New Canon video cameras

[dchip]

Hulk, is this motherboard a slightly updated version of what you have in your main system?

[dchip]

If you were stepping up to that i7 cpu today, is this the board you would with?

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=BA25822

[Hulk]

Yes that is an updated version of my board.

And yes if I were to upgrade to the i7 I'd get the P6T.

If you are considering an i7 system spend some time reading this guide.

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3510

I have been reading Anandtech for over 10 years now and in my opinion it is far and away the best hardware guide on the web.

Then have a look at some of the forums to see what components guys are using for i7 builds. I get all my info/advice from this site and if you do a little research you will not be steered wrong.

[dchip]

I'm probably going to stay off the cutting edge because in the past trying to stay on it has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars. Patience is the order of the day. I'm the guy with a gigantic 640x480 digital camera tucked away in a closet somewhere that cost him a ton just before the cameras became ¼ the size with many times the power. Of course there's the massive SCSI scanner that he dumped about a grand on way back when, just prior to the units with double the resolution and a simple USB connection with no IRQ's and stuff to fuss with. I'm not even going to try to remember what I paid for my first computer way WAY back when. Let's just say it was huge, had IBM on the front of it, and could do amazing things, that today a USB micro drive does.

i7 might get me on a path I can ride for years. Or it could lead to power addiction. I think I'll follow the progression of that board you have now that you called a key part of the best system you've even built. Did you notice these Asus mo'bo's have VIA chipsets on the IEEE-1394. Weren't those the chipsets that brought so many editors to a standstill back in the day? I assume VIA has fixed whatever it was about that architecture that caused the conflicts.

Thanks for the site recommendation. I will do some reading there. As for user categories when it comes to selecting hardware, I will think of myself as a gamer (although I am not) and kind of stay a step or two behind the hardcore gamers on that site who are building some truly amazing systems. I see there are some i7 discussions and particularly some about that Asus board. I do like that that board has 3 of the PCI slots that I am most familiar with. I also need to catch up on terminology. Some of the stuff discussed there may be my old equipment with fancy new acronyms to describe it.

You were right about NLE talk kind of being dead here. It's been about a week and nobody else has chimed in. If they are still out there, I'd love to know what they are doing. Anybody editing? What software are you using lately? Anybody with a dinosaur of a system, like mine?

[Hulk]

I know what you mean about spending tons of money on leading edge gear when backing off 10% can save you 70%. I had and IBM and a Gateway P5-90 that cost me $4000! Can you imagine the system you could build for 4k today. What the hell was I thinking? I try to sell that stuff as fast as possible so I can try and make myself forget it ever happened.

I think you're smart in moving to a nice Penryn Dual or Quad core system. Inexpensive cpu and memory and it'll be a HUGE upgrade for you all the same.

I would probably be hard pressed between the Q9550 or the Q8300 I think. There is about $100 between them. You get the lower multiplier for an easier overclock with the 9550 and double the size of the onboard cache. Then again you could go really cheap and pick up a dually for less than $100 and overclock it and be happy as well and have an easy future Quad upgrade path.

[dchip]

Inexpensive is good and since I don't play games and stuff I don't need graphics power that is through the roof. Of course, trying to play an Mpeg4 clip on my current hardware was an eye-opener. I figure if I step up a couple of notches above the system you now have and then go with the Canon HFS1, that should do it. I might focust more money on getting hard drives that are fast enough to stay viable for a long time and memory in a class that is known for efficiency and speed. It's always fun to put something together that really works, espeicaly when you can tell right off the bat that the system is clicking on all cylinders.

[dchip]

I know what you mean about spending tons of money on leading edge gear when backing off 10% can save you 70%. I had and IBM and a Gateway P5-90 that cost me $4000! Can you imagine the system you could build for 4k today. What the hell was I thinking? I try to sell that stuff as fast as possible so I can try and make myself forget it ever happened.

A daggone fast system and a copy of the latest greatest professional encoding software is what I would buy. I ended up giving the gigantic scanner to Goodwill to get it out of my sight. I've only mentioned a couple of the big things. There have also been about 10 cutting-edge printers, all kinds of software.

You were thinking... GOT TO HAVE THAT. It starts small, looking at the advertisements and thinking of having the marvelous item. Eventually there is no resisting. I remember being so excited about a digital camera that $900 for the big Canon contraption, with giant memory card and industrial-looking docking station, seemed like a small price to pay. I was consumed by GOT TO HAVE until there was no use fighting.

[dchip]

I had and IBM and a Gateway P5-90 that cost me $4000!

By the way, I did one of those, too. It was my second computer. I lived on the Gateway site for weeks on end till I could no longer resist. Had to have that Pentium 1. Not even 2 weeks later Pentium 2 was out there and prices were dropping like a rock. I called the Gateway sales rep back to express my anger. I strongly suspect the announcement of the Pentium 2's and lower prices were right there on her screen when she unloaded on me that P5 90 in the tank-like case with expensive video card and pricy RAM measured in MB's instead of GB's.

Not that I didn't enjoy that computer. I used it constantly. I even went out and bought the flagship US Robotics modem (that cutting edge again) so I could be sure I was connecting the fastest that a home user could.

I did resist buying their Gateway Diamond somethingoranother, monitor. Instead purchased a Sony CRT so big it could barely be carried by one person. About five years ago I donated it to a church. They had never seen anything other than an interlaced display. That non-interlaced Sony dazzled them exceedingly and probably saved some eyesight(s).

I ended up with two tiny pieces of remaining value from that bad Gateway purchase. I took the keylock off the front of the case and have rigged it into every computer I have built since. A little peace of mind if we have contractors in the house or something like that. I also took the HDD LED off of it and have used it down through the years to show drive activity on the Promise ATA controllers I have owned. $4000 down to about $10 worth of hardware. haha.

Remember how those first Pentiums were marketed as being light years ahead of the fastest 486? That's another reason I look at all the dual this and quad that today with a bit of caution.

[Hulk]

Good idea just to build a system a little faster than mine as you know I'm editing AVCHD no problem. Go a little faster and you'll be even in better shape. One thing I would keep in mind if you are going to use Vegas is the rumor of the problem of Quad core rendering with AVCHD and Vegas. If this is really a bug and not just a setup issue for some users then it could be a problem. Hopefully the next update or version will address this. I read that users are simply turning off two cores in the BIOS when rendering.

Oh yeah. Good review of new Canon here:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcorders/review/2009/03/21/Canon-LEGRIA-HF-S10/p1

[dchip]

One thing I would keep in mind if you are going to use Vegas is the rumor of the problem of Quad core rendering with AVCHD and Vegas. If this is really a bug and not just a setup issue for some users then it could be a problem.

The user, "clif" over there sounds like he is experiencing something real. You are right, though; not enough folks are even using such cpu's with Vegas to call it a true bug. Even if it turns out to be a true bug, it might be hard to get candid thoughts on it on that board. I have never liked blind loyalty. Never.

Oh yeah. Good review of new Canon here:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcor...GRIA-HF-S10/p1

Image Quality 10/10

[dchip]

I like the Vixia name better than Legria across the pond. I bet folks over there think Vixia sounds silly. By any name, I think this camera is going to be a big hit.

I wonder if there will be a noticable difference between the FXP 17Mbps and MXP 24mbps shooting modes on this one. It's over 4 hours of shooting capacity on the 32gb internal card versus just under 3 hours for MXP so it sounds like there will be some difference, but I wonder if it will be easy to tell the difference when looking at it on a good screen. I guess it will be the same as it is with mpeg2... the better the screen the more your cheating on bitrate will be revealed.

[Hulk]

I honestly think the greatest advantage to the 24Mbps bitrate will be really high motion scenes, like water waves, and when you need to color correct in post. I have found that higher bitrates respond better to post work for the final render. I'm fine with the increased storage requirement. a 16GB card costs $35 these days!

And I don't doubt the Vegas bug with quads and AVCHD. I like Vegas but all software has problems. I'm hoping for a fix in the next release/update. Then I'll move to a Quad.

My biggest gripe with Vegas right now is that when I preview AVCHD both cores aren't floored at 100% yet I'm still not seeing realtime preview. The preview isn't bad but I want to utilize both cores! I know it's easier said than done as optimizing for dual cores is not child's play. But it think it is important as I'd rather have faster preview so I can work more artistically than faster rendering. I can always render over night.

[dchip]

Yeah, you want to get what you paid for, both in Vegas and your CPU. Vegas should be one of the most evolved editing packages in the world now. Not that it's been around the longest, but it has received as much attention in recent years as any package. Certainly when they added Pro to the name it should be ready for professional prime time. They need to offer that guy, Satish, a temporary job and pay him a fat sum to get everything fixed. My gut feeling about him is that he could look at that code and fix what needs fixing and write whole new code for stuff that Vegas can't do at all right now, such as your wish for a smooth preview with your darn near top of the line hardware.

[dchip]

I scanned the Sony forum and saw the wish lists for Vegas 9, including yours, and it's amazing how many crucial feature are still missing from such a great NLE. Truly amazing. I guess there is no end to what is considered crucial to workflow in editing.

[Hulk]

Just when everything was worked out for Standard Definition it starts all over again with HD. The good thing is that I think 1080 will the the consumer format for a long time. Sure people will push for 2k, 3k, and even 4k but I think those formats will come into thier own on really large screen sizes like over 10 foot screens. Not something many people will be having anytime soon. Those formats are more for movies you go OUT to see I think. So I guess what I'm saying (hoping) is that once the developers catch up with 1080p we'll be set for at least a while as the human eye isn't getting any better.

Look at it this way audio applications have been in a very evolved state for quite some time. I expect video to get there as well. Remember when you looked forward to the latest release of your favorite word processor or spreadsheet? Yeah, not so much anymore, they all just work. Same with photo editing, vector drawing, and desktop publishing. Video editing was "there" with SD but now software/hardware developers have to deal with a format that has 4.5 times the pixel density and a much more involved compression (AVCHD).

That being said I can get it done with Vegas right now. The things I'm asking for are more evolution rather than evolution. For a while the Sony engineers were pushing just to have the app accept various HD formats, capture them, render them, preview them, etc.. Now it's time to refine. Hopefully they can resist the urge to include new useless features just to put them on the side of the box!