Which system is better for capturing

[rvl123]

Which one is better for capturing (be honest now )

Mac:

G4 450Mhz
512 MB SDRAM
40 GB HD

PC:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512 MB DDRAM
30GB+10GB

I have heard that MACs are overall better for video capture/editing. If this is the case, since I have an extra G4, I can use that instead and then move it to the PC for DVD-burning over LAN or CD-R.

Thank you

[malducci]

What you need to look at is the speed at which the system can write data to the hard drive - its min, max, and average.

the formula is as follows:

Horizontal_pixels * vertical_pixels * ( color_depth/8 ) * Frames_per_second

This will give the raw video MB/sec needed for video capture - using huffyuv or even lossy codec will bring down the MB/sec, but increase the CPU usage. VirtualDub has a benchmark that will simulate the above formula captured to a drive. I can't remember a MAC OS one at the moment.

What is your final objective(format) and how much free hard drive space do you have? Judging form the list of specs - I would probably go with the PC since the MAC is on the slow/old side and there are more filters/programs for creating VCD/SVCD/CVD/DVDs for the PC. Don't get me wrong - MACs are great for professional video editing - currently using a dual 1.4ghz, 2gig ram, 1tera byte HD space, and final cut pro 4 for movie production.

[MrKGB]

you need at least 60GB more disk space.