building a computer strickly for capturing video.

[IGUANA_AL]

I am building a computer strickly for capturing video from my Sony Hi8 camcorder and burning dvd's. I would like some suggestions on the best inexpensive motherboard with firewire and cpu to buy. Thanks for any help.

[harley2ride]

Find a good motherboard that supports sata drives (you want two drives, one for os/software, one for video files), you want ata133 bus speed, support for at least a 2.8ghz pentium 4 or the AMD equiv., you want firewire support, and ddr2 ram (1gb) is plenty. Those are what I would suggest as minimum requirements. You also want good cooling (a good 450w power supply(antec true power) with dual fans, plus two case fans. Rather than build my own, I would watch for deals. Yesterday, dell had a 2.8ghz dual processor, with 1gb ram, 20" lcd, 256mb x600 video card, 7.1 onboard sound, dvd burner and cdrw, with a 160gb sata drive for $823.00. Don't think you can build one for that...

[junkmalle]

Capturing using what kind of device? Firewire DV? Hardware MPEG2? Raw YUY2?

What processor manufacturer? AMD? Intel?

[budz]

I'd suggest getting a PCI FIREWIRE CARD instead of one built into the mobo.

[ranchhand]

I built the following to capture fam. videos from analog Sony camcorder to my Harddrive, works flawlessly at hi-res. Plus my son plays every game known to man, including online US Army and others with totally smooth performance.

Chip: AMD xpBarton 3000 (2.2 MHz)
Board: Shuttle AN35N (no longer made, a few maybe at Outpost.com) $65
V.Card: ATI Radeon 8500LE/64
1gig DDR pc3200 RAM/333 FSB
USB2
System running at 333FSB
Case: Aspire X-Dreamer w/top blowhole

Entire system cost about 1.5 years ago: $600

Hope this helps. Oh, BTW, for those who remember me posting with problems in the Capture forum, my probs. were with getting editing proggies to recognize my capture card, but when I did get some result the capture was flawless at highest settings.

[whitejremiah]

2.2mhz? wow...time for an upgrade :P i'd definately recommend going with AMD (sorry, i dont like intel) and if your looking for firewire, you can even get that built into some higher end soud cards these days...i wouldnt bother with trying to go out of your way to locate it specifically built into the motherboard...that and the fact that you can buy firewire cards for probably around 30 dollars at your nearest computer parts shop (best buy if you live in the USA should carry em......)

[GreyDeath]

As far as Harley suggesting buying a Dell, there is a drawback. They put so much crap on it that you'd probably have to blow away the harddrive and do a fresh install of XP to get the most performance.

I bought my brother a Dell XPS for gaming, and it couldn't smoothly run the games he plays with even 512megs of RAM. I looked in the task manager and he had 54 processes running, wtf?

Also, another drawback buying a name brand system is that most of the time, they really limit your options in the BIOS. The Dell couldn't even adjust CPU clock speeds or the RAM Latency.

If you're comfortable building systems I'd go for that, the 2 biggest factors in capturing and encoding would be CPU and RAM, and at least a 7200rpm Hard Drive--THREE biggest factors... :P

[harley2ride]

True about Dell, but clean up the crap (no need to reformat), turn off the apps and tasks, update drivers, and you have a good system for the money (as long as you wait for the deals). For Example: Dell 9100 3.0ghz dual proc, 1gb ddr533, nvidia 6800, 20" Digital LCD, DVD/RW, DVD-Rom, 160gb Sata, 5.1 surround speakers, 7.1 audio, all for $1200.00
So what if you have to do a little tweaking. Their normal price sucks, but the deals are great.

[Paul William]

I'd suggest getting a PCI FIREWIRE CARD instead of one built into the mobo.

Why is a standalone firewire card better than being integrated into the motherboard? - Paul

[Mister Flonk-Flonk]

If all you're doing is capturing via firewire you don't need to go crazy building a fast system with SATA drives or DDR2 memory or any of that crap. You can capture via firewire on just about any PC equipped with a firewire port and enough hard drive space. Regular EIDE drives are MORE than fast enough for this. Even the really old ones that are less than 7200rpm drives. As for encoding your DV AVI files to MPEG2 for DVD, you don't need a particularly fast and expensive machine for that, either. The video quality is going to be the same. The only difference is speed. How fast do you want to go? You can get by with as little as a 500mhz CPU and 128 MB RAM for video encoding if you really had to. It will just take forever. I'd recomend at least a 1 Ghz processor and 512MB RAM for any encoding, personally. That equipped with a firewire port would be my bare minimum threshold for doing any kind of video work. The big powerful and fast systems are nice but they're really overkill for firewire capturing. You only need that kind of bigtime CPU horsepower for capturing stuff with an internal capture card. System stability is critical for that type of capturing. All you're doing with a firewire connection is transferring....you aren't really capturing at all.

My $.02


HTH

[Mister Flonk-Flonk]

As for PCI vs onboard IEEE 1394 ports.....it's all serial.

PCI
Firewire
USB

All are serial ports and fast enough for transferring DV AVI to the hard drive.

[Joex444]

The only capturing I've done is from TV tuners, but with that, the original post inquired about capturing Hi8. Now, after a quick google (not having a camcorder, I only had an idea of what Hi8 was), I realized Hi8 is a tape format, which is not the same as DV. Going with that logic, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but you would then need a PC that is capable of actually capturing 30 fps without dropping them since it would then be like a TV stream.

With that prefaced, while a huge AMD fan, I'll say that Intel is better at encoding performance in a head-to-head comparison based on what the two processors involved in the comparisons are able to do on any non-encoding based job. That may sound confusing, but if a 3.0GHz P4 can perform equievlant to an Athlon 64 3000+ (let's say, the S754 version) in gaming, WinRar, content creation benchmarks, etc. then it's a fair chance that the P4 will outperform the Athlon in encoding.

However, as an AMD fan, I still recommend it even though the sole purpose would be encoding. Why? A 3.0GHz P4 and Athlon 64 3000+ might not perform equally, but a 3.0GHz P4 and an Athlon 64 3200+ (S939) probably will, maybe the Athlon can even edge out the P4. But, why compare those two CPUs? They're much closer in price! The price disparity becomes greater as the clock speed ramps up, too. If you compare, dollar for dollar, then you'd look at a P4 3.4GHz or an Athlon 3700+ (S939). I think at this point, the Athlon wins...

Moving on, however, one can realize other price differences. For example, the motherboard & RAM are going to be platform dependent. You can still get good S939 AGP boards for ~$65. AMD boards use DDR1 as opposed to DDR2. This leads to lower latency and PC3200 is cheap. [Though, if I were in the market for 2GB DIMMs, DDR2 has DDR1 on that.] OK...

Now, video card. You just want something to run a monitor. If the motherboard has it integrated, use it! You don't need a seperate video card let alone an accelerator to encode video or capture video.

Monitors....if you don't have one, you need one. For video applications, I use CRT. I bought my 19" Samsung CRT for $200 last year (strange, it's selling for $220 now...) and love it. It's big, yes, but I have room. Decent 19" LCDs start around $250, not a big savings, but CRT displays the picture better (probably due to LCD's viewing angle problems).

Hard Drives are very important for capturing streams (though less important that if you were capturing DV [I say this because I believe DV will send data only as fast as the PC can handle it, where as Hi8 will play the tape and the PC gets what it can]). If I could build one, it would have 3 or 4 hard drives. I'd use 4 if the data on the tapes would be overwritten before I can get the digital format on DVD. What I would get: a 7200RPM 8MB cache 80GB for the OS. Three identical (or 2, if the tapes will not be used again before it makes its way on DVD) hard drives (SATA preferably, but ATA is fine for this purpose), ~250GB each with 16MB buffers (tho 8MB is fine). Then, because my motherboard would have RAID5 capability, I would make a 500GB RAID5 array. Then if one drive fails the data is still there. If the tapes are kept until it's on DVD, then I don't need RAID5, I don't need the 4th hard drive. Practically every board offers RAID1. I would RAID0 the two 250GB drives to make a 500GB drive array (notice that 3x250GB RAID5 is = capacity to 2x250GB RAID0; 3rd drive was for data security). Sure, if one of the two HDs fail everything on both drives is lost, but the tapes are still there, and you can just recapture everything.

RAM...2x512MB PC3200 2-2-2-5 would be about enough. If you can get 2x1GB or 3x512MB, that might be a little better, but encoding (dedicated) should be happy with 1GB.

Dual vs Single core. This issue depends solely on how you capture. If your capturing program is single-threaded then you should get single core. If it is capable of multi-threading, then dual core is an option. Note that a 3800+ X2 is some $70 more than a 3700+ 64. The 3800+ is a dual 2.0GHz 512K part, while the 3700+ is a single 2.2GHz 1MB part (essentially a 3500+ with 2x the L2). Though, for $20 less than an X2 3800+ you can get a 64 3800+. The single core is a 2.4GHz with 512k. So, if you have multi-threaded encoding programs/capturing programs (with Hi8, this is the more important aspect), the question that you have is whether 2x2.0GHz or 1x2.4GHz is faster. I think the dual core wins, but with single-threaded program, the single core wins because the 2nd core isn't used at all.

If you can build a PC yourself, do it, Dell (et al) are absolute shit. I've worked out equivelant retail pricing for the items involved in a Dell PC, and can say that I can build a better PC for less money, several hundred less if the Dell price is >$1000 or so.

[BTW, XP Pro can be hacked to make software RAID5 drive arrays]

I won't touche the issue of IEEE1394 interfacing, however, if you're board doesn't have it, you will need a PCI card. And if you look for boards that do have it, you limit your options. Mine has it but I don't have any IEEE1394 devices, so it's just a useless bonus. Yay!

OK, OK, nobody actually read it, so...HD & RAM important, capture time important. Need low latency fast RAM and fast CPU to capture. Encoding needs a good HD, though a RAID array is best. For DVD burners, I haven't used one, but hear good things about the Benq DW1640 (~$40). For encoding machines, video cards are absolute meaningless, so the person who mentioned Dell's 'deal' with a 20" LCD & Geforce 6800...pretty meaningless stuff right there.

I have a 1.5 year old Athlon XP 3000+/2.1GHz/400MHz bus/512MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-6/RAID0: 2xSeagate 7200.8 8MB 120GB/GF3 Ti 200 [older than 1.5 years...]. I can capture TV without dropping frames at 320x240 in Divx, but the card won't allow capturing in 640x480, 720x480. However, a program I have will record in 640x480 (not truely capturing here, since it's upsizing on the fly), and it will rarely drop frames in MPEG2.

S939 v 754: 939 wins... don't think about 754. Not enough RAM bandwidth.

[Paul William]

As for encoding your DV AVI files to MPEG2 for DVD, you don't need a particularly fast and expensive machine for that, either. The video quality is going to be the same. The only difference is speed. How fast do you want to go? You can get by with as little as a 500mhz CPU and 128 MB RAM for video encoding if you really had to. It will just take forever.

It won't take forever..., just 42 hours (by my estimation) to encode one hour of video to DVD quality MPEG2 using the 500mhz PC. Based on the video encoding computer benchmarking thread located here, if you had a really fast AMD 64 X2 based system, it would only take 4 hours to encode the captured video to MPEG2. Build the fastest computer you can afford, if you don't want each encode to take "FOREVER". - Paul

[INFRATOM]

How much do want to spend? for capturing you need a motherboard + cpu pentium 4 2.8 and the fastest hard drive you can buy like WD raptor. You got lots of info above if it didn't make sense go to Tom's Hardware guide and take one of those examples.

[davideck]

I am building a computer strickly for capturing video from my Sony Hi8 camcorder and burning dvd's. I would like some suggestions on the best inexpensive motherboard with firewire and cpu to buy. Thanks for any help.

Did you mean a Digital8 camcorder? If not, why 1394?
Is Real Time encoding out of the question?
My Hauppauge PVR-250 runs great in an old 866Mhz PIII machine.
Real time encoding also minimizes disk space requirements.
You did say inexpensive, didn't you?

[TBoneit]

As far as Harley suggesting buying a Dell, there is a drawback. They put so much crap on it that you'd probably have to blow away the harddrive and do a fresh install of XP to get the most performance.

I bought my brother a Dell XPS for gaming, and it couldn't smoothly run the games he plays with even 512megs of RAM. I looked in the task manager and he had 54 processes running, wtf?

Also, another drawback buying a name brand system is that most of the time, they really limit your options in the BIOS. The Dell couldn't even adjust CPU clock speeds or the RAM Latency.

If you're comfortable building systems I'd go for that, the 2 biggest factors in capturing and encoding would be CPU and RAM, and at least a 7200rpm Hard Drive--THREE biggest factors... :P

And they should support overclocking? What Large Name brand manufacturer supports Overclocking, I doubt Dell will ever support overclocking.

[Mister Flonk-Flonk]

Alienware machines and the like perhaps, but not the usual off the rack stuff. The less options they give you, the least amount of flexibility you have with your machine, the lesser the odds of the tech support person in India conversing with you in broken english not being able to help you.

[GreyDeath]

I actually don't overclock any of my machines, but I do like flexiblity as Flonk-Flonk says. And I guess I'm just a fan of being able to see the inner workings of my computer.

On the point of having a fast CPU, 48 hours for 1 hour of Mpeg video?? That's insane. I was bitching that my encoding of the SW:OT took 56 hours for each movie with all sorts of filters on it. I suppose a 500mhz would work if you only encode every-so-often, but I've been putting anime shows and my music video collection to DVD so time is of the essence. A 24 minute anime episode takes 1 hour and 20 minutes to encode, and that's with a picture resize on my 2.4 Athlon.

I don't think you could buy anything new under 2 gigs nowadays anyways... :P

[Paul William]

encoding of the SW:OT took 56 hours

Forgive my newbie question, but what is SW:OT ? - Paul

[GreyDeath]

Star Wars: Original Trilogy

[IGUANA_AL]

WOW!
Thank you for all that great info.


Joex444: great reply. thank you.
davideck: I am sorry I did mean Digital 8 camcorder, it uses Hi8 tapes. excuse my newbieness, but I do not understand 1394?, Hauppauge PVR-250?
Infratom: I would like to get away with $800.00 or less if possible

[junkmalle]

It sounds like you are starting from scratch and don't know much about video capture and DVD mastering.

There are three basic types of video capture devices for analog video. Raw uncompressed video, hardware DV (as in mini DV camcorder), and hardware MPEG.

Raw uncompressed video capture devices usually capture in a YUY2 colorspace. This is very close to the way a high quality analog source is broadcast. This can get you the highest quality but requires the most hardware resources (mostly CPU, disk) and is the most finicky. If you plan to do extensive, multi-generation, editing this is the way to go. But be ready for really big files (30 to 75 GB/hr of video) while capturing and editing if you want the absolute highest quality. If you have sufficient CPU power you can convert to MPEG on-the-fly while capturing -- but this usually doesn't give the best results because the CPU doesn't have much time to get the best compression. High quality conversion to MPEG for DVD will be time consuming.

DV will require an external analog-to-DV device like a DV camcorder or a Canopus ADVC 100. If you are planning on purchasing a D8 or mini DV camcorder in the near future this may be the way to go. Hardware requirements are less than raw YUY2 capture. Just about any computer you can buy now will be able to capture DV easily (you will have to add a IEEE 1384, aka Firewire, card (~$20) if there isn't one on your motherboard). Quality is a little lower than raw YUY2 but after conversion to MPEG for DVD you probably won't notice. (This is a highly contentious issue here so somebody is sure to chime in and say DV to MPEG is crap!) DV AVI files are easy to edit but the picture quality can decrease with multiple generations of processing (simple cut/paste operations are no problem). High quality conversion to MPEG for DVD will be time consuming.

Hardware MPEG encoders like the Hauppauuge WinTV PVR-250 capture directly to MPEG. There are many MPEG settings available, some of which are DVD compliant so no re-encoding is necessary for DVD. Quality is slightly lower than DV capture followed by high quality conversion to MPEG. (Again, this is a higly contentious issue and somebody will disagree.) Hardware requirements are very low. I have a Hauppauge PVR-250 and an old 2.8 GHz P4. Without displaying the video CPU usage is a mere 3 percent while capturing. With display CPU usage runs around 35 percent and it's still virtually bulletproof. If you want to quickly capture, cut out a few commercials, and burn to DVD this is the easiest option.

Any decent motherboard and CPU combo should have no problems with DV or MPEG capture. Even raw YUY2 capture is pretty bulletproof these days. But YUY2 will require that you disable background tasks (like Antivirus programs) and refrain from using the PC for anything else to get perfect captures.

Is your $800 budget for just the CPU and motherboard? Or for the whole system? Including capture device, DVD burner and monitor?

[julitomg]

I also built my system around video capture(and yes it´s video capture rather than just DV-HD transfer since I needed to convert analogue video to DV), I have a Pinnacle Studio Deluxe(used basically to capture analogue sources, actual editing si done in Premiere 6.5, and, well; yes, it´s cheaper to buy a complete computer, but I also consider the fun factor when you build it yourself...