Help Me Take the Plunge

[btieleman]

I have been doing allot of reading, on this and other websites/forums, in an attempt to get off to the best start in digital video. I’d sincerely appreciate any opinions, insight, and/or direction you could provide – in that I’m at that dangerous point where I "THINK" I’ve got things figured out and I am ready to buy. But first, some background...

My *initial* goal is simply:
1) archive all my 120 min. VHS and Hi8 home movies as AVI’s.
2) convert all my 120 min. VHS and Hi8 home movies straight to DVD.

Once I gain more knowledge and experience, I *later* intend to:
3) edit and author the archived AVI’s into polished DVD’s.

My system is currently equipped as follows...

Model: Dell Dimension 4400
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 1.80GHz
Memory: 1024MB (1GB) PC133/DDR SDRAM
OS: Windows XP Professional Version 5.1.2600
Monitor: 17” Dell P792-FD Trinitron 32bit True Color
(max resolution 1600x1200 @ 75Hz)
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9600XT AGP-8X 128MB-DDR
Hard Disk: 40GB IDE Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM
IBM Deskstar 60GXP
Hard Disk: 160GB IDE Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM
Seagate ST3160023A
DVD Burner: Sony DWU14A DVD+|-R, DVD+|-RW, CD-R|RW
Sound Card: Creative SB Live Wave Device 16bit 44kHz
USB Port 1: 82801BA/BAM USB 1.1(?)
Universal Host Controller - 2442
USB Port 2: 82801BA/BAM USB 1.1(?)
Universal Host Controller – 2444

My video source/players will necessarily be my Sony TR400 Hi8 camcorder, and a Panasonic PV-4661 VHS 4-Head VCR.

I was initially considering Pinnacle’s Studio Deluxe 8, or ADS’s InstantDVD+DV, but dismissed both for all the bad rap they get. I’ve decided to spend the extra coin on good/versatile/scalable hardware and do things (hopefully) right at the start with:

- Canopus ADVC-300 (to clean/correct/convert with A/V lock)
- ADS Pyro 1394b PCI FireWire Card (high quality DV interface)
- WinDV 1.2.3 (to capture)
- TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 (to encode)
- Nero 6.0 (to burn)

I’m thinking that I can then subsequently work to learn basic editing with TMPGEnc Plus 2.5; adding TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.5 to get my arms around DVD authoring.

Later, if my time and effort pays off and I show some promise, I’d like to step up to a DV camcorder and perhaps Vegas+DVD 4.0.

Before I pull the trigger, I’d very much appreciate the benefit of your experience, input, and suggestions on my intended initial setup/selections, and approach. The dvdrhelp site has been a tremendous resource for me, but this is still quite a pantload for a newbie to grok.

Am I on the right track? Missing something? Could I do better up front? Please feel free to comment at length.

Thanks very much for your time and consideration.

Bill T

[indolikaa]

Now this is what a 'newbie' post should look like!

No complaints here, but four observations:

* You will find you need to move from .avi to polished .avi to DVD rather quickly. DV.avi is about 13GB/hour, so your hard disk space will get used up rather quickly. You'll find it's not that difficult to make the transition. You could also encode to a file you're happy with and simply store that file on DVD±RW discs until you're ready to author.

* The hardware is more than adequate. I run an Athlon 1200, and the only 'problem' I have is that encoding takes a lot of time. Your P4 should decrease the encoding time dramatically.

* I've used your software process in the past with no problems. I author and burn with DVD-lab, but your process should work fine.

* A Time-Base Corrector is always advisable with videotape transfers, but your results may be satisfactory without one. My camcorder has one built-in, so I use that to passthru analog signals on their way to the FireWire port. I still purchased an external TBC for my ATI AIW card, though.

I think you're just fine with this setup.