UDMA100 or UDMA133 or Raid ???

[lobomatic]

Hi folks!

Ok, I want to upgrade my Celeron 400 to have the capabilities to make quality AVI-Caps with biggest possible resolution, means 720x576. So I thought of buying an AMD XP 1800+ and 512 Megs of DDR-Ram. That should do it at least for SVCD. I additionally thought about a RAID-UDMA133-System, which means U133-HDs and a motherboard, with U133-RAID-Controller onboard, because a Controller-Card slows down everything in my eyes, but I recognized, that I don't have the money for a 133RAID-System, cuz I'm currently in school and don't have a job. BUT I could afford a "normal" U133-System, which means one HD OR a RAID-UDMA100 System, cause those hardware is much cheaper than the rather new U133 parts. Mathematically the RAID100 System have to be better, cause U133 transfers 133MB/s and RAID-0 (UDMA100) up to 200 MB/s, but I can't test it, so what are your expectations, experiences or suggestions ?

thx lobomatic

[Allan55]

Hi,

I'm using a 60GB 5400 (yes 5400) RPM Maxtor drive with an Athlon 1200MHz (C step) CPU and can capture trouble-free from a Dazzle Hollywood Bridge (720x480 DV) with no trouble (no dropped frames, nothing) under Win98-2 and XP. I use Ulead VideoStudio 5 for longer (continuous) and Dazzle's own software for under 19min (4GB in Win98-2) captures.

I think just about any 800MHz+ processor is adequate, as is any current HD because all? of them are capable of AV capture.

Post-capture processing to MPEG is another matter... Faster, newer processors do make a difference here, as does more memory.

[lobomatic]

yeah i know the hollywood bridge seems to be kinda brilliant, but its also expensive AND I don't have the firewire port to connect with the bridge, so thats not a real alternative.
The point is, there are basically two ways in capturing:
1. Digital: You need i.e. the hollywood bridge to convert, or a digital source and a capture card with firewire, which handles the stuff. Because the signal comes in digital, you do not need much processing power, BUT the digital cards (i.e. Hollywood Bridge costs 450€=500$) are expensive.
2. Analog: You need a TV-Card with S-Video-IN AND a fast computer, cause the pc must convert the analog signal into a digital one, which is more intensiv than just capture a digital signal.
The point is, that no matter if you are cap digitally or analog the quality cannot be better than the quality of the original (I cap from S-VHS for example).
So I got two choices:
Buy the bridge AND a low-cost newer CPU (like a 1Ghz Celeron) and cap that stuff OR I buy a up-to-date CPU like 1800+ XP AMD. Because I want to use my PC for gaming also and not only for capturing, I decided to go the analog way, cause quality is quite the same, but requirements differ like hell. So I want to know, if U100/U133/RAID makes any difference in speed or if only the CPU/Ram counts.

so long fl3xX

[lobomatic]

anyway I don't think anything can beat uncompressed AVI-Capturing, cause there u have the FULL quality of the source and can edit out things like flicker or other things with tmpgenc easily. Maybe its not the fastest way to make quality VCDs, SVCDs, but it is the best way, if u want quality, but you need a fast pc.

[Allan55]

Firewire cards are cheap! I paid $45 Canadian (maybe $25 US) for a no-name with the Texas Instruments Chipset.

Consider your quality choice carefully! Also your gaming needs! Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com) says that the video card is the most important thing for games (e.g. the XBOX has a 700Mhz CPU and a Geforce3 video chip). I have the Asus V8200 (GeForce3) which also does captures but the capture quality is terrible (I'm very disappointed here). I was using a Pinnacle DC10+ but it doesn't work very well either and Pinnacle has been terrible about supporting it beyond Win98.

I suggest you back-off on CPU power and HD performance and spend the money on a good video card and a good capture system.

One thing I've noticed here is that people have varying attitudes to quality and it takes some reading and learning to match comments (including mine) to your own desires. This is just an observation and not a criticism of anybody!

[lobomatic]

Allan you are right, you can't expect a good video card to be a great capture card also, but, and you are right, that everybody must define the word 'quality' for himself, but currently I can do perfect VCD caps with my Hauppauge Card and Celeron 400 / 256 MB Ram with a few settings in tmpgenc like 'noise reduction' etc. So why don't stay in this line ? I think a fast pc is always a good capture system, cause I think any Card with S-Video-IN will do great caps, if your system is fast enough. As I've already said, you can either get a digital-converter like the hollywood bridge and back-off on some cpu-power or you can go the analog way, which means fast cpu, DDR-Ram, good HD...in my eyes that'S both quite the same. A friend of mine got the hollywood bridge and there is really NO DIFFERENCE betwenn his DV-->VCD caps and my AVI --> VCD caps if we use the same source (S-VHS), except that my caps are brighter.

so long lobomatic

[Allan55]

I think any Card with S-Video-IN will do great caps, if your system is fast enough.

Elsewhere I just responded that my Asus V8200 Deluxe (GeForce3 with VIVO etc) is a lousy capture device. Perhaps it's the drivers but without better drivers what difference does it make?

It's been plugged into both a 1.2GHz T'bird (C step) and an XP 1400+ Athlon with no difference in capture. Either computer is way faster than needed for capturing.

The same comments apply to a friend's computer with the same video card; I don't remember his specs.

[OptimusPrime22]

So from what I can tell, it would be good to have either the fast CPU and a good video cap card OR something like the Hollywood Bridge. I'm looking at getting the fast CPU AND the Hollywood Bridge because then I can convert the DV to MPEG faster as well. 2 Big Hard Drives and Windows 2000 will pretty much be the rest of the setup. From what I can tell, AVIs are faster to convert in TMPEG than any other file so a DV AVI with high quality would bethe fastes thing to convert. If anyone has any experience with this then I would LOVE to hear.

[Allan55]

Major decision points for the DV Bridge:

• High quality capture (including audio in one device) beyond what I need now but maybe I won't have to upgrade so soon.

• The Bridge is a completely external device; therefore no motherboard compatibility issues which appear to exist for the 'Digital Video Creator II' (this appears to be true; it's been plugged-into 2 different VIA chipset MBs (KT133A and KT266A and works fine). Both MB use no-name firewire cards with Texas Instruments chips.

• Longer life (no special drivers) because it "looks like" a digital camera on a firewire port (I hope)

Faster MPEG encoding is an issue for me right now. It appears (no real testing) that the a 1.2GHz C-step T'bird is faster than an XP 1400+ processor and I have no idea why. Don't rely on this! I've switched the XP1400+ to WinXP and can't further test this.

I'm not a fan of Win 2K; and WinXP is slowly getting more stable. If you can wait a while, consider WinXP.