Processor Speed

[poolplayr]

Curious to know the recommended processor speed to do efficent transfers. I will be using a firewire and a dv camcorder. Looked a bit on net to see if there was such a requirement and didnt find much.

Thanks

[mats.hogberg]

Don't think there's much processor involved in DV transfer, as it's a matter of transferring binary data from one device to another (albeit at a fairly high rate).

/Mats

[poolplayr]

My computer hard drive light is working its tail off when i am transferring so i would think it is "processing". Heres why I ask, i am using ulead moviefactory and while it is caputring, the video playback on my screen is choppy and slow sometimes resulting in a "blurred" result in parts of movie if not all the movie. Its unexceptable quality.

[mats.hogberg]

Nope. Disc activity is not the same as processing. DV transfer, is just that - transfer. Like when you copy files from C: to D: (or perhaps more to the point when you copy a file from your MP3 player to your computer). I suggest you try something more optimized for DV transfer, like WinDV.

/Mats

[junkmalle]

The DV capture itself hardly requires any CPU power. But most capture programs will decode the DV stream and display it on the screen so you can see what you're capturing. I used to capture DV on a sub GHz Athlon processor without any problems. But...

Ulead DVD Movie Factory converts to MPEG on-the-fly while it's capturing. This probably requires over a GHz processor. While it's capturing it doesn't necessarily display every frame it's captured and converted, hence the choppiness. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the actual capture.

DVDMF also scales down the captured image and deinterlaces it for display (it doesn't deinterlace the saved MPEG data). This is the cause of the bluriness you see while capturing -- also while editing and mastering since it uses a similar small window to display the video. Once again, this doesn't effect the MPEG file that's burned to a DVD.

I suggest you burn a DVD to verify all this.

[INFRATOM]

Any operation requires cpu time but transfer is not cpu intensive if it is DV or AVI transfer it would be for MPG. You need to have fastest possible hard drive setup possible e.g get 10000 rpm HD set as DMA master don't run anything on that channel things like that , you can also optimize your computer for hard drive use like a file server so it would give priority to hard drive. if you get drop frames then you need more cpu power.

[sholmes202]

Vide0 processing is more dependent on RAM, a fast Hard Drive and a good video card than it is on a high end CPU. You should be fine with ANY P4 or similar processor. Several things you can easily do to make your life easier...

1) If you do a lot of large file capture/transfer/encoding etc. defrag your hard drive on a regular basis. It just speeds things up

2) Make sure that you have at least 25% of your hard drive space free at all times. The PC runs more efficently this way and is better able to manage swap files.

3) Every so often open your PC and blow the dust out with compressed air.

I hope this helps.

Holmes

[mats.hogberg]

Video processing is very processor intensive. Video card has absolutely nothing to do with it.

/Mats

[Raga]

You need to have fastest possible hard drive setup possible e.g get 10000 rpm HD set as DMA master don't run anything on that channel things like that , you can also optimize your computer for hard drive use like a file server so it would give priority to hard drive. if you get drop frames then you need more cpu power.

How much good will that actually do to you? There's only so much data you can push in and out over ATA, and most of the time you won't need a fragment of that. Capturing DV footage, you need some 30Mbps, or 3.75 MB/s. SATA maximum throughput is 150MB/s, or 1200Mbps. So SATA vs. PATA clearly isn't an issue. As far as RPM goes, if your seek time is 8.5ms or 5.5ms, how much of a difference will that make in any real life video editing? Where does the difference come out in speed, in doing what exactly? Please help me out if I'm missing something.

2) Make sure that you have at least 25% of your hard drive space free at all times. The PC runs more efficently this way and is better able to manage swap files.

As far as I know, the swap file space is already reserved off your disk space. I have C:\pagefile.sys here, 1.40GB. Or do you mean swap files of different software you use? 25% is an awfully generic figure to give, since there's a gulf of difference between 25% off a 80GB drive and off a 300GB drive.

While I agree that it's a good idea to keep at least 15% space on each drive to be able to defragment them, this really doesn't have anything to do with managing swap files. What you need for software swap files is up to your software, and in any case I'd think 10GB should be plenty enough, unless your software is dumb enough to forget deleting the temporary files after the work is over.

[sholmes202]

I have found that PCs run most efficiently with 25% free space on the hard drive...admittedly the performance boost would not be felt in most cases. However with the demands of video processing every little bit helps. Also various software sets up their own temporary or swap file space which can eat into your drive as well, so I like to allow for that. The 25% number is admittedly my own preference and you can certainly play around to find a balance that works for you.

Holmes

[edDV]

Assuming a separate capture drive, DV transfer requires ATA-66 or better disk controller and drive. As stated, CPU activity is limited to preview display. Single drive systems may drop frames if the OS takes control of the drive system for background tasks.

Any operation requires cpu time but transfer is not cpu intensive if it is DV or AVI transfer it would be for MPG. You need to have fastest possible hard drive setup possible e.g get 10000 rpm HD set as DMA master don't run anything on that channel things like that , you can also optimize your computer for hard drive use like a file server so it would give priority to hard drive. if you get drop frames then you need more cpu power.

Way overkill for single streams. A 5400RPM ATA-100 (controller and drive) offers more than adequate safety margin for single stream DV transfer.

Vide0 processing is more dependent on RAM, a fast Hard Drive and a good video card than it is on a high end CPU. You should be fine with ANY P4 or similar processor. Several things you can easily do to make your life easier...

In my experience 256-512MB RAM is sufficient unless the application calls for more (e.g some advanced filters). HDD needs to be fast enough but no faster. 3D features on a video card go unused. Save your money. Low end current models have all the needed 2D power and I/O.

Video processing is all about CPU power. We all are used to waiting hours for renders.

1) If you do a lot of large file capture/transfer/encoding etc. defrag your hard drive on a regular basis. It just speeds things up

2) Make sure that you have at least 25% of your hard drive space free at all times. The PC runs more efficently this way and is better able to manage swap files.

3) Every so often open your PC and blow the dust out with compressed air.

good advice

The DV capture itself hardly requires any CPU power. But most capture programs will decode the DV stream and display it on the screen so you can see what you're capturing. I used to capture DV on a sub GHz Athlon processor without any problems. But...

Ulead DVD Movie Factory converts to MPEG on-the-fly while it's capturing. This probably requires over a GHz processor. While it's capturing it doesn't necessarily display every frame it's captured and converted, hence the choppiness. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the actual capture.

DVDMF also scales down the captured image and deinterlaces it for display (it doesn't deinterlace the saved MPEG data). This is the cause of the bluriness you see while capturing -- also while editing and mastering since it uses a similar small window to display the video. Once again, this doesn't effect the MPEG file that's burned to a DVD.

I suggest you burn a DVD to verify all this.

If attempting a realtime MPeg2 encode, ULead suggests minimum 2 GHz. I say 2.4GHZ just barely keeps up for a dedicated capture machine. More CPU power allows greater compression.

[Raga]

Assuming a separate capture drive, DV transfer requires ATA-66 or better disk controller and drive. As stated, CPU activity is limited to preview display. Single drive systems may drop frames if the OS takes control of the drive system for background tasks.

Where do you get ATA-66 from? DV stream is nowhere near the maximum throughput of ATA-66. Anyhow, I don't suppose you get ATA-33 hard drives these days..

[edDV]

In theory ATA-33 can work but my old IBM deskstar would loose it. Remember, sustained transfer over an hour is way different from burst. Old rule of thumb in those days was divide advertised sustained rate by 4 or more.

Also remember the max sustained rate differs from beginning to end of drive.

For newer systems, this may help. Effective DV transfer is approx 36 Mb/s (video + audio + IEEE-1394 overhead). Rate to drive is approx 30 Mb/s.

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/white_papers/av_white_papers.pdf

For the typical user, RAID will not be needed.

[junkmalle]

For newer systems, this may help. Effective DV transfer is approx 36 Mb/s (video + audio + IEEE-1394 overhead). Rate to drive is approx 30 Mb/s.

Just to be clear, those values are megabits per second. ATA33 is ~30 megabytes per second -- although the sustained throughput was nowhere near that on drives of that generation.