Need help with vid cards and such
 

I'm building a new video editing suite, and need some help choosing the right card. I was thinking either an nVidia 6800 or ATI x800 was good enough for video capture, but what is this I hear about the Matrox Parhelia? Is this an add-on card or a video card? Also, do you recommend the Canopus DVRex with the Parhelia? Can someone explain what all these products do? Thanks

What are you capturing?

DV- You need a firewire card.

Analog (composite/S-video) - Get a deck (or camcorder). OR, get a DV<-->analog convertor box. With some of the hardware acceleration cards for Premiere they have this built-in, so a converter is not necessary.

Analog (betaSP uncompressed) - There are special cards for capturing this. You also need a RAID to capture.

2- The Matrox Parhelia allows three monitors for greater screen real estate. It supports only certain combinations of DVI, VGA, and S-video out. *S-video out isn't too useful. If you plan to hook up a NTSC monitor to your video card, you will probably want a switcher to hook it up to your deck.

3- Are you gaming? Are you going to use AE or another compositng program? These may be reasons to get a card with good openGL acceleration. Look at the workstation cards for this use (i.e. Quadro, Wildcat lines), not gaming cards.

4- Which NLE are you going to use?

I'm planning on using Premiere Pro. I'll be capturing DV from a VTR. Does the vid card need a special connect to the VTR, or does the parhelia take care of this?

For DV, you need a firewire card. They're under $25 online.

With Windows XP it shouldn't matter too much what you get as they should all work fine (may not be the case with win2k and before; get a Texas Instruments chipset card in that case).

For shopping, check:
pricewatch.com
resellerratings.com
pricegrabber.com
newegg.com (good prices and service)

The firewire card is just for capturing video. It is not a video card, which you will also need.

There are also hardware acceleration cards that give you more real-time in Premiere Pro. I don't know much about these but you should research your choice before buying. Try the Premiere Pro forum here if you are interested. Some of the bundles of the hardware acceleration card + Premiere Pro are very attractive.

Video cards: There are two main differences.
A- How many monitors the cards support and which combinations of monitors do they support. Do some research to see if the card supports the right combination of outputs (DVI, VGA, S-video). More monitors means more screen real estate
B- Some/most compositing programs can take advantage of openGL acceleration. For good openGL performance you would want to look at workstation cards (i.e. Quadro, Wildcat lines).

if you are building a new system...why not get firewire built onto the mobo?

I have had great success with the ASUS A7N8X. I have two older models running for over a year now with Barton 2800+

I just built one for my school editing suite with the newer a7n8x-e (that adds gigabit ethernet, the older revision is harder to find)
as a matter of fact, for $800 i got

amd athlon 3200+
asus A7N8X-E deluxe
512 3200DDR
2x WestDig 200GB se ata133
powercolor ATI 9600 pro 256MB
cheapy case w/300w PS

I am all for asus mobos (and AMD chips), been using them since 1997 for almost every system for myself and for others i have built (close to 30-40 systems for others). I think i have only had one asus board die, and i have never had a AMD chip go under (then again i dont delve much into OC'ing)

Matrox Parhelia (or however it is spelled)
 

I have the Matrox Parhelia on the editing station and can't say much about it, it just does its job - which really is a good thing. Nice stuff:
1. two analog monitors + TV-out
Independent (different settings for each monitor) or stretched display (2560x1024 desktop)
2. Overlay video from mediaplayer / DVD player on TV-out
3. DVD hardware playback acceleration
4. Custom settings for desktop behaviour for each application
5. Good calibaration tools and easy setup
6. No driver problems, well, no problems at all..

Parhelia is probably overkill for plain DV editing, seems most people are doing fine with a 9600fx card

/magnus