#Multimedia Solution
Beta Digital is simply a Sony Beta tape format that records digital instead of
analog. You can even play BetaSP tapes in it. It is definitely the high end
of the video spectrum since it provides, supposedly, equal video quality to D1
at less than half the cost (D1 = $120,000 Beta Digital = @ $50,000).
The Avid and Imix are non-linear devices. I don't know much about the Imix
(other than that it was recommended over the Avid by every video professional
when I mentioned the name Avid <g>), but the Avid Media Suite 100 is basically
a Mac Quadra with a bunch of hardware. I don't know how audio is dealt with, I
imagine it is digitized as well.
The Fast Video Machine is a set of hardware peripherals and software that you
install in a PC that provide an edit and control interface. They will be
coming out with a non-linear system, I imagine it will be another pc card with
a big HD or two.
Actually, if you're REALLY serious about non-linear, and don't deal with
extremely long sequences, then I would suggest an Abekas A60 series DDR. This
is a D1 digital disk recorder that plays back 720x486x24bit uncompressed video
back in real time. It is far and away the best digital disk playback device,
but I don't know how much info it will hold in one shot. Definitely the more
disk space you get with it, the more expensive it will get. I think they
dropped the prices on the A66 to $19,000, but that only gets you around 55
seconds of playback time.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)