Speccing new video-editing station

[Fat Tone]

What, Fat Tone in DTV? I know its hard to beleive...

Anyways I need to spec up a system for video editing. It won't be really intensive use, mainly capturing from tapes we already have, a bit of cleaning up/editing and burning to DVD. Budget is ~£2500.

I'm thinking a RT-X100 Xtreme Pro suite and a Parhelia, twin TFTs and a ~3G P4, Windows XP, NEC 3520A DVD-RW.

Any and all suggestions welcome.

TVM

T.

[Brian Ellis]

Seems an awful lot of money for tape (VHS???) quality,

I'd recommend your 3GHz P4 and DVD-RW (although there are other makes). There are many dual-head graphics cards at half the price of a Parhelia or less. A Canopus ADVC-300 with an IEEE-1394 card would be fine if your tapes are iffy, or an ADVC-100 if they are in excellent condition. With either, you can output to TV, with Ulead MediaStudio Pro for software. The end result with that will be indistinguishable from that made by your proposed set-up and I'll guarantee you will have a lot less hassle with both setting it up and using it.

Can we split the £1,000 I just saved you between us

[gt40]

or just go for the rt.x10 -
699 U.S. get you the rt.x10, Adobe Encore, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe Audition.

advc-100 -299
media studio pro -299
dvd worksop -199
total $797

If I'm off on these figures feel free to correct me.

[Fat Tone]

thanks.

We also have a number of digital camcorders so I should think we'll be putting videos together with those too.

Saving money from the £2500 isn't an issue, but we may as well get the best we can for that.

[gt40]

personally I had absolutely no problems setting up my rt.x10
just remember to get a mo/bo that has been validated by matrox.
If money is not a issue than by all means step up to the rtx100

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by gt40
or just go for the rt.x10 -
699 U.S. get you the rt.x10, Adobe Encore, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe Audition.

advc-100 -299
media studio pro -299
dvd worksop -199
total $797

If I'm off on these figures feel free to correct me.

In the UK, I think you will find you can get a better deal on the Canopus/Ulead combo than on the Matrox/Premiere one and I maintain you will have, by far, less hassle with it. I think our beloved Dr. M, moderator here, will second me on that and he is a beta tester for both.

And you can do digital (mini-DV/D8) with it, at no extra cost. An important point is that the set-up I recommend will work with any reasonable computer. The Matrox/Premiere combo is extremely fussy as to which computers it will work with.

MSP full version is £159.99 and includes entry-level DVD Authoring. If you want sophisticated DVD authoring, DVD Workshop Express is £99.99. Prices per http://www.ulead.co.uk/

If FT cares to take a holiday in the sun, I can demonstrate the set-up I recommend, with his tapes (provided they are VHS or VHS-C). He could easily pay for the trip with his savings!

[gt40]

Wow,
only at the Matrox Users Resource Center do senior members try to dissuade others from buying Matrox.

[VJ]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
A Canopus ADVC-300 with an IEEE-1394 card would be fine if your tapes are iffy, or an ADVC-100 if they are in excellent condition.

The ADVC100 has been replaced with the ADVC110. I recently ordered one, and while I might be following in The Pit's footsteps (Chief Lemon buyer), some changes from the ADVC100 are worth knowing. Be sure to check this thread:

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?postid=524537#post524537

(But when it worked, the ADVC110 provided great image quality)


Jörg

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by gt40
Wow,
only at the Matrox Users Resource Center do senior members try to dissuade others from buying Matrox.

I try to give advice, based on what I know works well. If this is in conflict with the raison d'être of this forum, then it's just too bad

I am not married to Matrox: in fact, I dislike their policies, since they forced me to replace my Marvel and since an upgrade from one Millennium graphics card to another one, with zero technical support, forced a total reformat of my C: drive, and all that implies...

At the moment, I have only one computer with a Matrox product.

Does that disqualify me from being a legacy (not senior, except in physical years) member of this forum?

[gt40]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis

Does that disqualify me from being a legacy (not senior, except in physical years) member of this forum?

Absolutely not

[landrover]

For "a bit of cleaning/editing", this sounds more than luxurious, if not a little overdone...
Call me old-fashioned, but I´d want two decent CRT´s, which should be no problem considering the average price of TFT´s.

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by landrover
Call me old-fashioned

Hi, old-fashioned!

I have zero regrets replacing two quality 21" CRT monitors (Nokia) with two 18.1" TFTs (AOC) for my editing. On the practical side, practically identical screen area, finer dot-matrix, allowing upgrade of resolution, sharper visual "feel", better contrast, much more desk space, cooler running (important here in summer!), lower electricity bills. In fact, can't think of any advantage that the CRTs had over the TFTs, as the modern ones don't even have the "video smear" that plagued early TFTs. And 18.1" TFTs are now even lower cost than good 21" CRTs.

I now have 4 TFTs here and 0 CRTs.

[gt40]

How are the new tft's with colour depth?
I have noticed on many lcd's 'contouring' on gradual colour gradients.

[landrover]

Originally posted by gt40
How are the new tft's with colour depth?
I have noticed on many lcd's 'contouring' on gradual colour gradients.

...which is exactly why I am using CRT´s. Although I must admit that I haven´t had a serious look at a TFT in quite a while. But then again, TFT´s capable of displaying realistic video overlay, probably are still way over my budget.

Brian, you keep this forum alive!

[VJ]

Originally posted by gt40
How are the new tft's with colour depth?
I have noticed on many lcd's 'contouring' on gradual colour gradients.

Haven't seen anything like that on my Eizo L568... (and I tested with a number of colour gradients )

(well, there was this one time when my colourdepth was set incorrectly... )


Jörg