I am about to purchase a new computer & a mini DV Camera. The camera is capable of converting my analog home Video to a digital signal so I can edit both the new DV movies as well as my old home videos. The computer will be a P3 866 with 128 Sound Blaster, CDR, I-Link (Firewire card) etc. Camera: Sony DCR-TRV6. I intend to edit my home movies as well as burn them on CD to play on my Pioneer DV-333. My questions are: 1. What is recomended for a Video Card? I am thinking of the ATI Radeon 32mg. Is this good enough or more than what I need? 2. Will the Sony camera convert my old analog movies ok with good quality? 3. What is recomended for video editing software? Something that is reasonably priced. 4. I understand that Nero 5.5 is best for converting to mpg 2 SVCD, but do I need some other software to do some indexing at the beginning of my burned SVCD's? I would really appreciate any help anyone could give me, because I want to make sure I do this right. I am blowing the budget on this new equipment. Thank you.

-- Joe Schwartz (majk-1@home.com), May 07, 2001

Answers

Don't get the ATI. If you read posts in this forum the apps that come with the ATI like to confuse you and your PC's audio settings. If you've got enough dough get the Matrox RT2000. The package includes a capture card that features FireWire AND analogue capture, and a full- fledged G450 3-D Flex AGP graphics adapter, together with Premiere6 and a host of other trappings.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 08, 2001.

If the Sony MIni DV camera has analogue capture, why would I need a video card like the Matrox RT2000 that has this feature? The otjher features sound interesting, though?

-- Joe Schwartz (majk-1@home.com), May 08, 2001.

I started video editing the hard way - knew nothing about PC 2 yrs ago. I ought to summarise my experience in an honest way.

> Know yr PC and know the speed of all yr components & devices on yr PC.

> If you are making VCD fr DV, you will come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time because many of the Video editing & encording cards do not give you really acceptable resolution. The good ones are expensive (they were even more expensive 3-5 yrs ago).

> I started out wt humble Dazzle, then ended up wt Pinnacle DV500. But this is expensive stuff as you begin to entertain larger & faster Hard Disk Drives. > My view is that the video editing part is not so critical. There are general good Firewire cards & video editing softwares. The key is encoding. The cheapest & best solution is Tsunami software - this is the best software based encoding (even better than some expensive hardware based encoders). > Make sure yr Videocam can do DV out and IN. Nobody told me this!! It is still cheaper & sometimes convenient to save yr edited "movies" by downloading it back to the DV camera if you begin to run out of hard disk drive space. > Consider RAID for the hard disk drive - it is cheaper and just as good as SCSI. Here you can use the 5K rpm types hard disks which are going cheap because most people are buying the 7K rpms ones. > Be ready to learn and spend more !!

This are my few rudiments of knowledge.

-- Steve MF Lai (stevelai@magix.com.sg), May 08, 2001.

I really appreciate the answers I have received so far. The Sony DCR- TRV6 video cam does have i.LINK in/out as well as Analog to Digital Signal conversion function. The hard drive on the computer will be 20GB (7200 rpm). So am I to understand that the video card does not matter as long as I have the proper software to give me as good a quality as possible to burn onto a VCD?

-- Joe Schwartz (majk-1@home.com), May 08, 2001.

Partially. You still need a good video card. ATI Radeon could be a good choice. The problem with ATI are the video capture cards (I have an ATI All in Wonder Radeon), but ATI fixed the drivers, at least for me.

On the FireWire side, I think the best deal around is the ADS Pyro PlatinumDV, it comes with Premiere 6 and a bunch of useful software.

Finally, get the biggest HD you can afford. You will find that 20Gb are going to be used reapidly.

Regards

-- Luis Gomez (lgomez@softrends.com.mx), May 09, 2001.

I just finished an 866MHz-P3 with 1/2 GB RAM and 80GB HD. ATI Radeon AIW card. Creative 5.1 Live Platinum. I quickly realized that some sound modules of Creative and ATI fight for the same memory. Once video is captured to MPEG1 standard, I run the file through TMPEGenc and burn with Roxio 5. Audio might be overdriven. Has static during peaks. But video is OK once you adjust the ATI software settings. You must not be impatient. Allow hours of testing, tweaking.

-- Ted Rosenberg (ted.rosenberg@radioshack.com), May 10, 2001.

I have the same camcorder. When I bought it, it had a bundle card and fire wire cable. The card is Canopus EZDV. FYI. So far no issue with the card or capturing process.

-- sbar (sbar2000@hotmail.com), May 12, 2001.