger and larger drives getting so cheap, it's insane what you can do with IDE!!!

- Jeff

**Eric VanHeest** · 11 September 2000, 16:42

--------------------------------------
I haven't had near enough caffine today, so bear with me. If I get a mobo that supports UDMA 33 and 66, should I have my OS drive connected to the 33 channel as a master(with my other IDE devices) and my capture drive by itself as a slave on the 66 channel? Did I get that right?
--------------------------------------

If your motherboard supports two U33 IDE channels -and- two U66 IDE channels (there are some boards that do this), then you could take advantage of that and hook all of your devices up to a master on one of the four chains (perhaps put the ZIP drive with the CD reader or writer, depending on the DMA usage of the CD drives).

-----------------------------------------
Eric, you have a Celeron dedicated to video capture? If I build a second machine, do you think my PII 300 is powerful enough to run my Marvel to do video capture? How much RAM would I need? (ps- "nifty"? It looks like we're both children of the '80s )
-----------------------------------------

Heh. Born in '76, not quite the 80s, but I picked up "nifty" from sluggy.com.

The Marvel doesn't need any processor at all (relatively) when capturing to MJPEG format; the Celeron 366 (clocked at 550) reports about 4% usage during actual capture. I have never used the Matrox to do YUY capture, so I can't really comment on that, but I do capture to a WinTV (in the same machine) to YUY with HuffYUV, and it's barely powerful enough to do it (runs at about 80% usage, with spikes into the low 90% range, but never a dropped frame). The 300 MHz processor is probably not beefy enough to do HuffYUV, but it's definitely enough for MJPEG, as long as you make absolutely certain that your drives really are using DMA mode (if not, the processor usage while accessing those drives will kill it). Memory is relatively unimportant, it seems (although I do tend to stuff machines full of RAM). I haven't tried 64 MB in a machine yet, but 128 MB is more than enough for the Matrox or the WinTV, so it may work.

**Riddek** · 12 September 2000, 12:33

Jeff,
So you have all your capture drives running on your UDMA66.... is there a reason you have the 10Gig drives on each channel as slaves, such as caching or buffering or some other purpose unique to video editing? Or are they just there as additional capture drive space? Also, do you think the integrated Promise UDMA66 controller chip on the MS BXMaster mobo is as capable as your Promise UDMA66 card?

Eric,
------------------
"If your motherboard supports two U33 IDE channels -and- two U66 IDE channels (there are some boards that do this), then you could take advantage of that and hook all of your devices up to a master on one of the four chains (perhaps put the ZIP drive with the CD reader or writer, depending on the DMA usage of the CD drives)."
------------------
The Microstar BXMaster I've been eyeing has 2U33 and 2U66 channels. Could you expand upon what you mean by hooking all the devices up to a master on one of the four chains? Should I put my OS drive on a U66 or U33 channel? I guess I should dedicate at least one U66 channel for my capture drive, so everything else would go on the U33 channels? (ps-by "children of the 80s", I meant "growing up in the 80s". It turns out I'm older than you, but you wouldn't know it by the questions I'm asking!)

Sorry guys, these questions must seem pretty basic and you've probably been asked them a few thousand times already. Thanks for all your advice so far.

**Eric VanHeest** · 12 September 2000, 12:56

You should use the U66 channels for things that support U66, which is usually not CD-ROM drives. If you had two hard drives that are UDMA66 compatible, I would recommend putting them on the UDMA66 channels, one on each, as master drives. This is assuming, of course, that you can configure the BIOS to boot from those IDE devices (which I'm 99.9% sure you can). I would then use the U33 channels for CD readers, writers, ZIP drives, and miscellaneous whatever. If there is only one drive on an IDE chain, it will not have to share the channel with the slave device, and will respond appropriately faster.

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