johnnymk

A friend of mine shoots weddings full time, edits them and stores the info on a VCR tape. He is ready to take the plunge to go digital all the way: Digital camcorder, digital editing and DVD-R.
Since he is not that familiar with what he requires, I told him I would ask the questions in this forum:

NOTE: Each tape presently runs 1-1/2 to 2 hours
Minimum CPU?
Lots of memory?
Minimum hard drive size? Would a SCSI hard drive have any advantage?
I assume a Firewire card would be required.
DVD-R device for recording to DVDs. Aren't there different formats available? Do all home DVDs read DVDR's?
Best program for editing?

Raider007

Minimum CPU? - I currently use an athlon 700, but since thunderbirds are cheap now adays, if you can get one of those, like a 1.4 gigz then i would. but if you can afford the new AMD's and p4's, i'd go for those.

Lots of memory? get all the memory you can, i use 512, but you can probably get away with 256 if you wanna go the cheap route . But the more memory the better, if ou can get a gig's worth, for for it.

Minimum hard drive size? Would a SCSI hard drive have any advantage?
video takes alot of space, get at least a 20 gig harddrive, you'll only be able to edit like 20-30 minutes at a time though, so that tells you how much space it takes. Also, get at least a 7200 rpm drive to keep up with the video transfer. SCSI is good cause it's faster, so if you can get one, get it.

I assume a Firewire card would be required. only required if your camera has firewire port. If you don't have a DVcamera, then i'd recommend getting on. Canon and Sony make pretty good sub $1000 miniDV camera.

DVD-R device for recording to DVDs. Aren't there different formats available? Do all home DVDs read DVDR's? not all home DVD drives read DVD-r, and yes, there are alot of different standards, i'd recommend waiting a little while longer to see which one is most dominent.

Best program for editing - I use Adobe Premiere 6, but i started out with Ulead Media Studio Pro, that was a good entry level one. My choice for editing software though is Final Cut Pro for the Mac, I'd get a mac just for Final Cut if i had the money for it.

Also, just my recommendations, get a miniDV cam, if you can afford it get a Sony VX2000 or Canon GL1. Those are about $2000ish. But if you can't, still get a miniDV camera from one of those companies. Don't be cheap on it. Also try and get a miniDV camera with 3ccd, the image quality is much better. Also, miniDV tapes rung about 1 hour to 1.5 hours and cost like $7-10 bucks each.

hope this helps and jsut so you know, it's not cheap

edit: also, since i've used both camera's listed and then some, here is some on-hand notes:
GL1, has a nice soft camera lense, not the sharpest, pretty good zooms and effects.
VX2000, this camera can take a beating, sharp image, good quality, nice zooms. has a better image for darker places...

johnnymk

That was very helpful... Thanks!!

billxp

There is a pretty good how to on gotapex here http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?rev=nle/index.html

Its getting dated but hey thats how fast things change in the tech world.

Still a damn good starting point.

Ladogaboy

Thanks billxp... that review article was very good and helpful...

__________________
It is not enough to merely touch the face of god; you also must open your eyes so that you may see your palm.

johnnymk

When was that gotapex article written? Dual Celeron 300's? Must be a couple of years old. I would imagine that a 1.4 TBird would perform
better than dual 300 Celerons.
Anyway, they appear to like SCSI drives, either one dedicated for the OS and another for the actual finished product or partitioned drives which do the different tasks. The video capture card that was mentioned: Has it gotten cheaper?

Ladogaboy

Well, yes, I'm sure 1.4 Tbirds will perform better, remember, they said you need every bit of cpu power you can get. Also, they weren't yet editing in Mpeg 2 format, so that made things a little less intensive.

Yes, it has gotten cheaper... about half the price from what I've found.

Dave_7

Now... I'm no tree-huggin' Mac lover... but you gotta figure one of those new G4's with the DVD-R drive, Mac's Video editing software, a big HD and a rippin' 867MHz G4 processor (wow... without sarcasm) would do the job nicely, eh?



Dave.



Again... NOT a tree-huggin' Mac lover.

Ladogaboy

I dunno though...
1) The price to set up a dedicated pc digital editing center would still be cheaper than the Mac.
2) Hard drive space seems to be the most important feature, and upgrading a mac costs more than a pc
3) I'd still avoid the DVD-Rs for a while
4) If you are planning on interfacing and exchanging hardware with another pc... I'd rather have a pc

Dunno, from what I've just read, that is my opinion on it...


Also, I've been looking for the Pinnacle DV300 with no avail. All I've found is the DV200 and DV500... it looks like the DV500 has most of the same features as the DV300, but I'd still like to see if those features could be had for less money...

Dave_7

An excellent point to bring up... however...

I think upgrading the HD space on a Mac would cost minimally more (if more at all) than upgrading on a PC.

And when faster DVD-R drives appear... upgrading those will be comparable in price to upgrading a PC in the same way.

If it was an iMac, then I'd be with you... but those G4 towers are pretty boss.



Dave.

Ladogaboy

They are, but I wasn't just talking about the price to upgrade.. I was talking about the price in general. The Macs are going to cost more from the outset, and they aren't going to get any cheaper.

As for the DVD-R drives, I was saying that I would avoid those entirely as for now. There are still far too many compatability issues. Especially for someone who is making a business of digital editing. You don't want to make a movie for someone who can't even watch it.

Heihachi

Raid 0 please. 20 gigs??? I was thinking more of like at least 60 gigs. 240 gigs would be nice w/ 2 WD 120gig HD's in a raid 0.

SCSI is too expensive for the performance of raid.

Get AMD Athlong XP.... 1600 chip should be fine.

And of course.. stick to a DDR mainboard...

preferably ak31, 8kha+, or the dragon plus.

sumyundud

check out Matrox RT2500 for your FIRWIRE AND SOFTWARE...It comes w/ good bundle softwares.

Ladogaboy

After looking around, I'd say that the Pinnacle DV500 might be a better buy. It is much cheaper, and although it doesn't Real Time editing (I think), it does have a Firewire port that feeds right into a SCSI drive. Plus it comes with Adobe 6.0.

Raider007

actaully, i've used the Matrox Rt2500 and the Pinnacle, i'd take the RT2500 anyday, that real time stuff sure is really helpful, really worth the extra stuff, and my experience with several Pinnacle products hasn't been good either....tends to crash my systems for some odd reason...

Ladogaboy

I'm just saying it might not be worth the $300 difference for some. But if you have the money, sure. I've always heard nothing but good things about Matrox, so I believe what your saying. I guess I'm just speaking from a beginners point of view. I'm just throwing other options out there.