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jdr	How do I get started?	Lead	[-]
Posts: 126 (December 16, 2001 8:32 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Tags : None Hi everyone, I've been considering making videos with my current equipment and was hoping that a could get pointed in the right direction by members of this forum. First, the equipment that I have: PIII 850 system w/ 256k SDRAM, ATI AIW Radeon adapter. HP9110 CDRW, 36GB ATA66 hard drive, & a SonyHandyCam TR91. Second, What I've done to date: Imported video from the handyCam to my hard drive. Third where do I go form here? Is my camera to "ancient" for the job of developing quality video? What hardware / software do I need? DVGate, Premiere or both? I'd appreciate any help that would get me started to creating video output. All input is greatly appreciated!! BTW, A haapy holiday to all. Thanks, JDR
DaveC	Re: How do I get started?	#1	[-]
Posts: 4663 (December 16, 2001 10:00 PM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	It kind of depends on what you want to be able to do. I think your camcorder is analog (Hi8 or 8mm) so you must have an analog capture card. DVgate is the interface to a digital (MiniDV or Digital8) camcorder and uses a I-link (firewire, IEEE1394) port which you probably don't have. I guess it doesn't matter because if DVgate didn't come preloaded on your computer from Sony, you can't get it. How does your captured video look? Can you send it back out to your camcorder? Being analog, you will lose quality with every transfer you make. Did your analog capture card come with any software for cutting out segments that you don't want. Can you do any transistions like fades, wipes, and desolves to join the clips you want to keep in your final video. Can you convert your captured video (AVI) files to MPG (MPG1) files so that you can burn a video CD. If you want it to play in a DVD player you will need something like CD Creator 4.0 or later or NERO. I have an old Sony PCV-E518DS, P3 500MHZ, 128MB recently upgraded to 256 MB of PC100 ram and a 17 GB (5400 RPM) HD. It seems to be fast enough to work with DVgate and capture DV without dropping any frames but I think analog capture needs more speed than DV import. But since you have captured video already, yours must be fine. I haven't used Premiere yet so all I have done is import DV, cut out the bad stuff, and send it back out to my D8 camcorder. To do transistions and titles I would have to use Premiere. Personally I think it is too much of a can of worms to upgrade an old computer to edit video. I need to buy one ready to go like the Sony RX580 or RX590 because I can't solve all the problems that will pop up when upgrading to the latest software. If you are brave and know your way around computers then maybe it would be worth a shot. Dave
amf1932	Re: How do I get started?	#2	[-]
Posts: 2295 (December 16, 2001 11:24 PM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Dave, I thought that if you capture an analog signal into your computer it digitizes it. You then do your editing and when you send it back to your camcorder or VCR it's send back in an analog form. Could you straighten me out on this point? Alan
Gil	Re: How do I get started?	#3	[-]
Posts: 1583 (December 17, 2001 1:52 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Dave, If you do go with the RX580 or RX590 try to get with a 7200rpm harddrive some of them ship with the Maxtor 5400rpm. My RX470DS came with a Quatum Fireball Plus 7200rpm harddrive makes a big difference when you capture video. Gil
jdr	Re: How do I get started?	#4	[-]
Posts: 126 (December 17, 2001 7:31 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Dave, Thanks for your input. You touched on some issues that I haven't considered. I have noticed that a few frames have been dropped, which may be the result of my hard drive (5400 rpm). It also makes sense that analog loses quality with each transfer. I tried to tranfer back to tape and thats what happened. Looks like a new PC is on the wish list for '02 Thanks again, JDR
DaveC	Re: How do I get started?	#5	[-]
Posts: 4663 (December 17, 2001 10:43 AM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I think you are exactly right Alan and I didn't mean to indicate otherwise. If I said otherwise I didn't mean to. The advantage to DV is that the camcorder does the digitizing and from that point on the video and audio is all digital so there are no more A to D or D to A conversions except when you play your digital tape back on your TV and if you have a digital TV that conversion takes place inside the TV or maybe not at all. I am not sure how they work. Everytime you go through a conversion you lose quality. So with DV editing there are no conversions. It comes in Digital, it is handled as Digital, and it is exported back to your camcorder as Digital so you end up with an edited version of your video that has not degraded from your original. Dave
DaveC	Re: How do I get started?	#6	[-]
Posts: 4663 (December 17, 2001 11:03 AM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Gil, good point but when you get a Sony I don't know how you can prevent getting a 5400 RPM model because I don't think Sony tells you in their specs what they are using. With 7200 you have a little margin for error but with 5400 and a P3 500 mhz processor you are running on the hairy edge of dropping frames. I was dropping a ton of them to start with until I found out how to fix most of them. Fortunately DVmotion has a box to check for recovering lost frames. If you have a Sony camcorder and you have checked the box, it will stop and back up your camcorder and start capturing again at the point of the lost frame. To start with the camcorder spent more time backing up and capturing lost frames then capturing video. To fix it I had to stop other programs running it the background. To start with I didn't realize that all those icons in the lower right corner of my screen were programs all running in the background. When I stopped my flatbed scanner software and my virus checking software most of my lost frames went away. DVmotion now only has to recover about 1 dropped frame every 15 minutes so that is very satisfactory. Anyway, I end up with 45 minutes of captured video with 0 dropped frames and that is important. I think these new 1.8 and 2 ghz processors may tolerate a 5400 RPM drive better these days but if you can you should always get a 7200 RPM drive. Dave
amf1932	Re: How do I get started?	#7	[-]
Posts: 2295 (December 17, 2001 11:07 AM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Dave, I wanted to know this: If you have an analog camcorder do you get a generation loss when you send the information to the computer for editing? Why the loss if all it's doing is converting the image to a digital format? When you send back the digital image to a VCR or the camcorder are there any losses at this point? Alan
DaveC	Re: How do I get started?	#8	[-]
Posts: 4663 (December 17, 2001 1:08 PM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Yes there is a loss when the analog capture card converts your analog video to digital. First of all I think 4/5ths of the analog information is thown away in the DV codec because all that digtal information would choke the system if it were all saved. So I think the DV codec is a 5:1:1 codec. Meaning that of every 5 parts of video, 1 part is saved for luminance and one for color or something like that. It is all too complicated for me. Then there is another loss when you convert back to analog because you have to restore that 4/5ths that were thrown away from the 1/5 that you saved. When you make a Video CD (MPEG1) I think it takes that 1/5th that you saved as AVI files and throws away 19/20ths of it and keeps 1/20th. So with every conversion there is a loss. That is why it is so foolish to think you can archive DV on CDs because you have thrown away 99/100 of the data by the time you get it to the CD. It is best to archive on DV tape where you can make perfect copies of your original with no additional losses. Dave
jdr	Re: How do I get started?	#9	[-]
Posts: 126 (December 17, 2001 1:16 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Upon checking out the adaptec site, I found a 1394 port adapter for about $70. that would provide the link for a digital camera. My radeon video adapter came with DV software. Now all I need is a digital camcorder... JDR
DaveC	Re: How do I get started?	#10	[-]
Posts: 4663 (December 17, 2001 1:39 PM) Administrator Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Check out the links on this thread. pub36.ezboard.com/funofficialsonyfrm15.showMessage?topicID=90.topic My link to the Pyro card on 12/01/01 might be a good choice also. The thing is that even if you do get a good 1394 card it still may be a huge problem to get it all working. So don't expect to install a 1394 card and be up and running. Hopefully it will work that way but so many people still have problems capturing and exporting video. John Prices web site in the UK is a big help for those that go the Pyro route and he has a message board devoted to helping those folks. www.price98.freeserve.co.uk/ pub9.ezboard.com/bpyro1394 Dave

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