I'm currently evaluating lots of possible hardware + software options to get a working DV/MPEG2 NLE system. Here is what I currently have: - Dual P3-933 with Fastrak 100, 30 GB ATA-100 drives x 2, 512 MB RAM - ATI All-in-wonder Radeon in AGP slot, onboard ATI chip disabled - Getting IBM 60GXP 40 GB ATA-100 for video capture - ADS Pyro Firewire card

Here's what I want to do: - Capture analog from videotapes & be able to convert to high-res archive format (e.g. MPEG-2 IBP) - Grab DV from my camcorder - Do NLE on capture videotapes and grabbed DV clips - Be future-ready when DVD-R is available so I can create DVDs

There are lots of solutions that I need feedback on. From cheapest to most expensive:

1) Stick with current hardware and buy NLE software, either Premiere 6 or MediaStudio Pro 6. Question: Does Premiere 6 allow MPEG-2 I-frame NLE or did Matrox add that to their RT2500 package? If I want to use Premiere 6, am I out of luck if I want to use my ATI AIW to capture MPEG-2 I-frame clips? Also, if I'm using NTFS will I run into any 2 GB file limit?

2) Get the Pinnacle DV500+, $670 at buy.com. This gives me real-time effects and good DV solution, but MPEG-2 editing is out. Could add Ligos MPEG2 plug-in for extra $200.

3) Get Matrox RT2500, $875 at videoguys.com. This lets me handle both DV and at least capture MPEG-2 IBP, but still can't edit IBP stream. Will be able to edit MPEG-2 I-frame according to Matrox, and could use transcoder to get IBP, but quality of MPEG-2 transcoding or hardware capture is suspect.

I'd rather go with #1 if I could find decent software, and I could add the Ligos plug-in for $200 in addition to Premiere 6 upgrade at $139. Your thoughts?

-- Bill Katz (WTKatz@yahoo.com), May 15, 2001

Answers

Thanks

-- simon ahn (simonahn@jps.net), May 15, 2001.

You seem to be dying to capture and edit in MPEG-2. Avoid capturing in any MPEG format if you can. If it's quality you're after the DV AVI codec is good enough. It was designed specifically so that ordinary people like us can have a go at digital video, NLE, etc, without costing two arms and a leg that a professional scene would have. Analogue sources can get transcoded with the DV codec while being captured with the Matrox RT2K which makes the resulting AVI files no different from those that got captured from your DV camcorder through FireWire. Even Matrox in their RT2000 literature do not sound very enthusiastic in endorsing that one should exclusively capture I-frame MPEG-2. The high point of RT2K is real-time, ie, effects and a lot else can be viewed as soon as they're applied without rendering. MPEG-2 is mainly a distribution format and that's where it shines. Just because one can marginally capture and edit with MPEG-2 you don't allow yourself to be dazzled with that. As for filesize, Win2K doesn't have limitations, which is a byproduct of NTFS. Anyway, Premiere6 that comes and was tweaked for RT2K and 2.5K captures in segments of 2GB but makes the bunch appear seamlessly as one whole file in the timeline. After all these you can get the Ligos LSX suite to encode into MPEG-2 with all the control you can muster. Even the free TMPGenc/AVISynth combo is excellent in this regard. Do not get scared with the encoding times involved because they are not as bad as those who haven't been through them make them out to be. Besides you can always take a walk in the park while encoding is going on. This is supposed to be fun, remember?

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 17, 2001.

Thanks for the suggestions. I am looking at MPEG-2 I-frame capture because my current ATI AIW Radeon does it for free, and it's a reasonable way of not having to capture uncompressed video. To get a DV capture from analog, I'll have to buy either the DV500+ or the RT2500. Once I do my editing, I plan on archiving the video in MPEG- 2 IBP format since it offers good compression/quality. So the target format is MPEG-2, and I thought capturing in MPEG-2 I frame might result in less artifacts.

-- Bill Katz (WTKatz@yahoo.com), May 17, 2001.

Okay, if you're not going to do any editing to the core then MPEG-2 I- frame is probably enough for you. If you will make productions of your own and be heavily involved in things NLE then you have to capture DV. I'm curious: does your ATI capture MPEG-2 with a h/w or s/w codec? H/w codec capture cards ARE always expensive ($thousands) and I might have figured which is which out from how much an ATI Radeon costs. But I want to be sure. This is because one of those I currently use (Matrox Marvel G200) uses a h/w MJPEG codec and it was about $250.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 19, 2001.

This is exactly the information I have been looking for. So you are saying that the best video card to get is the Matrox RT200, because of quality and ability to capture both analog as well digital DV via firewire? What if your DV camera has a Signal Conversion Function from Analog to Digital? I intend to purchase a Sony Cam as well. Will the Matrox still do this with better quality? If the Matrox is not needed is it better to just have a good video card, such as the Radeon 32meg, with a good Firewire card? It's so good to have access to such knowledgeable people as I can't get any reliable information from any computer or Audio video store in my area. Thank you,

-- Joe Schwartz (majk-1@home.com), May 19, 2001.

If you are trying to capture analog video (VHS, 8 mm, etc), somewhere along the line you'll have to use a compression scheme. Even with a RAID-0 2 x 30 GB ATA-100 drive setup, I'm not confident that I could capture an uncompressed full color video stream.. so the options are to use DV or MPEG-2 I-frame. Basically, I'm trying to compress as little as possible and if I have to compress more for archiving purposes, I don't want my first stage compression to heap more artifacts on the eventual archived video.

The ATI A-I-W Radeon uses the Ligos GoMotion MPEG1/2 encoder. If you try to do full MPEG-2 IBP encoding, you'd run into trouble with just a P3-600 computer. But given that I have a dual 933 Mhz CPU setup, and I'm interested in I-frame only, that's not a problem. The main problem is finding a NLE software package that will let me edit using MPEG-2 I-frame or, better yet, MPEG-2 IBP. The reason why I want to do the latter is that after I do the compression to archive format, the clip may be too long to fit into available CD-R space, so I'd like the option to cut a little out rather than having to cut in I- frame and go through the whole compression again.

Can people familiar with either RT2500 or DV500+ give me some feedback on their performance? Also, anyone using Premiere 6 for MPEG-2 I frame editing?

-- Bill Katz (WTKatz@yahoo.com), May 19, 2001.

I have a Sony TRV-730 and I play my old Hi-8 tapes through it, capturing it with my Pinnacle DV200. Cost w/full Premiere 6.0 was under $300 (search pricewatch.com). Getting it back to MPEG- 2 ...well I haven't figured that out yet, but I store edited videos back onto Hi8 tapes in Digital 8 (i.e. DV) format. I assume when DV- R drives are on the cheap, they will include some conversion software that will take my DV footage and put it in DVD format. Quality so far is beyond what I expected...

-- dan (danhe2000@hotmail.com), May 31, 2001.

I have seen software mpeg-2 encoding called campegRT. They say realtime encoding on 1.1ghz systems. Has anyone tried it? I've seen it for sale for under $200.

-- Jon Bilson (jon@dotgen.com), July 26, 2001.