Also, when you need some stuff on the fly (like weather map chroma keying) you need it now, can't render. Someone who wants me to do some editing for him uses an Avid system with 80 real-time layers and realtime DV output. I use Vegas. But, he needs to do several variations of a 30 minute show, and i just doo smalltime stuff. But he can't use Vegas, he's stuf with Avid.

From my limited knowledge of this topic, I felt the same way about not being tied down to one companies hardware solution.

But from the sounds of it, hardware does seem to allow some features that aren't available with a software only based solution.

So does Vegas support any of these hardware based solutions?

Cliff

I can't speak for all hardware solutions but currently if you wanted to do multi real real-time effects you would need a supercharged system and some sort of hardware solution. Also currently VV can not capture or PPT any HD material and currently VV does not offer any sort of Hardware solution for it.

As a thought you might consider this - while VV does not support Hardware for *video* it does indeed support it for Audio. Sure you can create surround mixes with VV but if you want to actually hear a surround mix you need the hardware to be able to do so. I would like SoFo to have that option with the video side of things as well. Sort of being able to purchase a great 'one price' software that functions well on its own but one that, if you have the need too, can greatly expand *what* you can do by additional hardware. For the HD example I gave, VV and hardware support would mean you could get a BlueFish 444 card.

My issues with Hardware/Software combos is that if the software part relies *only* on one hardware solution (Such as the early D/Vision NLE relied only on the Intel Action Media II card) when the hardware stops being made you are sol unless the software is open ended (Such as Premiere) toward hardware. On the negative side Adobe has partnered with so many hardware solutions that you get a company like Pinnacle and all these people go out and purchase their hardware and find it does not really work well. Than the backlash is that you have thousands of people saying that the software sucks when in reality is is more of a driver/hardware issue in those cases. (Before anyone goes off on Premiere my point is that time after time after time, if you read these posts, you see wording like "Premiere sucks. I spent blah blah dollars on a Pinnacle DV25/300/500/whatever and it crashes all the time")

Does anyone know if its technically feasible to design an accelerated video hardware editing card that looks to software as if it is a plain old OHCI firewire card?

For the sake of argument, here, let's just limit this concept to DV editing.

If so, why in God's name hasn't anyone built such a thing yet?

>>I see companies like...Pinnacle...still pushing these hardware based solutions for video editing.

The Pinnacle proprietary capture card/breakout box setup cannot do anything that the Canopus ADVC-100 with firewire cannot do...except tie you down to the Pinnacle-only software, with the sole exception of Scenalyzer capture software.

I personally would stay away from proprietary hardware...but that's just me.

I'm sure such a thing could be built. It would do color correction and blurs and maybe supersampling. It could do frame resizing. Basically it would do post-processing.

But consider. It's doing the work to a digital stream. Why not have the card write the data to disk instead of/as well as outputing it via 1394? At a minumum it would work as well as windows media encoder.

To make it worthwhile it has to be usable by any nle. To make it really spiff it ought to be controllable by an nle with keyframes. This would mean a plug-in effect. In vegas it could be used on a video bus track. Vegas would do nothing except set keyframes.

It also has to be capable of NOT working in realtime-to just assist in renders. This way it doesn't absolutly have to keep up.

I think that it's surely possible but that Sofo and everyone else would probably have to write their plugins for it.

I wonder if you could do something similar with dual processors-send the postprocessing jobs to processor number 2?

Rob Mack

Some of the NLE vendors that have relied on their own hardware have had big problems in Mac land. Every time Apple would make a big hardware change there was a good chance the upgrade path was closed off for that NLE.

One instance was a change (drop) in the amount of power delivered to the PCI bus. It meant that you couldn't put a particular card into a newer and faster system. The company had to redesign or just think more seriously about moving to the PC.

Another will be the new 64bit G5 with PCI-X slots. You could well see a few companies jump ship rather than spend the cash on developement.

The point here is that the hardware NLE providers are in a tough spot when they rely on one company for a system platform. In the same way, users can be in a tough spot too if they have to rely on one and only one hardware vendor.

I'd like to see a few cards that provide some very generic services like color correction, frame resizing, etc. I also think it is crucial that if I hand off a Veg file that uses those services to someone that doesn't have the card that the services can still be rendered in software.

Rob Mack