Music & Video

An area for people to discuss Scope related problems, issues, etc.

Moderators: valis, garyb

Post Reply
Christos
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2003 4:00 pm
Location: Athens, Greece
Contact:

Post by Christos »

Hello there
I am working on a PC with Pentium III, 512 Ram, Cubase VST32 5.1, Widows XP. 3HDs and a Pulsar II Plus. Minimal settings, no prob-lems. As I am interested to make music for TV ads, I must have the ability to capture Video and make it AVI, so I can work it with Cubase ( I have used Video Module in Cubase with AVI and it works just fine ). I bought a Pinnacle DC10-Plus ( PCI card ) which does Analog capturing and comes with Studio 8 software for editing. I couldn't make it work although the Pinnacle requirements were below my system. I suspect some kind of conflict with Pulsar. (The card DID worked on a friend's Pentium IV without CW Product on ). I am asking if somebody has similar experience and how to deal with it. I am thinking of buying Formac Studio DV ( a Firewire converter ) and add a firewire port to my PC or even buy a Mac G4.
Thanks.
User avatar
alfonso
Posts: 2225
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Fregene.
Contact:

Post by alfonso »

PCI Video card is not recommended with audio cards and expecially CW cards.

put the PCI video card in another (cheaper) computer.
Spirit
Posts: 2661
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Terra Australis

Post by Spirit »

I've got an Osprey 210 analog capture card sitting alongside my Pulsar-II and it works fine. I use Vegas to capture through it.

I think the problem here may not be so much having two PCI cards, but using Pinnacle gear. It's just my opinion based on anecdotal evidence in various forums, but I believe Pinnacle gear to be very sub-standard.

I used to have a low-end Pinnacle capture device and software and is was shockingly slow and bug-ridden. Their forums was full of complaints with no fix available.

I ripped it all out, just threw it in the rubbish and got the Osprey card and Vegas instead.

Problems over.

If I was building things again now I'd just forget about an anlog capture card and use Firewire instead and capture the DV feed. If you have an analog cource I'd route that through your videocamera and do it that way.

The biggest problem I've had with video is in the capture phase. Although the Osprey is an excellent card and does not drop frames, there are many issues with what compression codec you use to capture and then how these interact with other compression techniques and codecs, framerates etc you might use when rendering.

Capturing uncompressed is not a great option since the files are so huge.
User avatar
wayne
Posts: 2377
Joined: Sun Dec 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Australia

Post by wayne »

I recently installed a firewire card that came bundled with pinnacle studio dv clip, and it is cheap and low end, but no probs with it. You will need fancier software for professional work i suppose.

as Spirit says, go digital if you can
Post Reply