simultaneously capture from 3 cameras into Vegas?

beatnik wrote on 5/21/2003, 11:52 AM

Can this be done? Instead of buying three Expensive harddrive capture devices, ie. Capdv or Firestore, can I hook-up three camcorders to one computer running Vegas
and simultaneously capture from all three cameras. I tried this with two Sony PD-150's
and Vegas would only recognise the first camera and ignore the second. What I would like to do is capture to disk instead of tape as this would give me more footage per camera AND I don't have to spend hours on post capture!

If anybody has a fix, such as a low cost capture firewire harddrive, or a cheap laptop
I can then hook one up to EACH camera.

Thanks,

Alex

Comments

mikkie wrote on 5/21/2003, 12:48 PM
Far as I know this is usually done with/thru hardware as it's asking a bit more then your PC might be able to handle bandwidth-wise, but could always be wrong.
filmy wrote on 5/21/2003, 4:34 PM
Not that this is "low cost" if you are buying 3 of them - but would this do the trick for you?

http://www.adstech.com/media/mediafiles/PR_PYRODVDrive.htm
Caruso wrote on 5/21/2003, 8:15 PM
Maybe I missed something in the ADS blurb, but I don't see where that solution allows for simultaneous recording from multiple cams.

I didn't know that ADS had a direct cam --> disk offering, and I admit that I like the idea, however, I think at present it's a bit pricey for the amount of storage offered. I wonder if the drive is interchangeable with a larger unit.

This is a bit like the old video days when you carried a relatively compact camera tethered to a large and heavy Beta "portable" recording deck.

Those cams would rival the models offered today for compactness, but those recording decks more than cancelled out that benefit, and, to my knowledge, the decks had to be plugged in (I could be wrong about this).

In any event, I don't see where the ADS portable HD answers the wish expressed by the original poster.

I can only imagine what sort of computer it might take to be able to caputure simultaenously from three cams without crashing, bogging down, or dropping frames.

I'll be curious to see what the rest of the board has to say about this interesting (if, perhaps, fanciful) topic.

Caruso
Sab wrote on 5/21/2003, 8:36 PM
To the best of my knowledge, the only product that facilitates three simultaneous captures is made by Canopus. It is bindled with the DVStorm2 package. The first time we tried it our jaws dropped collectively. It seems it wasn't all that long ago that efficiently capturing 1 stream was a chore. Since switching to Vegas last fall, we don't use our Storm/Premiere systems very much but we do enjoy the multi capture thing.

Mike
filmy wrote on 5/21/2003, 11:13 PM
The question ended with the hard drive question and saying "I can then hook one up to EACH camera." 3 cameras would equal 3 drives, or did I miss soething? :)