Ok. It's down to the wire. Time to buy. But after weeks
of following capture card posts,on this site and elsewhere,
I'm still just a little fuzzy on the requirements.
SF specifies OHCI-compliant cards, but not all decks are
compliant. And even the Pyro card--a DV favorite on this
site--does not specifically say 'OHCI' on its box. I guess
it just 'is'.
One user says Matrox (or Pinnacle) was unusable, another
prefers it.
The question boils down to:
If a card, any card can input the required analog or
digital video format and capture it as a file recognized by
VV, what does it matter? If the card can output VV's
realtime playback or any supported, rendered file, what
does it matter? For example, if I buy Pinnacle's DV500 in
order to get my required composite, S-analog and 1394
digital, both in and out--and use their capture software to
grab the file, then open that file in VV for editing, what
have I lost? Machine control? I use a hardware controller
anyway. (OK that was more than one question.)
I tried VV through most of the recent trial period. I
found it to be fast, intuitive, and I liked it a lot--
enough to specify it as the core of my system (with which I
make my living) The system I had temporarily available for
the test had a Fast-AV video card (which writes its own
flavor of M-JPEG file) and the VV demo worked well with
those files and with a variety of existing files which had
been captured by Miro cards or processed into .avi's by
Media Cleaner.
At the NAB demonstrations (April 2K), the presenter told us
that VV would work with any card recognized by Windows--
anything from an Iomega 'Buz' to a high-end Matrox. If I
remember correctly, the demo output was displayed as a
computer screen overlay and simultaneously on a full screen
(NTSC?) monitor.
OK, SF boys and girls, will the Pinnacle DV 500 do the job?
(keep in mind I need analog composite I/O, not just 1394
and my clients will start throwing rocks if I spend an hour
and a half copying their DigiBeta material to a DV deck so
I can spend another hour and a half capturing it into the
system.)
Thanks
PSP
of following capture card posts,on this site and elsewhere,
I'm still just a little fuzzy on the requirements.
SF specifies OHCI-compliant cards, but not all decks are
compliant. And even the Pyro card--a DV favorite on this
site--does not specifically say 'OHCI' on its box. I guess
it just 'is'.
One user says Matrox (or Pinnacle) was unusable, another
prefers it.
The question boils down to:
If a card, any card can input the required analog or
digital video format and capture it as a file recognized by
VV, what does it matter? If the card can output VV's
realtime playback or any supported, rendered file, what
does it matter? For example, if I buy Pinnacle's DV500 in
order to get my required composite, S-analog and 1394
digital, both in and out--and use their capture software to
grab the file, then open that file in VV for editing, what
have I lost? Machine control? I use a hardware controller
anyway. (OK that was more than one question.)
I tried VV through most of the recent trial period. I
found it to be fast, intuitive, and I liked it a lot--
enough to specify it as the core of my system (with which I
make my living) The system I had temporarily available for
the test had a Fast-AV video card (which writes its own
flavor of M-JPEG file) and the VV demo worked well with
those files and with a variety of existing files which had
been captured by Miro cards or processed into .avi's by
Media Cleaner.
At the NAB demonstrations (April 2K), the presenter told us
that VV would work with any card recognized by Windows--
anything from an Iomega 'Buz' to a high-end Matrox. If I
remember correctly, the demo output was displayed as a
computer screen overlay and simultaneously on a full screen
(NTSC?) monitor.
OK, SF boys and girls, will the Pinnacle DV 500 do the job?
(keep in mind I need analog composite I/O, not just 1394
and my clients will start throwing rocks if I spend an hour
and a half copying their DigiBeta material to a DV deck so
I can spend another hour and a half capturing it into the
system.)
Thanks
PSP