camcorder-pc via firewire

daveathome_16

recently bought a sony digital 8 trv 255 camcorder and realised that i cant use the usb to get good quality digital video compared to the quality of picture when connected to the tv

does anyone know if connecting through firewire will help..
pc specs are

Processor Intel Pentium III 733MHz
Memory 62MB RAM

(have free pci slots)

any comments appreciated

SantaHoe

Yeah definitly, USB(1) speeds suck for realtime video transfers and any software they'll give you to capture over USB is going to compress the be-jesus out of it.
You'll be wanting a firewire(IEEE1394) interface card...

You can get them fairly cheap(€60?) if you just want the connection... other cards cost a fortune due to the amount of crappy software bundled with them... if your can source some decent editing/capture software from somewhere else, then just go with the cheapest card you can find.

Or if you're planning on upgrading your motherboard, you could save a few euro by getting one with 1394 on-board.

Your CPU speed seems fine for DV capture, although I'm not sure if your RAM will scrape you through even a capture... let alone some DV editing... you'll probably be wanting to take out that stick of 64 and slap in two 512's (although you'd get away with ~256MB)

Placebo

yo same problem here, i have ubs 2and fireaware now in laptop, is the connector the same ? as the usb one ? and i just use same software ... ?

daveathome_16

thanks for the info..

i saw a firewire card on

http://www.nowafflecomputers.ie/view_products.asp?id=67&sectid=10&UID=200462821289195.218.109.253

its 20 euro

seems cheap... but is it any good....??

another question too........

would upgrading the ram be of any use because i think i was told before in a computer shop that upgrading the ram on the computer wont really make a difference

SantaHoe

USB 1 and 2 connections are the same.
firewire is completely different.

There's a larger socket used aswell, but I cba looking for a pic of it
USB2 is about on par with firewire in terms of bandwidth, but if your camera only functions as a USB1 device then the extra bandwidth is useless to you.

Some capture/edit software like the one bundled with Windows XP will allow you to change the capture rate/quality... you're looking for /other/DV as the capture type there, which is only going to happen if either you've got firewire or both your camera and PC are using USB2... if your camera only operates as USB1 then you're stuffed without firewire.
I remember getting a CD with my Sony DV cam, "Pixel" or something, wasn't great... in fact I'd use XP's moviemk.exe before I'd go near that again.

SantaHoe

Originally posted by daveathome_16
seems cheap... but is it any good....??

If it works - it works.
All you really want it for is transfering data from your camera to your system bus... nothing too fancy about that when you think about it.
Most expensive cards I've seen are nothing but a basic card with a software bundle that jacks up the price.

Originally posted by daveathome_16
would upgrading the ram be of any use because i think i was told before in a computer shop that upgrading the ram on the computer wont really make a difference

Never trust anyone who tells you anything in a computer shop, if they were IT experts they'd be in an IT experts job (except for Peats maybe, who actually have IT experienced staff instead of sales people).
64MB is disgustingly low for a PC these days, especially if you're running 2K/XP.
You wouldn't notice it for basic things like word processing or web browsing, but if you were to stick on a game like Medal of Honour, it'd lock up every few seconds because it can't hold all the current game contents in memory at once, and has to resort to swapping/paging... juggling RAM contents to the harddrive and back again.

If money's tight, you could just go for the card first and see how you get on... but if it's painfully slow, then you'll know why

daveathome_16

is there a certain type of ram to get if i was to upgrade

im running windows 98 second edition and hav you got any idea of the price range ?



....and thanks again for the extra info

SantaHoe

RAM is pretty cheap these days, 256MB would set you back around 50 euro, but it depends on where you buy it.
Read your motherboard manual or PC manufacturers website before you buy anything... All the information should be in there, you're looking for something like PC100 SDRAM DIMMS or something similar, but find out for sure... also some PC manufacturers will have their own proprietary RAM requirements and can get narky if you try to use generic ram, so again - do your research.

daveathome_16

thanks for all the info

appreciated

lodgepole

Originally posted by daveathome_16
i saw a firewire card on

http://www.nowafflecomputers.ie/view_products.asp?id=67&sectid=10&UID=200462821289195.218.109.253

its 20 euro

seems cheap... but is it any good....??

That card works perfectly. There's **** all difference in firewire cards, that doesn't stop the likes of Pinnacle charging five times what they should and packaging a limited version of their software with it.

The RAM upgrade will show its uses once you start editing the footage and having to render video.

daveathome_16

Originally posted by Lodgepole
That card works perfectly. There's **** all difference in firewire cards

just wondering about it though because it doesnt say the speed. And i saw a firewire card on pixmania.com(where i bought my camcorder) that only had 50 speed

the camcorder can use 100 so idrather get one capable of doing 100

not sure if that one does though

ill send em an email...........hoping ill get a reply as alot of sites dont bother

SantaHoe

Firewire operates at 400Mbps... that's a set standard.
I had a look at pixmania.com there to see what you were talking about, and they stated the card could transfer at 50MB/s (Mega Bytes)... firewire operates at 400Mb/s (Mega bits)....
8 bits = 1 byte
so 400Mb devided by 8 = 50MB
The other cards have the same data transfer rates, only they're represented differently... tomayto tomaato.
So there's no difference there.

lodgepole

The last post is entirely correct. Firewire cards are standardised with the code IEEE1394. If you see that number, then the card will do everything you need it to.

daveathome_16

thanks for that....

i also saw another card as you probably already saw ina previous post on nowafflecomputers for 20 euro

ill probably buy that card and see how well the camcorder works on it
but ill prob buy an upgrade on my ram too...hav tofind out a bitmore about what type first.. doesnt say anything in the manuals

lodgepole

Originally posted by daveathome_16
i also saw another card as you probably already saw ina previous post on nowafflecomputers for 20 euro

You can save the shipping cost on that card by ringing nowaffle and picking it up yourself. If you're in Dublin, it's on the Firhouse road, close to Knocklyon... Very close to the M50.

Frameless

Hello Dave.

I have been a Camcorder enthusiast for 15 years now, and only recently moved into the Digital arena. Nothing major, JVC GR-DVLI67EK with heavy duty battery. However, if you're really serious about PC-based editing, you'll need a machine with the following minimum specs:

P4 2.4GHz; 512 MB RAM (prefereably DDR); separate 7200 rpm Hard Drive; and some decent editing software. I have purchased Pinnacle Studio 9 (normally castigated on the Internet - but this is usually by people trying to run it on machines below manufacturer's minimum spec) and Cyberlink Power Director 3.

You can get both (legitimately) on www.softwareoutlet.com for about 10% of the manufacturer's price. I have produced wedding videos with the above software and system, but, even with 768 MB RAM, you can visibly see it pushed to the limits when rendering. However, the finished DVD product is absolutely perfect.

Pinnacle S9 has a neat compression system which tells you the exact amount of space left on the DVD, so you don't have to divide the project across two DVDs.
There is no visible difference between one-hour and two-hour presentations on the finished DVD.

Now I know that when you read the back of the software packs, they'll quote things like 166 P2, 128 Megs RAM, etc. But if they were to put the real requirements on the packs, I don't think they'd find many takers!

Finally, I have captured (via Firewire) from both Sony Digital 8; Sony DV-CAM; and JVC mini-DV. There is, if you look clsoely, a noticeable difference. If your budget allows, buy a mini-DV machine sometime - it's worth it.
Hope that helps someway!

Frameless

PS:

One hour of captured DV-AVI takes up just uner 12 GB on a Hard Drive - so you see the need for a deparate drive. This is also to prevent interference from other programs which normally try to access the C Drive - tus disrupting the flow to the video editing softare. You can get 512 MD of DDRD RAM delivered for approximately 100 euro from www.crucial.com

lodgepole

Originally posted by Frameless
P4 2.4GHz; 512 MB RAM (prefereably DDR); separate 7200 rpm Hard Drive

I have a 2.26Ghz P4 with 256MB RAM and it does the job admirably. And that's running Adobe Premiere Pro. Render times may be a tad longer, but nothing unbearable. The software itself, and the capture process, work perfectly.

I use a 40gig partition of my second (120gig 7200rpm) drive for video editing. I always import at full quality* and it's always been plenty. But then, I've never cut anything longer than a fifteen minute short.




*importing at low quality and redigitising only the essential footage is a good way of getting away with using less disk space.

daveathome_16

adobe premiere... is it normall possible to view the preview in motion(when effects are added to a clip)

i can only view one frame, but the effect is added when saved

lodgepole

Originally posted by daveathome_16
adobe premiere... is it normall possible to view the preview in motion(when effects are added to a clip)

i can only view one frame, but the effect is added when saved

Once you add the effect, you must render it. You'll notice a red line across any effects you've added to your timeline. Once the project is saved, you just hit the enter key and it will render all unrendered effects. The single frame is all the preview that Premiere can give you.

legofsalmon

Originally posted by Lodgepole
I have a 2.26Ghz P4 with 256MB RAM and it does the job admirably. And that's running Adobe Premiere Pro. Render times may be a tad longer, but nothing unbearable. The software itself, and the capture process, work perfectly.

I use a 40gig partition of my second (120gig 7200rpm) drive for video editing. I always import at full quality* and it's always been plenty. But then, I've never cut anything longer than a fifteen minute short.




*importing at low quality and redigitising only the essential footage is a good way of getting away with using less disk space.

that is the exact same set up as I'm using and it works perfect for me too. Find after long spells that a restart does wonders.

anyone know any good plug ins for premiere 7 pro actually?

davmigil

Get a cheap OHCI compliant PCI firewire card.

http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/choosing-best-firewire-card.html

As an aside I ran Pinnacle Studio 7 on a PIII 500Mhz (512Mb 100Mhz SDRAM) for years. For capturing and editing the specs were fine. For rendering I outputted the edited footage as an .avi file of the same specs as the input and used Tmpgenc (on slow/high quality settings) http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html to convert to MPEG2 to burn to SVCD.

Now rendering on those specs was a different story, but having said that I'd just leave the PC on overnight and set up a batch. I'm sure if I'd used the Cinema Craft Encorder http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/home.html instead I could have reduced rendering times a good bit. The Pinnacle 7 MPEG2 encoder was actually quite fast, but v. blocky.

Point I'm making is for casual home movies, you can live with lower specs (for a while anyway!). However two bits of advice for daveathome_16:

1. Head over to www.crucial.com to see what type of memory your MoBo takes. Working on 64Mb will be painful, consider another 256Mb anyway. Also be aware that maximum* amount of RAM Windows98SE can access is 512Mb, so no point buying more

*though there are some unofficial patches available that let you use more.

2. If you are thinking of getting a new hard drive, upgrade from Windows 98 first. Windows98 normally uses FAT32 file system and doesn't support NTFS , so you are limited to file sizes less than 4Gb, which in full dv capture terms isn't a lot of minutes (about 20 minutes).

Have fun,

David