Tweet
hardware advice needed
When I saw the Matrox G450 eTV, I liked the idea of using my PC as a VCR replacement (and as an upgrade for my old G200). Lately I've also been playing with MPEG-2 and making (S)VCD and (mini)DVD's. And I'm also looking into buying a miniDV camcorder with an IEEE 1394 card, and would like to put the movies on miniDVD (and probably SVCD while standalone DVD players that can play them are hard to find).
When looking at the camcorders, I found some that also have an analog input, which could replace an analog capture card.
The thing is that my PC is not too recent any more (PII 300 running at 450) 256MB RAM, 13 and 37 GB 5400 RPM harddisks on an AOpen AX6B (BX chipset) motherboard. I don't really want to upgrade my CPU as it's fast enough for most things. But the information on the G450 eTV says that a PIII 600 is required for the realtime VCR functionality (probably because it doesn't have a hardware codec). So I'm concerned about the ability to capture at full 720x576 (PAL) resolution. I'm not sure how IEEE 1394 captures work, and whether compression is done in software on the PC or that compressed data is transferred over the wire. And then there is the problem that I have only 1 PCI slot left, so an IEEE 1394 card and an analog capture card (WinTV for example) is not really an option. The ATi Radreon All In Wonder specs look good, but I don't like their driver support (I'm running NT 4.0 right now).
For the camcorder I want it to be small, and have DV in/out and (XGA or better) photo possibility on a smartmedia card (or something like that). The ones I found were JVC GR-DVX10, JVC GR-DVL9800, Panasonic NV-MX7 or Sony DCR-PC100/110. I would not mind waiting for something better, but these seem to have all features somebody could possibly want. But this would be my first camcorder, so things to look for would be very welcome.
For the video/capture card, I want it to have at least a seperate TV output, but preferably one that can also drive a monitor (which none seem to be able to do). And because my motherboard does not allow me to set the FSB-AGP divider manually, it should be able to cope with a 100MHz AGP bus as well (possibly at AGP2x or AGP 1x, which my G200 is doing right now).
So would full size captures via IEEE 1394 directly from the analog input of a camcorder be possible on my PC? And how would the video quality be compared to an analog capture card be? An analog capture possiblity is not really a requirement for me, but I think I need a better video card with a separate TV output anyway. And I was thinking of a Matrox G450 DH, so the eTV seemed like a relatively inexpensive way to add video capture without using an extra PCI slot (although at the cost of the possiblity to add a second monitor). I want the card to have a 360MHz RAMDAC though (so no G400 Marvel), as I have a big monitor on my wish list as well.
So can somebody give me some advice?
Thanx,
Eddy.
When looking at the camcorders, I found some that also have an analog input, which could replace an analog capture card.
The thing is that my PC is not too recent any more (PII 300 running at 450) 256MB RAM, 13 and 37 GB 5400 RPM harddisks on an AOpen AX6B (BX chipset) motherboard. I don't really want to upgrade my CPU as it's fast enough for most things. But the information on the G450 eTV says that a PIII 600 is required for the realtime VCR functionality (probably because it doesn't have a hardware codec). So I'm concerned about the ability to capture at full 720x576 (PAL) resolution. I'm not sure how IEEE 1394 captures work, and whether compression is done in software on the PC or that compressed data is transferred over the wire. And then there is the problem that I have only 1 PCI slot left, so an IEEE 1394 card and an analog capture card (WinTV for example) is not really an option. The ATi Radreon All In Wonder specs look good, but I don't like their driver support (I'm running NT 4.0 right now).
For the camcorder I want it to be small, and have DV in/out and (XGA or better) photo possibility on a smartmedia card (or something like that). The ones I found were JVC GR-DVX10, JVC GR-DVL9800, Panasonic NV-MX7 or Sony DCR-PC100/110. I would not mind waiting for something better, but these seem to have all features somebody could possibly want. But this would be my first camcorder, so things to look for would be very welcome.
For the video/capture card, I want it to have at least a seperate TV output, but preferably one that can also drive a monitor (which none seem to be able to do). And because my motherboard does not allow me to set the FSB-AGP divider manually, it should be able to cope with a 100MHz AGP bus as well (possibly at AGP2x or AGP 1x, which my G200 is doing right now).
So would full size captures via IEEE 1394 directly from the analog input of a camcorder be possible on my PC? And how would the video quality be compared to an analog capture card be? An analog capture possiblity is not really a requirement for me, but I think I need a better video card with a separate TV output anyway. And I was thinking of a Matrox G450 DH, so the eTV seemed like a relatively inexpensive way to add video capture without using an extra PCI slot (although at the cost of the possiblity to add a second monitor). I want the card to have a 360MHz RAMDAC though (so no G400 Marvel), as I have a big monitor on my wish list as well.
So can somebody give me some advice?
Thanx,
Eddy.
Comment