transportation of captured video.

[Greg12]

i seem to have a small problem.

my analog capture card is located in my dell desktop.

however i do not wish to encode on that machine because my laptop is 500mhz faster. also my parents use the desktop and i don't want to tie it up. also i can leave the laptop on for a long long time.

is usb the best way to move the files which can be any size but not more than 2 gigs.

or is splitting and burning to cd-rw the best way to go.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Greg12 on 2001-10-19 21:55:20 ]</font>

[Shabubu]

USB transfer cables are pretty pricey, if you don't mind waiting a loooong time, get a parralel poet file transfer cable and use that, it should be cheaper (though if you have the cash the USB will be slightly faster and easier to set up). Though remember you'll only be transfering at about 12 Mb/s, so it's going to take you a while.

[Hateslife]

Learn this good: USB is god-awful slow. At it's maximum speed, normal USB is 11 mbps. Most of the time, when you get cables longer than a foot or two, it drops.

I bet you can guess what throughput is when you try to use USB to link computers together.

Bad idea, man. The time wasted burning a dozen CDRW's is better than moving it over a jury-rigged USB network.

Of course, the other possibility is using a real ethernet network (which would cost like 50$ to set up, 40$ for a laptop NIC, 5$ for a desktop NIC, 5$ for a cross-over cable)

It would still take forever, since the throughput on a 100mbps network is more like 8-12 mbps under good conditions. Still, forever is better than eternity

[Hateslife]

Oh yes, please remember that mbps, with a lower-case m, is megaBITS per second, not megaBYTES. 8 bits per byte. You do the math.

It would take a looong time over USB... Lets not even think about parallel. The electricity you would use transferring it over a parallel connection would cost more than buying copies of the stuff you taped onto your hard drive.

[Greg12]

i posted anouther question in the capturing forum.

you know the nic may be an option.

my laptop has a built in eithernet card and 56k modem.

my desktop gets a eithernet when we get cable net.

[Vejita-sama]

The cheapest/easiest way to transfer file between two PCs is with a "cross over cable" (aka a gaming cable). This is an RJ45 cable with the leads reversed (if you do a web search you can learn how to make your own if you want).

Assuming both PCs have ethernet ports just plug the cable between both PCs, enable sharing, give the same workgroup name, and you're done.

A cross over cable should cost ~$8 but last time I was a Compusa they wanted a fair bit more than that IIRC