#DTV Video Capture Cards
3 messages in this thread
Okay–let me ask this before I get *too* bollixed up…I've heard a couple
video capture card names kicked around on this forum as "usable for desktop
video" and "reasonably priced", and I'm frankly confused.
What I consider "usable for DTV" is a card that will capture video to a hard
drive for nonlinear editing, and output it to your VCR at a frame/field rate
and resolution that approximates how it would look if you'd edited it or dubbed
it normally, rather than running it through your computer.
What I consider "reasonably priced" for such a card is $2,000 US or
under–okay, that's more approximate, but I'm considering price for a video
prosumer, since that's who I predominantly write for.
Which of these cards, if any, fit those qualifications? I've heard about Miro's
DC-1 and Fast's Movie Machine and Targa's 2000 card, off the top of my head.
Cardinal has also mentioned their Snap-Plus to me elsewhere (though I haven't
heard anything good about it here).
The reason I'm asking is because it sounds like desktop nonlinear editing,
while it may not be *cheap* yet, has come down in price sufficiently so that a
person who does, say, wedding videos or pubic access programming could purchase
it–provided they've got a newer Windows or Mac computer and lots of RAM and
hard disk space. However, I'm not clear on the numbers.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Tim Liebe
Contributing Editor, VIDEO Magazine
Tim:
You raise a few interesting issue about DTV. First, the consideration of
quality. Determining how good the output of a desktop system is, to some
degree, subjective. My eyes were trained by years in broadcast and highend
video post houses so a lot of what I see coming out of desktop systems looks
completely unacceptable. On the other hand, a small group of companies have
made great headway to the point where, at compression ratios of 4:1 it's almost
as good as component video.
This leads to another issue, and that is storage. At 4:1, you are going to need
many GB of storage capability, so the price of your system goes up beyond, I
believe, where the prosumer (whatever that is) will spend his money. Many other
issues like internal bus structure, data rates and others determine quality as
well. Suddenly, as you can see, we are talking more and more money. If you just
want to impress your friends with video on your computer, you can do it
cheaply. If you are a professional, as you suggested with someone who does
wedding videos for a living (or any other independent professional video
pursuit) you are going to have to spend some money.
Talk to you soon,
Tim
Tim:
Thanks for clarifying a few things for me–or at least, pointing out a few of
the problems towards clarification.
"Prosumer" (not an especially elegant term, but it beats "serious hobbyist"),
for my purposes at least, is meant to cover video that's not primarily intended
for commercial broadcast but is intended for public consumption–like special
occasion videos, or public/leased/ municipal/educational access channels, or
small-scale industrials/ training videos.
Talk to you soon,
Tim Liebe