Posted on 01/09/2002 10:10:40 AM PST by Delta-Boudreaux
Most firewire capture happens in real time, if it is a good card.
and the iMac burns at 2x, which is waaaaayyy faster then USB speeds.
Why settle for doing it slow? use firewire.
I have a Sony notebook running ME and it's a dog (even compared to Win98v2 IMHO) but I have to use it until my wireless router will play well with XP.
First of all, what is your reason for transfering them to DVD? You will not improve the picture any by doing this, a scratchy record will sound just as bad if you dub it to tape. If you just want it on a disk, you might want to consider converting the tapes to Video CD or Super Video CD. Most DVD players can play VCDs and SVCDs, and you can make them easier and cheaper than you can make a DVD. The quality is much the same as with a VHS tape too.
Anyway, to make a DVD, I it might not be possible to do it in real time. You might have to first capture the video to an .avi file, then convert those files to .vob files and then use a DVD writer to create a DVD movie. You will need a lot of free disk space to do that (like 4Gigs). Anything that does do it in real time probably won't let you have chapter breaks or menues etc. There is software out there that can help you author a DVD, and will even burn short (15min or so) DVD file systems onto a CD-R (but most DVD players can not play these 'mini-DVDs'). I can point you to some software like that at Sonic but I haven't used it myself, so I'm not endorsing it. Search on 'DVD authoring' to find other such programs. DVD burners and the blank DVD disks are not cheap however.
If instead you wish to make VCD's, you can capture the video to an .avi file (video capture card and software required) then use EZ CD Creator 5, or Nero 5 to burn a VCD or SVCD using a regular CD burner and a regular blank CD. There is also this device where you just stick your VHS tape and a blank CD and it will make a VCD for you in real time.
Let me know what you try and how it works, and good luck!
You're doubt doesn't affect the reality that capturing 6 Mb per second to a hard disk requires a fast hard disk.
Maybe there's an opportunity for a home based business in this: converting family videos (VHS) onto DVDs.
I know, I know...somebody's already doing it!
Call your ISP. Prediction: Their server doesn't run Windows 2000.
First off the NT4 OSs (NT4, 98s) don't have protected memory or file systems. Unprotected MS memory means external processes, like malware or viruses, can address or occupy system memory addresses causing instability, lack of proper OS function and serious performance degredation.
A favorite trick of hackers and virus freaks is to load their code to system bios addresses so it gets loaded on bootup, before the OS or virus scanners. Also, because MS OSs are closed-source kernal-level instructions can be passed by malware and viruses which will almost never be detected by virus scanners. It's up to the folks in Redmond to i.d. corrupt kernal-level malware and create a fix for it. In most cases, they will not. Furthermore, if an anti-virus company wants to create a fix, like Norton did with CodeRed's NT4 virtual root trojan, they have to get permission from MS for the fix since it addresses MS's (propriatary) kernal operations. Norton waited 6 weeks last Spring for MS's permission for their fix and I suspect this was given only because the trojan also infected 2000. Several other CodeRed NT4 payloads remain unaddressed to the detriment of the platform. To remove them I had to wipe the hard drives, reflash sys bios and dump CMOS. That was a major pain in the a##. One which will not be easily forgotten, -or forgiven.
Having a proteced file system protects the integrity of your OS's system files on the hard drive.
XP is nice. It has protected memory and file systems. My ISP runs 2000 so when they got CodeRed so did I. At least I cleaned, patched and then removed my 2000 server, dumped my NT4 and went to XP. I suspect many of their other customers also had their NT4 OSs turn to mush.
Of course on my Mandrake Linux system using JFS:Reiser I don't have to worry about these problems.
Sorry to respond piecemeal. But what you're describing is essentially just file copying. It's not a time sensitive task and it will plod along at system speeds whatever your hardware. There are now about a dozen good inexpensive "DV" type video capture cards on the market right now that allow one to capture digital video from a digital camera to a CD. System performance - including disk speed - isn't really an issue there. But digitizing analog video is a complex task that involves reducing data that starts out at about 20 Mb per second at the source and has to be pushed through the rendering software and compressed to about 6 Mb per second and sent to a hard disk - at the 6 Mb per second speed - for file storage in real time. Anything slower at the hard disk will cause the data to back up at the capture card and the PC Ram, eventually causing drop outs during the rendering process. That's the limitation of the technology for the home market right now. If you want to discuss professional capture, rendering and storage, your talking supercomputers and terrabytes of high speed storage.
Came standard on my G4. Using iMovie, it's just a matter of connecting the camera with the Firewire and importing the movie. Then drag and drop onto the DVD and burn. Really easy.
This system wouldn't be professional, but it would be affordable for home use.
A professional video capture card would do MPEG2 compression on the fly, solving the hard disk problem.
MP3's will have about a meg of file per minute of music. So a CD could fit ten hours, but it would only be usable in special players or on computers.
But you could host the sermons easily on the internet
It would go between the VCR and the capture device to filter out the Macrovision signal. If there are capture devices that already ignore Macrovision, I don't know what they are. I know ATI cards won't let you capture anything if it detects it.
It it is something you taped off of TV, or with a camcorder, then there will be no Macrovision signal.
If you followed my link to Pinnacle... you'd find that they strongly disagree with you. No matter how fast the rendering, if you don't capture to disk before the cache fills up you'll get drop outs. It's that simple. You're right that newer disks and something like RAID would solve the problem.
I think the confusion would be lessened if the manufacturers were more clear about the distinction between rendering and capturing.
But most of the anti-capture signals come off of a DVD, but again that is no problem with the Studio.
Duct tape.
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