Wich video-editing card should I buy?

[MaartenLierop]

Hi

I’m going to make a promotion video of 8 minutes long with a Sony DV camera. I know that i will need a firewire card to get material into my computer. But I don’t know if I need an video editing card. I’m not sure what to expect from these cards, besides some effects I won’t use (like 3d titles). I’m looking for a card around 150 euro. Is the hardware compression worth the money on these cards, or is it useless.
I hope anybody can give me some answers!
Thanks!

My specs
-ASUS CUV 266 motherboard
-pentium III 1 GHz,
-768Mb DDR SDRAM PC2100,
-Matrox parhelia bulk (128 MB)
-Genius live series (soundcard)
-Monitor 1 : Dell P1110 21 inch, Monitor 2 17 inch Siemens Nixdorf. MCM 1702
-Windows 2000 prof Sp3

[Ray Austin]

based on your response it sounds like you are going to make just basic video's with little or no flair.

A basic firewire card would work fine for this. There should be some editing software that will be included with it. Don't expect much from a $40 solution. If you just stick to basic straight cuts and disolves then it should be fairly smooth with a firewire card and your computer system provided that you have a good amount of disc space especially if you plan to do more than 8min clips.

DV is recorded at roughly 3.5MB/s or nearly 13GB hour. Support files such as titles, graphics or whatever you put in your production can add up quickly... so plan accordingly.

I suggest going the $40 dollar route first to get your feet wet then you can decide if you want to swim out in deeper waters. A good source of information is Video Maker Magazine.

Good Luck.

[Dr Mordrid]

The ADS Pyro is perhaps the most popular option for basic DV editing.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

You do not need a "video editing card", just the IEEE-1394 ("Firewire") card for importing the DV from the camera to the computer.

With a 1 GHz CPU, you may find rendering is quite slow (say 4-5 x real time). You don't mention what you have as hard drives: this can be critical. Even for short projects, I recommend at least 60 - 80 Gb on a fast drive dedicated uniquely to your video files. That is where you should spend a 100 bucks.

As for software, a good starting point is VideoStudio which often comes (in a penultimate version) bundled with IEEE-1394 cards. From there, as you feel the need, you can start the upgrade chain to the latest version or even MediaStudio Pro, as they all come from the same stable.

[gt40]

If you are only doing a single project, the 30 day trial versions form Adobe and Ulead
would give you plenty of time to learn the s/w and finish the project.

[Dr Mordrid]

Actually you can get VE versions of Ulead software with some ADS bundles, which would in turn qualify you for a discount on the full versions later.

One I saw recently had both MSP and VideoStudio bundled with an ADS Pyro.

Dr. Mordrid

[MaartenLierop]

thanks for the response!
I forgot to mention my 30Gb hard drive. I am going to buy another 60Gb.

I'm going to use simple cuts without the custom transitions wich don't look very "proffesional" to me. Anyway, i don't like to use this kind of preset effects.

I didn't find a place where i can buy ADS-products here in the Netherlands yet. But i gues i'll have to look better.
otherwise there are a lot of other brands on the market.
Now I hope I won't mess things up on the set! (it's my first movie with real camera work).

Thanks anyway for the help!

[IM_Riktar]

On the software that comes bundled with firewire cards:

If you can get the Mediastudio instead of the Videostudio you will be much better off, even if you are only doing "cuts-only" editing. The interface of MediaStudio is quite logical and intuitive compared to VideoStudio's layout.

Just my personal opinion. YMMV

[Dr Mordrid]

Agreed. MSPro VE is more than suficient for most people.

Terry

[Flying dutchman]

I can also recommend Pinnacle Studio 8.5.21 - it is one blazing fast video editing program. A pleasure to work with.

[MaartenLierop]

Hi!

i bought a Sitecom Firewire desktop kit with Premiere 6 lite. (40 Euro) I don't realy know the difference between video studio en media studio, is the last the lite version or is it a version wich also has dvd features?
I choose to get a premiere card because i can work pretty good with photoshop and indesign, so i hope premiere is as good as these programs.

Thanks for the help!

[Ray Austin]

Yeah premiere lite should work good for you and has a good upgrade path for it as well, especially that you own photoshop it's pretty much a no-brainer.

there are other products out there that you can buy to complement that choice as your needs grow.... either to fill a weakness or upgrade.

I have 2 video editors and I use one more than the other, but having both fills weaknesses the other doesn't have and vice-versa.

Have Fun

[Dr Mordrid]

Premiere is just fine as long as you have over a gig of memory or takes its undo buffer count down to 3 or less

Not to mention it's general instability, sluggishness in scrubs and willingness to drop off the desktop when it throws an error, which in frequent enough to be annoying unless you have a realtime card whos drivers will fix some of the problems Adobe won't (RT.X100 especially).

I've tried editing with Premiere absent my RT.X100 engaged and believe me, it's no picnic.

Dr. Mordrid

[Flying dutchman]

Is the 6.5 version any better/more stable than 6.0? I heard it includes the mainconcept mpg codec now.

[Dr Mordrid]

Premiere 6.5 has the same MainConcept encoder that MSPro has with the Advanced menu turned on, but without AC3 or the MPEG quality slider. Problem is that Premiere's rendering engine is SLOW; as in it takes almost twice as long to encode a timeline to HDD vs. MSPro 6.5 or 7. Why? No program wide SSE or 3DNow! support save for the DS I/O filters for starters.

Premiere 6.5 also has a new titler plugin created by Inscriber. While it's much more powerful than the previous titler it has a weakness: a cryptic user interface that hides many of its capabilities from those used to intuitive interfaces.

Premiere 6.5 is also a bit more stable...but just a bit. Stability and usability are much enhanced by the use of a Matrox realtime card, especially the RT.X100 or RT.X10. This is because Matrox has gone out of their way to address some of these issues in their drivers, to the point of making 60 of Premiere's transitions realtime and enhancing its scrubbing and timeline performance.

By itself though I still find Premiere 6.5 a royal PITA to work with.

Dr. Mordrid