#PVR questions
Hi Nate,
Thanks for responding to my purchase questions about PVR/Speed Razor. My
understanding is that the PVR board inserts in one PCI slot & the daughtercard
attaches to the PVR card & overhangs or covers up another slot, but doesn't use
the slot. I've been told to put the pair of boards in the end slot so it
overhangs an ISA slot which I'm less likely to need. I haven't heard that
these two boards covers up 3 slots, but I have heard that sometimes you need a
riser extension board to clear the CPU & fan. PCI slots are going to be used
up pretty fast in this system and it seems I can only find motherboards with 4,
so I'm trying to find a motherboard with the Fast SCSI2 controller built in, to
free up a PCI slot. I know you don't need SCSI for the main systems drive but
I'm trying to plan ahead. If I buy the DPS Perception Audio 4 Video board when
it's ready in a few months, the operating systems drive controller will play up
to 8 channels simultaneously rather than the rendered two it is currently
required to do. That may tax the hard drive, controller & bus (23.5K per frame
or 707K per second for 8 channels) and I'm not sure if an IDE controller can
handle the extra load.
Your computer graphics card will take up another PCI slot & yet another if you
purchase a brand (such as the Matrox Millenium) that can do virtual screens
with a second card (screen info spread across two screens for less clutter).
To date I haven't heard much about the Conner 4 Gig AV drive. Do you or anyone
else have one working successfully on the PVR? Does it dip below 5 Meg per
second on the inner tracks? In other words, does it play properly at Betacam
SP quality (5 meg per second) or does it need short stroking during formatting
so it won't hiccup? The only Fast SCSI2 drives that I'm aware of that in
theory may operate continually over 5 meg per second are the IBM Ultrastar 4.3
& 5.3 Gig drives (not 5.1) and I haven't yet heard back from anyone to confirm
that.
DPS & some dealers have strongly recommended that I get multiple video drives
out into another box for better heat dissipation. Apparently they have found
that overheating of the drives is one of the biggest reasons for drive failure.
The box should have the cover left on so the 2 or 3 fans can draw the air over
the drives & cool them. You should not run the 50 pin SCSI cable outside the
box because it's not shielded. Instead, run it to the back of your computer
where you mount it to a DP25 pin SCSI connector. Between the two boxes you use
a shielded SCSI cable. Once inside the drive box, it converts back to 50 pin
SCSI ribbon cable that you attach to all the drives. As an alternative, some
drives can be purchased with their own individual box with power supply & fan.
Speed Razor Mach 3 by in:sync is releasing their NT (non beta version) this
week. I don't know when Adobe Premier will have an NT version but apparently
DPS says Adobe Premier version 4.0a doesn't handle 29.97fps correctly and is
not recommending Premier because it can't handle drop frame time code. The
Windows NT version of Speed Razor is apparently 3 times faster at rendering
than Windows 3.11 and will likely get faster as they refine the program to take
advantage of dual Pentium systems. There is some talk around about a rendering
accelerator but I don't know when this will happen or whether this is hardware
or software and whether it will be provided by DPS or in:sync.
As far as machine control, there is a company in Monterey California called
Addenda Electronics that sells an RS232 to RS422 interface cable for $68. plus
shipping. Apparently this gives machine control now for batch capture & time
code input with the in:sync Speed Razor Mach3 for NT. You can reach Bruce
Robertson at Addena by calling (408) 372-6192 or E-mail at Compuserve
74431,3350 They also have cables for hooking to Control-S & Control-L for
consumer VCRs.
Nate, I hope this helps & I could use any other purchase tips that you & others
have to offer.
Sincerely, Doug Hembruff Impact Televideo Productions London, Ontario, Canadat