[thelist] Video Capture/Hardware/Software

[Head Dragon:)]

I am not being argumentive either just pointing out the hassles of
her little project.  Better forwarned than wondering why it didn't
come out right.

We are just haveing and off topic discussion.

At 2:31 PM -0800 11/27/02, Kelly Hallman wrote:
>On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Head Dragon wrote:
>>  Remember Dedicated hardware on the new Macs and even on my older one.
>>  When I trained people we used the Radius Video system that had...
>
>Okay, so you are talking about adding custom video hardware.  In your
>original post it seemed to me that you were saying the Mac, out of box,
>has the necessary custom hardware to do what you are talking about.

Even our Macs have dedicated Analog and now Digital hardware on the
mother board.  My ancient 7600 has composite and S Video and audio
with a chip to decode and encode.  We got better results from using
the Radius stuff.

>At that point, I fail to see what difference the base platform has to do
>with it.  There is a large array of professional custom hardware solutions
>that are PC-based as well.

There is and Avid switched from Mac only to PC based equipment a few
years ago as the primary focus once the PCI bus took over

>I believe your credentials are in order, and I'm not suggesting that these
>high-end specs are false.  I am saying that doing decent quality video is
>more than possible with a middle-end PC *or* Mac, with no custom hardware.
>Sure, you can't do realtime rendering of effects or edit the next Star
>Wars sequel, but...
>
>>  Again compression, dedicated hardware compression is how you get away
>>  with it.  Do you burn full frame 30 minute DVDs?
>
>Well, compression is compression.  Some compression is better than others.
>If you have hardware compression you're in much better shape (and probably
>get there a lot more quickly), but it's certainly not required to work
>with digital video.
>
>As for DVDs, what am I missing?  If I have 29 frames/sec DV video at
>720x480 and I build an image of the DVD (which is obviously less than
>4.7gb) what is keeping me from burning that image on a DVD burner?

If you are shooting for computer then your resolution is fine as is
the frame rate but for playback on TV it is not.  I have a Sony DVD
player that is very picky about resolutions and frame rates.  Cheaper
is worse about compatibility.

>  > If I was to use a PC Video card that had input from the old days
>>  compression and only able to get one frame per second.. ..Which by the
>  > way is how most PC cards do it that I have had.
>
>Well dude, this is 2002.. I'm talking about DV and Firewire, which is
>pretty much identical between the PC and the Mac and certainly more than
>enough for most people's needs.  It doesn't solve the problem of
>"capturing" high quality video from a video feed, but I could certainly
>record an input source onto my DV camcorder and capture that.
>
>When you get right down to it, if you've got a good DV cam, the quality is
>roughly on the line with DVD quality.  Then you transcode to MPEG-2 and
>burn your DVD.  I know how custom hardware helps, I just don't see why you
>think it's the only way to do it.

It is not the only way it depends on the required results.  That is
like renting a Digital EFG (Electronic Field Gathering) camera for a
day at 10,000 a day to shoot home movies.  A little silly but a
function that can make or break a business venture then yes it might
be worth the effort.

>I'm not trying to be argumentative (and I appologize if this has strayed a
>bit off topic) but man, I'm doing what you seem to be saying is not
>possible.  And this is like a $500 PC w/ a Firewire card...

Firewire is wickedly fast, faster than most computers can deal with
nonstop.  Your DV camera and the computer software send start and
stop commands as the buffer fills up.  You can't do that with analog.
With analog is is easier to use High-8 and use a computer controlled
High-8 deck to capture into the computer.
--
Sincerely,
Kid Stevens Webmaster Dragon Vision Design

"Warning,
Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons.
They will make you crunchy and eat you with ketchup."
-Unknown Author