Got the Canopus ADVC 100 & Pinnacle Studio 8, so now wha

[hiptune]

I've been lurking around here for many months reading up on all this cool stuff. I have a good size Laser Disc collection (many Japanese imports), and also a nice collection of officially released Concert and Performance VHS tapes that are now out of print and not in the pipeline for DVD release. I have some really nice quality things. I'm really into Hi-Fi Stereo sound (along with 4.0 & 5.1 SS) and have two high-end Hi-Fi VHS machines.

So after reading up here and thinking this through I have decided to get the gear and back up all these "rare" and oop titles sitting there on the shelf.

I realized that system shortcomings and conflicts are not all that rare. So I've decided to start from scratch, and buy the entire rig based on needs of digital capture and edit & burn. I will have a complete new computer dedicated to Capture, Edit, VCD and DVDR burning. And keep the old one for other work including audio stuff I do.

So I first bought the Canopus ADVC 100, and today picked up Pinnacle Studio 8. And now I need to buy a PC based Computer, and then add on a 120g Hard Drive just for the video captures.

1) Can anyone give me some suggestions on what version of Windows may be best? Is win98 just fine? Or do I need 2000, or a later one for best compatability?

2) Is a 40g Hard Drive fine for the OS, and a 120 added for the video capture about right?

3) Is the onboard Firewire connector just fine, or do I need to buy a particular one like the (Canopus) capture card to get primo results?

4) and one last thing, I saw somewhere here (can't find it now) where a guy had listed the proper and best system settings for Video Capture in Windows, and I would like to print that out, but lost where it is located. I am under the impression that the opitmal settings for video are different than the settings for other computing tasks.

My plan is to start with VCD burning, and get the DVD burner six months later when I am really good at editing with Studio 8 and know it inside and out.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jeff

[geek rock]

if you bought a canopus advc100 it should just connect to your onboard firewire port. nothing else needed. think of it the same as plugging in a keyboard or mouse.

as for VCD burning.. there isn't really much point in this at all. standard VCDs are average quality at best, and won't really show off the full picture quality of your original source if it's something like laserdisc.

try SVCDs or XVCDs to begin with..

-Mark

[donpedro]

If I am not mistaken Pinnacle supports (prefers) Pentium over AMD... At least that is what I remember from some news some time ago. (BTW, I use it with AMD)

Another think... I beleieve they have some kind of "supported" motherboards list somewhere.....

Try this one...

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/MenuSupport.asp?product_id=577&division_id=1&langue_id=7

[xxiangg]

Although Window98 should be fine, it has a 4G file size limitation. XP has no
file size limitation. It takes about 14G disk space to convert 1hour video.
If you use 98, you may need to convert one movie to several files. If you use
XP, you can convert one movie to one file. So XP probably is easier to use.

40G disk space is probably a little bit tight. If you capture 2hour video, it
takes about 28G disk space. After editing in Studio8, if you use Studio8 internal
MPG2 encoder, you still have enough disk space to get your work done. If you
want to use TMPGEnc to encode, you need to generate AVI for your edited video
from Studio8, then you will not have enough disk space. Although I heard that
Studio8 MPG2 encoder is very good, I still use TMPGEnc most of the time.

[pharries]

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