Any advantage to professional firewire cards?

Luxo wrote on 11/26/2001, 2:08 PM
Is there any advantage to using a professional OHCI-compatible card from brands like Canopus or Pinnacle? I'd like to take advantage of the real-time full framerate editing features, but I don't want to waste my money if they only work with Adobe Premiere. Will Vegas take advantage of them?

Thanks,
Luxo

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 11/26/2001, 2:58 PM
nope, only OHCI compliant 1394 cards are supported (meaning not Canopus or the Pinnacle Pro firewire cards)
HPV wrote on 11/26/2001, 8:14 PM
Is there any advantage to using a professional OHCI-compatible card from brands like Canopus or Pinnacle? I'd like to take advantage of the real-time full framerate editing features
-----------------------------

Vegas does do real-time full framerate editing. It drops frames of video as needed (size/quality of preview window and number of tracks dependant), but the audio keeps on going full speed. On my P4 1.3ghz/128MB/ME system with an Nvidea 32MB Geforce 2MX-tv out at 640x480, I can see all of the action and safe areas (same as what you would see on a DV500 analog output). With the preview window set to preview quality (the same damn quality as good or best for 95% of what Vegas can do), it will show about 17fps during a dissolve between clips on my system. If I drop to draft quality, it's more like 26+Fps. Or if I leave it at preview quality and drop to 360x240 size, it holds at 29.97Fps. Note that the Geforce output isn't field based, but frames. The external monitor via OHCI feature does show fields at preview quality and above. I use this as a framebuffer to check for jitter. Works great scrubbing thru frames also. This is a major feature that I think few take advantage of.
If you have a bunch of layers or filters, both the DV500/RT2500 will need to render just to check your work. Vegas will always try to show you your layers, but there is a point where the frame rate drops too low to be useful.
Now add in the new RAM preview in Vegas 3 and you're not going to have many limitations (pending a good chuck of RAM). Or you can selective region render an area, and if you don't change anything in that region, the region won't have to re-render before print-to-tape.
For all that you gain with Vegas over Premiere, these slight limitations are more than worth it. Once you get up to speed in Vegas, you'll be cranking out stuff way faster than you ever could with Premiere.
I just drop to 360x240 or region render as needed for now with Vegas 2.
More ram and Vegas 3 might push me to use preview to ram.
Faster computers should give one better RT editing ability.

Craig H.