CompuServe Thread

Warren: >> the Vidiola Premium or the Video Blaster…Would the average person watching the videos produced by the cards consider the results to be inferior?<< First off, these products, and most of the products in their catagory, are designed for multimedia use. Thus the primary purpose of these cards is to digitize video and "overlay" it onto the computer screen and/or compress video so it may be used in a multimedia application _on_the_computer_screen_. So, the answer to your question is more obvious… the average person is going to be looking at that video on a computer screen, likely be quarter size or smaller (unless there is a further hardward assist regrettably called "video acceleration;" ie, the video doesn't go faster), and playing 10-30fps. Will the average person consider that inferior video quality? inferior to watching TV? Well, sure. But that isn't really the point of these cards. We get a little confused because a minority of products in this catagory do offer analog output, and perhaps this spawned your question. The Video Premium PRO does offer it, but the Video Premium and the Video Blaster do NOT. (Also, miro, FAST, Diamond, Videologic, & ASL do.). With these products you can digitize video, edit in Adobe Premiere or DVP, etc., then output to tape. The picture quality will vary depending on the card, but will be less than VHS quality. Will the average viewer see the difference? That of course depends on the viewer. My off the cuff answer is that it's fine for home movies and low end industrials. We have made a CD-ROM showing the results of our PC Capture Card study from New Media Magazine (Nov94). It shows side by side, interactive comparisons of many still images from the top nine cards. They're zoomable so one can inspect them carefully. Production costs prohibit give aways, but if there is interest we can probably sell them for something like $30 (I'll investigate). Jeff Sauer Desktop Video Group

Warren: >Anyone who is using the Vidiola Premium or the Video Blaster- Please provide some feedback on using the cards for home video production. 5-10 minute videos are fine, but want reasonable quality.< Don't know the Vidiola Premium offhand, but if we're talking Creative Lab's VideoBlaster, and unless it's improved a LOT in the last year or so, it's pretty strictly a lower-end multimedia card (for digitizing video to your computer that isn't going to be output back to tape after being edited). I'm assuming you'd like a card that can digitize video at a high enough resolution that, after you nonlinear edit it, can be re-output back to video at least at VHS quality. 800×600 pixels at 24-bit resolution at 60 fields/second are the numbers I've heard bandied about on this forum as the minimum required, which ain't what any lower-end capture card can do (like the VideoBlaster I mention above, or the VideoSpigot, or even Intel's Smart Video Recorder). Hope this helps, Tim Liebe