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  1. Member
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    I'm just getting into the Video business. I'm using Panasonic 456 SVHS Cameras. I have the ADS Pyro A/V Link(Wondering if the ADVC-100 is better?) But, I wanted to know is it possible to stream more than 1 cameras to the computer at the same time or do I have to stream them one by one? Thanks in advance.
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Personally, I like Canopus products better, so I'd go with the ADVC-100, etc. But if you ALREADY have an ADS Pyro, go with that. Either converts/digitizes the analog into DV-formatted video (and audio). It WOULD probably be better to have 2 similar or identical capture devices, though.
    Then it's a matter of how much horsepower is needed to capture 2 DV streams (and their attendant bitrate needs).
    This very much depends upon how many totally independent Firewire ports you have (not on the same card, etc), the specs of your computer, drive space, hard drive & bus speeds, and general PC app overhead (should be VERY minimal).
    It can be done--check out Enosoft DV Processor or Stereoscopic Player or Stereoscopic Multiplexer, both of which are proven to do 2-stream captures.

    What hardware do you have?

    Scott
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    Couple of questions:

    When you say "stream" do you mean capturing the video tape to the computer or are you streaming live camera feeds to the internet?

    Why do you want to have multiple cameras connected to a single computer? If you are trying to achieve something specific please describe what you are planning. If you are planning to save time by capturing multiple cameras simultaneously, a single computer would not be the way to go. Video capture is a processor and disk intensive process. When capturing you should refrain from using the computer for any other tasks. Many create a seperate profile in Windows just for capturing - dissabling networking and other non-associated periferals to save system resources for the capture. You would need as many capture cards as cameras...in seperate computers.

    VH
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  4. Originally Posted by Video Head
    If you are planning to save time by capturing multiple cameras simultaneously, a single computer would not be the way to go. Video capture is a processor and disk intensive process.
    The capture isn't processor intensive - even a 500MHz system can capture DV without any problems.

    Multiple capturing is possible. I have comfortably captured from three DV camcorders simultaneously to two external drives (i.e., 2 captured to one and one to the other). I captured three 60-minute tapes without a single dropped frame. On the 2.8GHz Pentium D system, this used less than 10% of CPU time (including the overhead of displaying a monitor window for each stream and other stuff additional to the actual capturing).

    As a result, I was able to capture 15 DV tapes from a safari in 5 hours.

    I even surfed the web and checked my email!
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  5. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by JohnnyMalaria
    Originally Posted by Video Head
    If you are planning to save time by capturing multiple cameras simultaneously, a single computer would not be the way to go. Video capture is a processor and disk intensive process.
    The capture isn't processor intensive - even a 500MHz system can capture DV without any problems.

    Multiple capturing is possible. I have comfortably captured from three DV camcorders simultaneously to two external drives (i.e., 2 captured to one and one to the other). I captured three 60-minute tapes without a single dropped frame. On the 2.8GHz Pentium D system, this used less than 10% of CPU time (including the overhead of displaying a monitor window for each stream and other stuff additional to the actual capturing).

    As a result, I was able to capture 15 DV tapes from a safari in 5 hours.

    I even surfed the web and checked my email!
    I've done this as well for DV capture (no encoding) just to see what would happen. Three streams from a single IEEE-1394 card to an independent ATA133 drive seemed reliable but the forth had drops. It seemed capture reliability varied by order of connection. 1st connection didn't drop, last one got the errors. I didn't test this extensively, it was just an experiment. I would expect more could be done using separate IEEE-1394 cards and separate capture disks. Each DV stream uses only 3.5MB/s where internal drives can reach 30-90MB/s sustained transfer. The bottleneck is probably DirectShow.
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  6. Indeed. The tricky/black art bit is getting all the camcorders to exist peacefully with each other. 2 on a 3-port interface is simple. 3 gets iffy/unpredictable. Hanging an external FireWire drive off the same interface is a bad move. I always use USB2.0 external drives and keep my two FireWire interfaces (i.e., 6 ports) free for the DV devices. For capturing, USB doesn't add much overhead since the data rate is so low.
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    Originally Posted by JohnnyMalaria
    Indeed. The tricky/black art bit is getting all the camcorders to exist peacefully with each other. 2 on a 3-port interface is simple. 3 gets iffy/unpredictable. Hanging an external FireWire drive off the same interface is a bad move. I always use USB2.0 external drives and keep my two FireWire interfaces (i.e., 6 ports) free for the DV devices. For capturing, USB doesn't add much overhead since the data rate is so low.
    I meant capturing

    @JohnnyMalaria
    What program did you use to capture 4 streams at the same time? I'm coming from a SVHS camcorder, not a DV Camera. I keep seeing everyone say DV, does that mean once I plug it into my canopus\ADS Pro it will become a DV feed? I also see one person saying that I need more then one independent firewire card and another person saying they captured 2 on the same card. Also, is there a program that can do more then 2 streams? I doubt I will do that many though...
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  8. The stream(s) coming from your Canopus/ADS Pro will be DV - it doesn't matter that your original source is S-VHS.

    The program I use is our Enosoft DV Processor. It can comfortably capture from three DV sources simultaneously (four is possible but becomes more dependent on your hard drives etc). To do this, you really need two FireWire interfaces each with 3 ports. DV devices tend to fight to get control of the interface. With two DV devices, it is typically no problem to put them both on the same interface. With three it becomes troublesome. I managed it once (it seems edDV did, too). With two interfaces, you connect two DV devices to one of them and the other device to the second interface.

    One of the other hurdles to capturing multiple streams is that most capture applications cannot distinguish between the different DV devices. i.e., they see all of them as "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR". Either only one gets listed or you can't tell which is which. This is even true for high-end profressional NLEs. Our software uses the more useful names provided by Windows such as "Sony DV Camcorder" and "Sony DV Tape Recorder" etc (which you can also change, e.g., "My Sony DSR-11" or "Pyro").

    For business use, you can try our unlicensed version to see if it will suit your needs. We have customers who have bought the software specifically for multiple capturing.
    John Miller
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    For business use, you can try our unlicensed version to see if it will suit your needs. We have customers who have bought the software specifically for multiple capturing.[/quote]

    Always nice to get an unbiased opinion...
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