Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

hardware advice needed

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • hardware advice needed

    When I saw the Matrox G450 eTV, I liked the idea of using my PC as a VCR replacement (and as an upgrade for my old G200). Lately I've also been playing with MPEG-2 and making (S)VCD and (mini)DVD's. And I'm also looking into buying a miniDV camcorder with an IEEE 1394 card, and would like to put the movies on miniDVD (and probably SVCD while standalone DVD players that can play them are hard to find).

    When looking at the camcorders, I found some that also have an analog input, which could replace an analog capture card.

    The thing is that my PC is not too recent any more (PII 300 running at 450) 256MB RAM, 13 and 37 GB 5400 RPM harddisks on an AOpen AX6B (BX chipset) motherboard. I don't really want to upgrade my CPU as it's fast enough for most things. But the information on the G450 eTV says that a PIII 600 is required for the realtime VCR functionality (probably because it doesn't have a hardware codec). So I'm concerned about the ability to capture at full 720x576 (PAL) resolution. I'm not sure how IEEE 1394 captures work, and whether compression is done in software on the PC or that compressed data is transferred over the wire. And then there is the problem that I have only 1 PCI slot left, so an IEEE 1394 card and an analog capture card (WinTV for example) is not really an option. The ATi Radreon All In Wonder specs look good, but I don't like their driver support (I'm running NT 4.0 right now).

    For the camcorder I want it to be small, and have DV in/out and (XGA or better) photo possibility on a smartmedia card (or something like that). The ones I found were JVC GR-DVX10, JVC GR-DVL9800, Panasonic NV-MX7 or Sony DCR-PC100/110. I would not mind waiting for something better, but these seem to have all features somebody could possibly want. But this would be my first camcorder, so things to look for would be very welcome.

    For the video/capture card, I want it to have at least a seperate TV output, but preferably one that can also drive a monitor (which none seem to be able to do). And because my motherboard does not allow me to set the FSB-AGP divider manually, it should be able to cope with a 100MHz AGP bus as well (possibly at AGP2x or AGP 1x, which my G200 is doing right now).

    So would full size captures via IEEE 1394 directly from the analog input of a camcorder be possible on my PC? And how would the video quality be compared to an analog capture card be? An analog capture possiblity is not really a requirement for me, but I think I need a better video card with a separate TV output anyway. And I was thinking of a Matrox G450 DH, so the eTV seemed like a relatively inexpensive way to add video capture without using an extra PCI slot (although at the cost of the possiblity to add a second monitor). I want the card to have a 360MHz RAMDAC though (so no G400 Marvel), as I have a big monitor on my wish list as well.

    So can somebody give me some advice?

    Thanx,

    Eddy.

  • #2
    Hi Eddy,

    Don't confuse the G450eTV with DV (firewire) cards, they aren't the same. The G450eTV captures in software MPEG from an analogue source, and requires HOT hardware for capture (I just found out that my new Tbird 800 probably isn't up to full frame capture).

    For capturing DV, you WILL need an IEE1394 (firewire) card in either a vanilla variety or one of the jazzier versions. These can be installed with any display adaptor, although one that supports overlay is probably a good idea. To give you an idea, I've been writing articles for publication on a variety of DV enabled editing packages using a P2 266 with a minimum of support hardware. Obviously a CDRom to load up the software, and the luxury of an 8Gb drive dedicated to capture in addition to a 3Gb system drive, and a G200 (Marvel) as the display adaptor and also to give me analogue capture when necessary. For the AV capture I use an ADS Pyro capture card and a Canon MV200 mini-DV camcorder.

    To be honest, the system works like a honey. OK, I can't preview my TV out whilst capturing (DualHead would be a boon here), but I can manage quite well. DV capture isn't particularly intensive on either HD capture speed (3Mb/s, which is about the same as hardware compressed MJPEG) or space.

    So far I've used this rig for writing articles on VideoStudio4 and VideoWaveIII, and havne't had any hardware problems at all.

    So you don't NEED to make expensive HW upgrades, you can get along quite well without. On the other hand, I wish that I had a second G400 so that I could install it in this machine instead of using the G200 (any offers ?)

    Comment


    • #3
      Thanx for your reply.

      I'm not confusing the G450 eTV with Firewire. For editing DV movies I need the IEEE-1394 card, which will take up my last PCI slot. And for video editing (and watching PC based movies) I would like a dual head video card. So if I want analog frame capture, I'd better get a video card that has it integrated.

      A video / capture card with tuner has more possibilities that an analog in on a DV camcorder. And one of the camcorders I'm considering (Canon MV3i) doesn't have analog in, so PC capture and sending to DV via IEEE-1394 could be a workaround for that (I probably won't use it very often). But if I need to upgrade my PC a lot for that, I'd rather buy a camcoder with analog in. The 3 MB/s (I've also read 3.1 and 3.6 MB/s) should not pose any problems, even for my older disk.

      If somebody has advice on choosing a camcorder, I could use some help. Right now the ones on my list are Canon MV3i (very small), JVC GR-DVL9800 (lots of features), Panasonic NV-MX7 (bit expensive), Panasonic NV-MX300 (probably the best, but expensive and bigger). The most important thing is that the image and sound quality is good enough (for me). After that I would like the camcorder to be small so I will take it with me more often (don't want to carry too much). I'm not sure about the photo mode anymore. My Olympus ยต2 will take better pictures anyway and is small (the Canon + Olympus together probably weigh less than the others). And capturing frames from video is always possible (so progressive scan would be nice). But I haven't really seen the quality of any of the camcorders yet.

      Comment

      Working...
      X