Kip Schauer (kschauer@digitalorigin.com)
21 Jun 99 09:34:31 -0600
Reply to: RE: Bandwidth and Beige G3
Hi Dr. Scott,
I carry around a beige G3 with the internal drive and a 16GB EIDE drive =
mounted internally, no SCSI card at all.
I have our firewire card inside and use EditDV for capturing and editing =
the video. The video quality is an exact transfer of what is captured on =
your XL-1. There is no compression on the way into the computer. What =
you see on your camera is what you will see playing off the hard drive.
16GB will give me roughly 80 minutes of video, plus I can use the internal =
drive.
The EditDV package retails for $799 with a firewire card, it also includes =
extra software - Media Cleaner EZ and Bias Peak LE.
Thanks,
Kip
Kip Schauer
Digital Origin
(303) 471-5703 Direct
http://www.digitalorigin.com
kschauer@digitalorigin.com
Dr Nathan Scott wrote:
>Dear Dig-vid,
>
>I've been struggling towards a semi-professional setup for many years now.=
>All along I've had visions of doing high-quality digital video editing =
but
>it has eluded me so far. Here's a history:
>
>I bought a Quadra 840AV which did 320 x 240 pixels at 15 FPS - not bad =
for
>1993 straight out of the box. Did some ray-traced animation and made a
>small promotional movie with Adobe Premiere 4.2.
>
>Then in 1998 I bought a beige G3 tower with the built-in AV. To my
>annoyance it was actually a less powerful video grabber than the 840AV! =
So
>I also bought a MiroMotion DC30+, thinking, "now I've got everything".
>
>The MiroMotion card was actually pretty good and for the first time I =
could
>at least read and write a decent PAL signal (i.e. 768 x 576 at 25 FPS). =
But
>again I was frustrated because it soon turned out that the hard disk in =
the
>Mac was only capable of a sustained data transfer rate of about 1.2 Mb/s.
>This is not enough for high-quality work and the movie ends up with
>noticeable artifacts.
>
>Then a friend gave me a spare FireWire card to try in my trusty beige G3. =
I
>connected up a lovely new XL1 but was horrified with the quality of the
>image captured this way - even worse than using the analog MiroMotion =
card
>to capture the same image. Of course the same hard disk limitation was
>getting me for the same reason.
>
>So I am just about to buy an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller and an 18Gb =
IBM
>Hammerhead disk to put inside my Mac. This pair is rated at 80 Mb/s burst
>rate. The best advice I can get about this is that I can expect an actual
>sustained data rate of about 30 Mb/s. This is much greater than the 8Mb/s
>that the MiroMotion card can produce and it is also greater than the 4Mb/=
s
>I expect the XL1 to produce. Therefore, in theory at least, THIS should =
be
>an awesome combination.
>
>If any of you are still with me, here are the questions:
>1) If there is anything wrong with this plan, I would really like to know
>about it NOW. If past experience is any guide, I will get the controller
>and hard disk working and THEN someone will tell me that - of course - I
>need XYZ additional hardware to edit a good-looking movie. In short, is
>there some other bottleneck or harware limitation I will discover? Or =
will
>it finally just work?
>
>2) I hear that Adaptec are now producing a cool new "combo" FireWire/SCSI
>controller card, the 8945
>http://www.adaptec.com/products/overview/aha8945hc.html
>HOWEVER it is only rated at 40 Mb/s. So again I need advice: when =
actually
>editing, will I notice a real difference between a card/disk pair rated =
at
>40Mb/s and a card/disk pair rated at 80 Mb/s? Is there any performance
>penalty for having the FireWire on a separate card from the SCSI
>controller? This is an important question because I would prefer not to =
use
>up two slots when I might be able to get away with just one. BUT I also
>want a swift editor.
>
>3) There is a new choice out there: the FireWire drive! The only one I =
can
>find is
>http://www.firepower.com/products/FireDrive.html
>So - does anyone have one of these, and does it work for DV? I note that
>the sustained transfer rate of the largest of these drives is given as "=
13
>to 8" Mb/s. What does that mean? Does it mean they will promise me 13 and
>deliver 8? Or should I divide every number in two to make it realistic?
>
>I hope this story will help anyone who is just starting. The message is,
>don't expect anyone, even Apple, to sell you a desktop computer that =
REALLY
>edits video straight out of the box. I am fairly certain this applies =
even
>to the otherwise appetising blue/white G3. You MUST also buy additional
>harware to eliminate the bottleneck of the relatively slow built-in hard
>disk and controller. If I am wrong here I hope someone will correct me.
>
>Regards,
>
>
>
>Dr Nathan Scott
>Lecturer
>Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering
>The University of Western Australia
>Western Australia 6907
>Rm 220 +61 8 9380 3761
>FAX +61 8 9380 1024
>Home +61 8 9440 0242
>nscott@mech.uwa.edu.au
>http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/dynamics/
>
>
>RFC822 header
>-----------------------------------
>
> Return-Path: <owner-digvid-l@ucdavis.edu>
> Received: from popeye.digitalorigin.com ([140.82.1.10])
> by eagle-1.libratech.com (Post.Office MTA v3.1 release PO203a
> ID# 0-42248U100L2S100) with ESMTP id AAA113 for <> ID# 0-42248U100L2S100) with ESMTP id AAA113 for <kip@tronix.=
com>;
> Sat, 19 Jun 1999 20:47:38 -0600
> Received: from gate.digitalorigin.com ([140.82.20.11])
> by popeye.digitalorigin.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.6)
> with ESMTP id AAAE70 for <kschauer@popeye.digitalorigin.com>;
> Sat, 19 Jun 1999 19:41:51 -0700
> Received: from nixon.ucdavis.edu (root@nixon.ucdavis.edu [169.237.105.5])=
> by gate.digitalorigin.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA10626
> for <kschauer@digitalorigin.com>; Sat, 19 Jun 1999 19:52:11 -0700 (PDT)
> Received: from host (> Received: from host (server@localhost [127.0.0.1])
> by nixon.ucdavis.edu (8.9.3/UCD3.13.10) with SMTP id TAA13900;
> Sat, 19 Jun 1999 19:38:08 -0700 (PDT)
> Received: from schilling.ucdavis.edu (root@schilling.ucdavis.edu =
>[169.237.105.1])
> by nixon.ucdavis.edu (8.9.3/UCD3.13.10) with ESMTP id TAA13866
> for <digvid-l-rl@nixon.ucdavis.edu>; Sat, 19 Jun 1999 19:37:21 -0700 (=
PDT)
> Received: from amberley.mech.uwa.edu.au (root@amberley.mech.uwa.edu.au =
>[130.95.52.4])
> by schilling.ucdavis.edu (8.9.3/UCD3.13.12) with ESMTP id TAA27557
> for <digvid-l@ucdavis.edu>; Sat, 19 Jun 1999 19:37:12 -0700 (PDT)
> Received: from [130.95.39.148] (nscott.general.dialup.uwa.edu.au =
>[130.95.39.148])
> by amberley.mech.uwa.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA17539
> for <digvid-l@ucdavis.edu>; Sun, 20 Jun 1999 10:37:07 +0800
> Message-Id: <l03130307b391fa763ea0@[130.95.39.148]>
> In-Reply-To: <2d9d0128.249d1a92@aol.com>
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"us-ascii"
> Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 10:38:36 +0800
> To: digvid-l@ucdavis.edu
> From: Dr Nathan Scott <nscott@mech.uwa.edu.au>
> Subject: Bandwidth and Beige G3
> Reply-To: digvid-l@ucdavis.edu
> Sender: owner-digvid-l@ucdavis.edu
> X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.2.07 -- ListProc(tm) by CREN
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Mon Jun 21 1999 - 08:33:19 PDT