I plan on getting an ADVC-100, but for now am also using an ATI AIW. I am able to view the ATI captured avi's in VV3 with no problems. Did he use some proprietary ATI codec to compress the file? MPEG's are not the way to go for editing. Way too compressed to do anything with. Make sure you capture in AVI format at the highest resolution possible and without compression. This will give you the best possible quality from the AIW card.

That's good info. I already plan to have him recapture the clips because there is audio clipping. When he does that I will get personally involved and check those items you mentioned.

Thanks
Todd

I am aware of ATI's problems that's why I'm not even considering that as an option. The firewire idea sounds good as long as I can get video and audio both in and out. I'll into it.

Thanks
Todd

I found the Canopus ADVC-100 for $299. And my vender said he had fire cards for $55. Does that sound right? Is that the going rate a firewire card or does it sound like a cheap one. I wnat to get good quality stuff.

thanks again,
Todd

That's about right for price. Beware of the chipset on the firewire card. I read on the Canapus website that the ADVC-100 does not work well with the TI (Texas Instruments) 1394 chipset. I heard the SIIG 1394 card was decent.

I got a generic firewire card from the local computer shop for $39.95. It's so generic that there is no identification on it at all. Even Windows control panel simply shows the manufacturer as "(Standard 1394 controller)" and the device as OHCI Compliant 1394 PCI, so who knows what it is. I've sucessfully used it with at least half a dozen digital video devices and never a hitch yet.

It may be a bit late, but instead of going for this all-digital solution why not stay analog ? An excellent Osprey 210 analog capture card is as cheap as chips, never drops frames, works on under-powered PCs, captures top quality sound, comes with many codecs and is an industry standard. You can then take your MPEG or AVI or whatever and drop that in VV3.

Just a thought.

I got my SIIG 1394 card (with DV cable) from CompUSA for $40. Or you can go to Best Buy and get the exact same thing (different box) for $80. I popped it in and have never had a problem (and I'm somewhat a newbie).

Now my question, instead of buying the Canopus converter, couldn't you spend a little bit more and buy a Digital 8 camera and use it as a pass-through? You can convert and have an extra camera around for multi-camera shots. Is there quality loss when you use a camcorder to convert your video?

Jon

>>>It may be a bit late, but instead of going for this all-digital solution why not stay analog ?

this looks like a nice card, but *stay analog*? sorry, but if you want to edit video on a desktop PC, you have to digitize it. the Osprey 210 digitizes analog video, just like the ADVC-100. the difference is, the ADVC-100 is an external box so it is almost fool proof. and the ADVC-100 only delivers DV video to the PC, whereas you can capture all different AVI formats with the Osprey.

if you are going to capture a lot of video that is destined for the web, it is nice to have an analog card like the Osprey, because you can capture at your final resolution and save some disk space. plus you get the option of capturing uncompressed video if your system can handle it.

but the Firewire/DV converter solution is what I would recommend. it's a little more expensive, but the value is much better. look at your needs and think of the future. then decide.

the digital8 camera solution is a good idea too. even MORE value! the quality should be the same. make sure the camera you buy does pass-through both ways.

By "stay analog" I meant that you can just feed your analog signal (ie from a standard VCR / Video S / RCA straight to the card. A 1394 Firewire wants a digital signal so you need some sort of processing in front of that - you can't just feed VCR RCA direct in. There's no great advantage I can see by going the Firewire route. And having to pass your signal through a video camera before PC capture is messy and tedious - do you really want to fiddle around with all that every time you capture ? I have my VCR permantly hooked up to the Osprey card - whenever I want something I just hit "capture".

I can see the appeal of Firewire, but if you don't already own a digital videocamera then I think it can be just high-tech for the hell of it.

The idea of a digital camera is very atractive. But I'm pretty sure I will do many of my future video projects from VHS tape. We often get clips from TV stations that have done an article on Teen Challenge and we get it on VHS tape. I suppose they could probably supply us with digital media but if I think I will have to use VHS tape for even half of my projects should I lean towards the ADVC converter? Or will a digital camera to the same? Or might the other analog card be a cheaper option for analog stuff and get the digital camera for digital stuff?

Thanks again
Todd

If you get the digital camera anyway for later use and it has the passthrough ports for converting, then you won't need any other converter, either the canopus or an analog card.

A friend has a Sony DRT-140 consumer digital camera. I bought a firewire card and tried some experiments along the lines of buyibng a camera instead of the Canopus converter. Everything worked well accept the camera's anlaloge ports only go out they do not accept incoming signal. Much of my video work will will require getting VHS tape INTO Vegas then out putting back to VHS. The Sony camera worked well with cpture and print to DV tape but unless I can get VHS into the DV camera it looks like I'm back to looking at the Canopus converter.

Does anyone know of a DV camera that will accept analoge signal IN?

Thanks
Todd

Every Digital8 camera except the 1xx series will do what you want. Also the first generation x10 units (and TR7000) don't do analog pass thru.

Craig H.

All (?) Canon DV cameras with an "i" in their name will accept analog in.
I have a Canon MV400i which I'm very happy with so far. I haven't yet been able to make it do analog pass-through though..

The camera I'm testing with (consumer Sony DRT-140) not only doesn't have analog thru it doesn't even have analog in. It only has analog out. Is there a DV camera in the $500 to $700 range with analog in or pass through? If not I'll probably have to settle for the Canopus converter.

Thanks
Todd

I should have said all "Sony Digital 8" when I typed that info.
The TRV240 sells retail for $599.00. You can find the 230 thru 830s on clearance.
Again, just stay away from the 100 series, 120 130 140
BTW, I saw a Sony TRV17 DV camera on clearance at Best Buy for $580.00. Might only be demo unit, but worth checking out. All Sony DV cameras have analog pass thru.

Craig H.

The 240 on up has the analog passthrough feature. I went through this myself. I originally bought the 140 and returned it for the 340.

I have used the 340 to convert a VCR tape and it worked very nicely.

I got mine at thegoodguys.com for $630 shipped to my door.

-Tim

A tale of two cards and Vegas 3.0a

For my two cents worth, video cards make a huge difference
during the edit/preview process with Vegas, ESPECIALLY if you've
got a marginal CPU.

I don't think a video card makes any difference in rendering
though, unless you're talking about preview display. If you
render to a file, just about any decent video card works. The
video card matters when you want to actually see what you've
got in the little Vegas window or on the second computer monitor.
If you *are* using a DV to analog converter, the video card
doesn't matter much (it's just doing the timeline and so on).
At that point, the converter and firewire card are what matters.

Recently, I wanted dual monitors and TV out. I got a dual monitor
nVidia GForce 4 128MB card to go with my Sony Media Converter
for TV (Y/C, Composite) out.

I do DVD stuff, and after all the crummy experience with DV out
into an analog converter, DVD is the only way to fly. The
DVD is so much better than VHS anyhow, so final output to DV
is a non-issue for me. For my final output when I actually
need VHS, I use either the DVD player, or go to another computer
with (Yuck!) Premiere and a Pinnacle card because the Premiere
allows stacking lots of AVIs together without rendering them.
Hey, I LOVE Vegas, and I only use Premiere
when I absolutely must, which fortunately is less and less.

For DV to DV, the Adaptec TI based OHCI card works fine for me,
no headaches, on Windows 2000.

The Sony Media converter used to work fine prior to 3.0. It's not
so good now, but it does work most of the time, and it is good
for preview in the television colorspace. One real tricky thing is
to get a TV, or for that matter, a pro monitor REALLY calibrated
unless you have a scope. The color bars way is fairly good, but
it's still easy to get wrong. The Sony converter used to have a
stable output, but now it hiccups and shows white blocks every now
and then.

I just got a 2.2ghz, 512MB RAM PIV for Vegas stuff. The nVidia
GeForce 4 440 MX works fine on it, with two monitors. It can keep
up with 29.97 in 4:3 and most of the time 16:9 as long as the
clips are either rendered or use one of the more simple plug-in
filters. Even with a couple filters, it can keep up. Still, I wonder
how many more filters I could do in real time if the nVidia used
less CPU???

On my 1 ghz PIII that has 768MB RAM and fast drives, I was unable
to get any clip, even pre-rendered ones, to play inside of Vegas
at faster than 15 frames per second using the same exact nVidia
card. Gosh, I said. I remeber better than that! So I went out and
bought an ATI Radeon 8500 64MB card (also does dual monitors), and
- Oh Joy!! - it does 29.97 on most clips, using my PIII and
Vegas 3.0a. The ATI seems to use less CPU for everything on the
older PIII at least, and MPEG playback is way better. So far,
for low -end editing in Vegas, I like the ATI Radeon 8500, however
I dislike the weird "double wide only" desktop of it's driver
in Windows 2000.

If your computer is substandard, the first and biggest gains for
Vegas are RAM and DISK improvements. Once all that is in place,
Video and CPU do the rest. RAM helps rendering, disk speed
helps real-time playback and capture (in uncompressed video
renders disk speed REALLY helps).

I also notice a WONDERFUL improvement (about 20-30% faster) in
rendering when I went from just 512MB RAM to 768MB RAM on the
PIII.

I previously tried an ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500 with -ok- results,
but the 8500 is MUCH better. The All in Wonder drivers had some
funky dithering in MPEGS. Frankly, the original Rage 128 that the
computer came with worked about as well as the All in Wonder for
Vegas.

Part of the problem is that advanced cards use an "Overlay"
that Vegas doesn't use to do their MPEG movie playback. This
provides hardware video acceleration when you use the right
player (usually provided by the card maker, or sometimes,
as a part of Windows Media Player). Since Vegas can't use
the overlay, those expensive features are usually (but not
always) lost on many cards. (Vegas people, correct me if
I'm mistaken!). So at this point, you just need any old
24bit color card that has great 2D performance. The people at
Sonic are obviously trying to keep Vegas easy on your
pocketbook, and their doing a good job.

Given no limits of computer though, I'd say that the dual display
system software for the nVidia is much better thought out, and
easier to use than the ATI Radeon dual display. The ATI doesn't
properly support multiple desktops under Windows 2000 (what I have),
whereas the nVidia supports multiple desktops beautifully.

You'll find that some cards "fit" better with some computers
than others. Sometimes it's the AGP system, sometimes it's how
much the card's drivers use the CPU.

One strong bit of advice - today, the battle in Video cards is
all about what gamers want (at least generic VGA cards...). The
3D features often are terrific for games, but don't do much
of anything for you as a 2D video editor. It's HELL trying to
get real benchmarks on 2D video from all the reviews. Sometimes,
a fairly simply 2D card will outperform a super duper fancy 3D
card in video editing.

The ATI - nVidia experience was a real frustrating one. So,
I solved it by buying another computer to put the nVidia card
into, and then another card for my tried and true PIII. Meanwhile,
my accountant is pretty upset!

Meanwhile, I'm saving my little coins to go Digisuite, but
I'll always use Vegas for many things. I've tried dozens of
others, and I keep my soft spot for Vegas, even if it can
be tough to "brew" the right combination of video card and
CPU that really hits the spot. In a couple years when we have
our first terrabyte drives and 33 gigahertz processors, you'll
be able to do everything in Vegas in real time! Trouble is,
then we'll be rendering for HDTV. Technology is just that
way....


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I can be a jungle out there, so I say Viva Vegas Video!