[thelist] Video Capture/Hardware/Software

[Kelly Hallman]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Head Dragon wrote:

> Well the real problem is (Mac Lover digital Video Trainer at one time)
> not the computer but the throughput.  A single frame grab of 640*480
> NTSC video is 30 megs and each grab is 2 Frames and there are 60 Frames
> a second.

What?!  That's ~900mb/sec by my calculation:
a four minute capture would be over 200gb!!

I'd like to see any Mac or PC work with that...

> Disc space and speed is the limiting factor even with the video cards
> compression factor added in.

I have a 40gb and an 80gb hard drive and I could easily work with plenty
of DV video comfortably.  And this is on a Duron 1.3 ... I have a friend
that works with lots of video and he's only got a dual 500mhz PC.

> DVD is good but requires a machine that can handle the raw horsepower
> to do the work.  CPU speed is not the only factor.  That video DVD
> iMac works because it uses dedicated hardware for that purpose.  You
> would be shocked at the number of PCs setting in video studios and TV
> studios bought to do video capture to later be scrapped after many
> frustrating months.  Then to be replaced either with dedicated
> digital editing systems or a Macintosh.

I really don't understand where these facts are coming from.  Sure, your
needs could exceed a particular PC's abilities, but you can get the same
bang for your buck with a PC as with a Mac, provided you are willing to
pay for what you need (goes for either platform, gotta pay to play).  For
the average home video enthusiast, it doesn't take more than a 1.5ghz
machine to be golden, even even with fairly ambitious video projects.

I also have recently acquired a DVD burner and expect no problems burning
DVDs on my 1.3 machine.  There is definitely a steep learning curve there,
but I'm also going the "pro" authoring route.  I could burn a DVD today if
I wanted to use the braindead software they included with the drive.
Burning a DVD at 1x is about like burning a CD at 18x, right?  Well, I can
smoothly burn at 24x on my 24x CD burner, so I don't really see why you
think these things either require a Mac or a pro editing solution...

> Even with 1 frame per picture(starts becoming grainy) that is 900 for
> one second of uncompressed video.

I guess you also come up with 900mb/second.  Where do you buy your
multi-terrabyte hard drives?

--
Kelly Hallman
http://wrack.org/