Why do I need a Capture card ?
 

Folks,

I am very new to the DV world.... so far I have filmed a wedding ( for Free), edited the footage and produce a DVD with pretty good results...

I would like to improve on items such as Slow motion quality ( this seemed very jerking on final DVD but ok in previews), better previews etc... Seems like the previews and the final prodect are a little different with my current setup...


Will a capture card such as a Matrox or Canapus make the quailty any better ? Speed up anything ?

Are the really worth the $1000 ?

I currently have the follwoing setup
P4, 3Ghz, 1 gig of Ram, 9700 pro video card
Sony PD150 & VX 2000
Adobe premier 6.5 & DVD encore

Do I have sufficient RAM, will adding more help ?

Nope, adding a capture card will not help. DV capture is mostly the same. The video and audio content is exactly the same. The packaging of it can be a bit different with type1 versus type 2 AVIs and such which you really don't need to worry about unless stuff doesn't work.

Some plug-ins will improve slow motion quality. An example is revisionfx's Twixtor plug-in (http://www.revisionfx.com/rstwixtor.htm). Search this forums for threads on Twixtor, it may have comparisons to other plug-ins.

The Canopus and Matrox cards will speed up the editing process, because they do many things in real time, no renering. A good example would be speed control. Without hardware acceleration, any speed changes have to be rendered. It also has no file size limitations during capture. With my Canopus DV Storm, I can do this in real time, no rendering. If you have no deadlines, then anycapture card will do. I have some strict deadlines, so I need the real time advantage that the Storm gives me.

Jeff,

Is Adobe 6.5's real time previews much different then the Canopus real time. I know that Adobe's quality is scaled down quite a bit but does the canapus give you a true final output look ?

Does it have color correction functions automated somehow ?

Besides deadlies, is there any other quaility that this card gives you versus a software based solution..

Thanks

The difference is that Adobe's "real time" is preview and requires rendering, whereas Canopus Storm is real time straight to Dv, no rendering. Color correction and and many other functions are immediate-real realtime. The advantage, besides deadlines, is that if you make a change and don't like it you don't have to waste tme re-rendering. You just make another change until you get what you like, no rendering penalty for changing your mind. It's really nice for doing things like speed changes and color correction. I could never go back to software only editing!