What software? What capture Card?

[David Kennett]

Jeremy

Firewire is direct digital copy of data on tape. ANYTIME you convert to another format besides DV there is loss. Unless you have a special reason for converting - stay in DV format.

ADS (adstech.com) has a nice package with card and software. You can get Ulead Media Studio Pro or Premiere (I think). I am a MSP fan, and many people say it is one of the easiest to learn. It is comparable to any high end program in its capabilities.

Keep reading, there is much to learn about different formats - and DVD burning.

[Jeremy Bond]

okay - what are these "Codecs". I understand they are peices of software needed for coding and decoding DV into a langauge that the computer understands.? Do I need to wory about these - are they autmocially included in the NLE software - or in the computer? Or do you have to purchase/download codecs? Thanks

[Ed Smith]

Just thought I'll add my 2pence

This is mainly if you are looking into Premiere:

1) Buying Premiere on its own is fine (as long as you have a firewire card). However you can purchase the hardware with the software for little more than buying the software on its own. So in a way it makes more sense to buy it with the card. You get the hardware practically free!

2) Buying a hardware accelerator (RTX 100 for instance) offer far more options:
- More real-time effects
- Real time Analogue/DV In/out
- Real time encoding to Mpeg 2
- BITC
- WYSIWYG plug-ins for other apps such as After effects etc

Admittedly hardware accelerators can be more trouble than they are worth. But in many ways it makes sense to buy Premiere with a hardware accelerator just for the price - Even if you decide not to use it.

Cheers,

[Ed Smith]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeremy Bond : okay - what are these "Codecs". I understand they are peices of software needed for coding and decoding DV into a langauge that the computer understands.? Do I need to wory about these - are they autmocially included in the NLE software - or in the computer? Or do you have to purchase/download codecs? Thanks -->>>

Jeremy,

You should not really need to worry about codecs. They will be automatically installed with your NLE. You will already have a few of them on your computer. If you goto device manager, click on sound, video and games controllors, then double click on video codecs and select properties, you will see all the codecs you have installed on your machine.

They basically enable your computer to see different types of videos. Allowing you to view/ play and edit video.

For instance if you try and play a Quicktime file on your computer and you have not got the QT codec installed, you will be unable to play the file until the codec is installed.

You can go into far more detail. I hope I have explained that OK?

Cheers,

[Jeremy Bond]

Thanks Ed, got it!

[David Kennett]

CODEC = CODer/DECoder. There are MANY available - here are the main ones.

DV CODEC - Compresses video about 5/1, and does not compress digital audio at all. Does not degrade even the best standard video very much - and edits easily.

MPEG (MPG) CODEC - MPG is capable of much greater compression than DV, since not every frame is sent in its entirety. In most cases a full frame is followed by 14 more frames built upon that one full frame, thus quality can be maintained with much greater compression. You can imagine the difficulty in editing since every frame is not immediately available. MPG can use various resolutions and frame rates, and a wide array of compression ratios is available - it's a balance between quality and compression. MPG1 is used mostly for internet distribution, while MPG2 is used for DVDs and high definition television transmission. All MPG encoders are NOT created equal. Some MPG encoders from LIGOS were included with my editor (ulead Media Studio Pro). They are not very good - and not very flexible. After considerable research, I started using TMPGEnc (Google it) to encode video for DVDs. It is inexpensive, and is unsurpassed in quality - even by much more expensive encoders. It is flexible and has many options. Learn to use it, and you'll make the best DVDs - and get more on each DVD.

Windows Media 9 - About 10 times as effecient as MPG, and it rules the roost for now. The decoder comes with XP, and the encoder can be downloaded from Microsoft for free. It runs the gamut from low-res streaming video to high definition. I use it for HD video from the JVC HD10. I recently encoded one hour and 20 minutes of 720P (720 by 1280) video into a 1.6 GByte file - and it looks better than any DVD you've ever seen. That's three times the number of pixels as standard video. For now, it can only be played on a fast (2.8 GHz) PC, but it means HD can go onto today's DVDs.

Well, it's a start. READ, READ, READ! And DV Info Net is a good place to start. Good Luck!

[Jeremy Bond]

Guys - do all these software programmes discussed support 25p (PAL) and will the firewire card also?

[David Hurdon]

Every serious NLE includes PAL as a project setting, and firewire couldn't care less what digital data it moves. In fact, one of the little explored settings in Premiere and I suspect elsewhere, is the choice of working with DV-PAL, DV-NTSC, Multimedia, QT, etc. If you take a close look at the options there are many that most of us ignore but perhaps should get to know better.

David Hurdon