What Do You Use For Digital Video Editing? 208
Viking Coder asks: "Hello, I'd like to get involved with Digital Video recording and editing, and I was wondering what other people were using. The iMac at first seems a good option, until you see the limited hard drive and editing capabilities. Are there any pre-packaged solutions that would make for a better system? How about Linux or W2K compatibility / support? Any Open Source solutions to what would be obvious roadblocks?"
"So, I've been looking to build an eMonster 550R from eMachines, with a $500 DVRaptor from Canopus, also loading in a 30G EIDE (UDMA) HD, and Adobe Premiere 5.1, running everything from my (company's) Sony DCR-TRV103.
Am I in for a rude shock, or am I going to love what I can do? Are there other options I should be aware of? Will uLead's Media Builder (?) blow me away, or is Adobe the way to go? Is there an obvious winner card that makes the DVRaptor look silly? Is a 30G UDMA enough? Any caveats? (Like, 7,200 RPM for instance?)"
And from Rares Marian: "What tools, OSes, platforms, and hardware do I need to put a good machine together? I'm currently considering the following:
- Platform: Athlon 700, Alpha, G4, SGI
- OSes: Linux, Windows, AmigaOS, BSD (are they there yet?)
- Tools: Broadcast 2000, Premiere
- Systems: PC, Amiga, Mac, Alpha, SGI
- Hardware: Linux Multimedia Labs LML33, VideoToaster
I've had some quotes from $2000 for an Amiga3K setup (hey they used it on Babylon 5, Jurassic Park, and many TV stations still use it) to an $8000 Windows Athlon based machine. Any ideas? Hint: Small Budget No Limits. (From home video to full blown Internet based publishing)"
New Macintosh Digital Video editing solution (Score:1)
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/apr/10fcp.ht ml),
Matrox has announced a PCI video card
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/apr/10matrox .html)
for real-time digital video editing on the Macintosh and Pinnacle Systems
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/apr/10pinnac le.html)
has announced uncompressed standard-definition and high-definition video solutions available only on the Macintosh.
So far my experience says DV support sucks, period (Score:1)
We had firewire driver problems with W2K (or maybe it was SCSI controller problems), and opted for 98. We always try to avoid windows, but we didn't feel like firewire was supported well enough for linux to use linux. There is a DV editing suite made by some German company that looked promising (ie can control your DV camera / deck, plus DV editing under Linux), but we opted for Adobe Premiere instead.
For $700 (Premiere) I am not too impressed. It crashes 2-10 times per hour, (illegal instruction...hmm?), and AFAIK doesn't support PPM format for still images. The interface appears reasonable, but is hard to get used to when it crashes so often.
As far as hard drives go, we had trouble (believe it or not) getting good enough performance from our SCSI drive. Perhaps driver problems, I don't know. At any rate it was dropping frames on DV record. We opted for a cheeze-ball UDMA drive which works quite well. Memory is obviously important too. We have (I think) 512 MB. I haven't pushed it enough to need more.
Good luck, hopefully a linux based solution will crop up.
Re:Stay away from Windows (Score:1)
Uhh, have you ever used Linux? The 2GB limit on file size is the same in Linux, so don't say Win98 is crap because of that. If it is, then so is Linux. In fact, I haven't been able to ``somehow work around this and make it 4 Gigs'' in Linux. Hell, my 95 can recognize any size partition I give it. Linux routinely craps out at 8 GB.
Re:Video Requirements (Score:1)
Re:Shoulda got a Mac (Score:1)
We bought both Mac and PC editing stations last summer. The Mac came with DV in/out, but needed an analog board (Fuse). The PC was fitted with a Canopus Rex (analog in/out, DV in/out. Both have Medea RAIDS, both use Premier, both have 386 meg of RAM and both have SCSI boot drives.
After using both for several months, we decided that the PC with NT was more stable, robust, faster, and less trouble to set up. A recent purchase was of another NT machine (similarly equipped but more RAM, bigger Medea, faster processors).
I can't say enough good things about the Canopus boards -- they just work well. The batch capture software gets around the 2 gig problem seamlessly, the integration with Premier, very good. We did our research before buying and we're glad we did -- the Canopus boards (Rex for high-end, Raptor for mid-range) are just good products.
For streaming software, we've decided that Quicktime isn't that great. It streams OK, but the problem is in rendering the hinted stream -- takes far too long on whatever juiced up hardware we throw at it. Serving using Darwin on NT has been OK, but we haven't tried to attach some sort of authentication to the process. Darwin on Mac OS X also works, but the problems with rendering streaming Quicktime has caused us to pretty much stop Quicktime development. Real Media's tools work well, do what we want, and streaming using a Linux box has been trouble-free. We're also looking at the WIMP streamer (because it's free), but haven't invested much time in it yet (because our Linux solution works so well).
elarson@a big university working with a teaching A/V group
Well, I'd second at least part of that... (Score:1)
Final Cut Pro rules (Score:1)
New Avid system (Score:1)
Re:What about Avid? (Score:1)
Good free MPEG compressor for Windows: (Score:1)
You can get it from http://www.ingjapan.ne.jp/hori/TMPEGEnc.html; the very top link.
Miko from the Blender community wrote a very small user's guide for non-Japanese speakers; it's at http://chat.carleton.ca/~rmckay/3d/inspiration/tm
Avoid avi2mpg, it has some nasty problems with animation and VBV buffer overflows.
And on Axogon: I agree, it's quite good. I used it to build a music video a few weeks ago for Shmups! and Sakura-Con. It's not very good at handling long sound files, but as an effects package and basic editor, it can't be beat. Although I wouldn't reccommend serious stuff being done in it unless you know what you're doing; it can't lossless-undo compression codecs, so every time you edit and re-save, you'll lose quality with a recompress.
Re:MainActor for Linux (Score:1)
Possible Stupid Question/Answer Alert! (Score:1)
What about the Be OS?
I thought it was supposed to be designed just for this kind of stuff. Where are they at currently? I've used it a bit and it truly is fantastic for handling multiple streams of video as well as other kinds of data. Just curious.
Mac OS Rules (Get a G4, not an iMac..) (Score:1)
Re:Storage (Score:1)
Just be sure to have enough archival space (DVDRAM?)
Good luck,
Your Working Boy,
Funnt you should ask.... (Score:1)
Asking during NAB rollout is probably going you get a bunch of responsesm but here's some news:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
Apple announces new RT (realtime solutions) using DV, Matrox Cine solutions which include _uncompressed_ (!!) video all the way up to HD, acquiring Astarte DVD solutions to bring DVD authoring to Apple in house, and a new version of Final Cut Pro now with HD, 16:9 and more!
Wow! Apple seems serious about integrating these products - all the above were engineered with outside companies and Apple engineers to tie tightly with Apple hardware.
As Cartman would say it, "Schweeeeet!"
CYA
=tkk
Re:OK, how about this scenario? (Score:1)
I looked at the Dazzle and came close to buying it. The main thing it would have given me that I can't do now is the ability to save the video back out to VHS. But since I got my DVD player, VCD seems to be a much better option anyway. Plus, the WinTV card provides acceptable capture, as well as giving me a TV and radio in that room.
Thanks again for the VirtualDub link. It looks like it might be a much better solution than the built in capture in VideoWave. (Which, btw, I've found to be quite an excellent program if you're looking for something in the $99 range.)
Re:OK, how about this scenario? (Score:1)
it depends whether you're after a job or a hobby (Score:1)
you might well be able to pick up a used mac-based avid at a reasonable price (ie four figures instead of six). No one can edit all the time, so consider sharing it between three or four people and expect to spend some serious money on scsi disks (and ideally a proper monitor and desk...).
we use an old quadra 900-based system that would be an antique in any other setting, and it works fine.
but check it carefully: these machines get used 18 hours a day from the day they're bought until just before they break forever.
if you just want to make films for your own art or satisfaction, then our experience has shown that you can't beat a fast powerbook, a DV camera and final cut. it's a fabulous toy box, and only disk space holds it back. we're using the old sony dv1000 camera, but the canon xl1 is looking like a better investment these days.
personally i hate premiere, but i know a couple of editors who happily use it on their messing about system, so ymmv.
What Do You Want to edit? (Score:1)
BTW: I specialize in Video systems and NLE boxes (NLE=Non-linear editing).
If you are just grabbing the footage a analog source and splicing it together to make simple videa... you don't nedd fancy effects just cuts and such, the best system is by FAST multimedia. Its called VM Studio. Raging good system and will run on skanky hardware (486 66 will work).
If you are getting crazy call or e-mail a professional. This will save you LOTS of time and Money!
My thoughts
Re:my setup (Score:1)
Does anyone have any information whatsoever about making this card work in Linux (probably under video4linux?)? Maybe somebody is interested in writing a driver?
Re:Stay away from Windows (Score:1)
Last time I checked, firewire support in Linux was not too great, plus I haven't found any DV Linux software.
Re:Stay away from Windows (Score:1)
Windows 2000 improves a lot over NT, but it's still not supported by most DV programs/cards I've checked.
Windows ME is supposed to be great for video editing, but judging by the piece of crap it's based on (Win98) it should also be a pain.
My only hope is that BeOS gets some decent DV software soon ! It at least recognizes my card.
Re:Stay away from Windows (Score:1)
Surprised not to see Trinity here (Score:1)
Re:Digital NLE (Score:1)
Re:Make sure that processor is blazin' fast (Score:1)
The processors important especially if you're working with compressed video... But while in the editting phase of a project, don't use any codec's like Sorenson or Cinepak... They just take TOO LONG to compress. Apple's generic "video" codec works fine, and doesn't hit the CPU nearly as hard.
SW its VirtualDub. HW is NewTek's Flyer (Score:1)
http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub/index.html
" VirtualDub is freely distributable, copylefted software, and full source is available. So you can look the source code and use parts in your own GNU GPL copylefted programs!"
Hardware wise, Is an easy choice since the best designed, most instantly responsive, yet most affordable device is more than a purely revolutionary tool: Its a _decade_ old product! "What is it?"
It's The VideoToaster-Flyer from NewTek. *
Its software has been recently OpenSourced too! All of the tricky trick SW that controls the entire dual Zorro card / Video Slot is opened up...
The "production suite on two cards" for the Amiga is open-f**ing-source! Wow!
They now offer the next logical progression of their forte:
It's a full bandwidth, loss-less(!), resolution agile, component digital video/audio "editing _company_ on A card",
all in PCI formfactor just so you'd like it! www.newtek.com
Priced at a fraction of Avid parts...
*NewTek is a squadron of the best. They made the package LightWave. Which enabled works like: Babylon5 Titanic MnM's StarshipTroopers, etc.
How's that for clear?
Re:Editing (Score:1)
Quicktime is limited to 2 Gigs, as is AVI. New versions will get around this (with the OpenDMI spec), but for the moment you need a proprietary solution to this problem...
I use a Casablanca (Score:1)
i use a little box called a Casablanca from draco [draco.com].
its a dead simple NLE box with a 9 gig scsi drive, and it cost about $3500.
i looked into premiere and some capture boards back when i bought this thing, and decided it was just too much a pain in the ass. i would like to have the added flexibility of a computer based NLE, but for my purposes (making sales videos of machinery) it was the perfect choice.
apple (Score:1)
spreer
Re:YOU DON'T NEED SCSI!!!!!!!!!! (Score:1)
A 5400rpm ATA drive is NOT going to have a decent enough seek time OR data transfer rate to store FULL FRAME FULL RATE FULL FIELD video + perfectly synced high-rate audio. especially a monsterfully huge drive like the one you speak of.
And especially each-and-every time you go to do it.
It might be fine for grabbing a minute or so of 320x240 15fps single field video + low bit rate audio from your TV card, but don't expect anything but headaches if you try to reliably capture to it, or output to tape from it.
OK, if you're talking just for storage purposes, or for the 'inbetween' editing phases, sure I've got no argument there, but for the raw in and out....no way.
Re:Mac OS Rules (Get a G4, not an iMac..) (Score:2)
He wanted PC with Pinnacle, so got Dell to put together a package. It worked, but the pinnacle board does not do true DV. His poor camera ended up in SDV mode, and it looked pretty good. Pretty good wasn't good enough.
He came down and used our iMac for two hours to see what the interface and board was like. The next day, two weeks after purchase, the PC was back to Dell (And they took it. Those folks are champs at customer service guys!) As soon as he was credited for it, he got his G4.
He's happy as a clam with Adobe Premier, and is spending his time letting me see what he can do easily with DV and one computer and camera what used to take hours with two decks, stopwatch, clipboard, or days with two sets of filmstock, a loupe, razor blade, and splicer.
This is not the 100K setup that you need for professional editing. However, this looks darned good, and I've fooled more than one station engineer with the final result. ("Hey Doug, what system, and what cost edited this?" "AVID at $100 K? Bzzz! G4 and Adobe Premier at $10K.)
Apple's blazing the way... (Score:2)
Apple's asserting themselves to be THE leader here, and OS X is the only thing that's really missing right now. But OS 9 will still get you going good...
Apple Announcements (Score:2)
Today's joint Apple & Matrox announcement (Score:2)
This PR release [apple.com] from Apple and Matrox discusses the availability of RTMac: a real-time video editing card made especially for Macs and Final-Cut.
A complete system would be less than 5000$USD, according to the release, and Apple Store [apple.com].
MainActor for Linux (Score:2)
Re:Linux software solutions (Score:2)
My setup, producing TV shows (Score:2)
Longer: Mac G3/300, 30 GB IDE HD, 128MB RAM (a litthe short), Canon DV camcorders.
If you considered the iMac DV, look at it again. (no, don't think iMovie, that's just a toy) EditDV works on it, and there are fast firewire hard drives for external storage. If you work mainly on DV format (as I do) it's all as seamless as uncompressed video, and you don't need a great bandwidth from the drives (6 Meg/sec will do easily).
Any experience beta/demoing UltraDV for Be? (Score:2)
This is the one product (check mediapede [mediapede.com]) I've been waiting for to begin thinking of BeOS.. Now that R5 is out and supporting DV/IEEE1394 (thru the elcheapo cards too no less!!
Any pointers/hints appreciated!
Your Working Boy,
Re:Thanks, All! (Score:2)
The right tool for the job, but definitely keep an open mind as there are other good tools...
Good luck,
Your Working Boy,
Re:What about Avid? (Score:2)
For mid-range editting (price wise) the DPS, Newtek and Pinnacle systems are much more reasonable.
OK, how about this scenario? (Score:2)
What I'd like to do is fairly simple. Record a TV show, capture it, edit out commercials (possibly adding nice transition effects in their place), compress to MPEG and store in VideoCD format for playback in a normal DVD player.
Obviously, since the source video is coming off of VHS tape, ultra-high quality is not an issue, but I don't want to degrade too much during editing, either.
Basically, all I want is to convert my collection of VHS tapes to VCD for my own private viewing, mainly for storage space considerations, but also just a little bit for the "just because I can" factor.
(So far I've been getting perfectly acceptable results using MGI VideoWave III, a Hauppage WinTV card for capture, and Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 for burning to VCD. Anyone other suggestions in the same general price range?)
Odd Solutions (Score:2)
There are a few questions you have to ask first.
1.) Do you need broadcast quality, or is this for something like home movies? This will *dramatically* change the budget of your project.
2.) How much are you willing to spend for your project? If it's a home movie type deal, chances are you don't want a TV Studio's budget. However, if you are doing broadcast work, you don't want a home-movie budget. Plan accordingly.
Now, if you want to get into broadcast quality, you would probably want a High-End Macintosh running Adobe Premiere. (Or if you still want broadcast quality, but have a tighter budget - Get an Amiga with a Video Toaster! YES, they ARE still used! I've seen Amiga 4000 boxes with the Toaster 4000 go for about $1500. Some TV networks and movie studios are still using this very same setup.)
For a home movie type project, you don't really need all the bells and whistles that come with broadcast quality equipment. Pick up an ATI All in Wonder, or a Voodoo3 3500 TV with some cheap video editing software by ULead or something. Pipe it in from your camcorder or VCR, add some cheezy effects and viola!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Stay away from Windows (Score:2)
I have mixed feeling about this product. I like the interface and it's very easy to use, but this program is hell to setup.
First, it requires Windows 98 SE. Yes, not only Win98 but it has to be SE. Some people have made it work with 98 and the latests drivers, but a lot of us couldn't.
Secondly, Windows 98 has a 2 Gig file size limit. They somehow work around this and make it 4 Gigs. 4 Gigs is the equivalent of about 18 minutes of DV. To get around this, they have a nice feature to capture in "preview" quality and then when you output to tape it recaptures. But man, it's really annoying to have that file size limit.
Lastly, Windows 98 is just the plain OS for this type of work. I have a fairly decent machine (128 MEGS of RAM, 400 PII, 20Gig disk UDMA, 13 Gig disk, TNT card, etc) and I have problems capturing video. Pinnacle recommeds that you run nothing while capturing video. They even go as far as to recommend turning off CD autoplay , powersave, networking, and even the little time app that runs in the taskbar.
With some of these conditions, they should have developed their own OS just tailored to the needs of their app.
I don't know about MacOS, but I've heard good reviews of the DV magazines about editing on G3s. And yes, stay away from the iMacs, plus the program that comes with the DV iMac has severe limitations and it's a pain to use.
Trinity, from the people who made the V.Toaster (Score:2)
The base package is only ~$8k usd which is damn near affordable even for a hobbyist.
FAST 601 (Score:2)
The system includes the FAST 601 card, which is the hardware part of the editing system. It's about the biggest PCI card I've ever seen in my life. We've got a two machine system setup for DVD production. The FAST does the footage logging from either DV or betacam masters, editing, various effects (they give you BorisFX), then gets shot over to the other machine (the DVD authoring station) where the sucker is chaptered and menued up, tested and finally imaged out to DLT that gets sent out to duplication. Warning: it ain't cheap.
Then again, those guys are doing big-time work. If you're looking to do some editing on little Johnny's first communion that was shot on a vhs camcorder, buy an iMac DV.
As for the question of how much disk space, the answer is "infinite". Our FAST has a 100G Medea unit attached to it, and it handles about 4 hours of video, MPEG2-V compressed. The FAST is more interesting than stuff from people like Avid, since it actually edits in MPEG2. The biggest problem you'll have is transfer rate. Think raid0 with a number of disks. That's how Medea does it. Insider their little black boxes are 3 or 4 large UDMA66 drives that are connected to a RAID0 controller. On the back-side, it looks like an UW SCSI-3 device.
If you're serious, get your butt on a plane and get to Vegas right now. NAB2000 is going on, and every major video editing company there is will be there.
--
Check out Banned From The Ranch... (Score:2)
Re:Editing (Score:2)
Whatever you might think of Apple otherwise, it is manifestly clear that they are willing to do almost anything to own the DV market
Except allow people to use the "firewire" trademark, which would do a lot to reduce consumer confusion about device compatibility. They want to control the standard if they have to destroy it in the process...
Re:Editing (Score:2)
I know many people still believe and practice SCSI RAID -- it's a mantra. The simple fact is that IDE (UATA66) is plenty fast for video editing. I've got about three thousand hours of 720x480 @ 25Mb/sec footage without a single dropped frome to prove it. I could have spent $5k more to get SCSI, but it would have to do a lot more than be "a little faster" to make up for the price difference. SCSI isn't cheap when you're talking about 100 gigs of space.
MPEG is just fine for editing as long as your hardware system supports IBP-frame editing. If you don't have the hardware to do it, you're screwed...
Re:Digital editing (Score:2)
You do not digitize the video before editting. All editting is done from A/B roll edit decks through the Switcher onto a record deck. You could automated the process with edit decision lists and a Video/LAN that could control your vLAN capable decks, but all editting happens in the analog realm.
If you get the ill-fated Video Toaster Flyer add-on you have access to a limited digital NLE system, but it isn't much better than using Adobe Premiere, some software from FAST, or Avid's low-end Mac and NT based NLE.
Re:Editing (Score:2)
Dunno about the file size limit on the PC, but last I checked, MacOS 9.04 [apple.com] supported files up to 2 terabytes in size, precisely to support digital video applications.
Whatever you might think of Apple otherwise, it is manifestly clear that they are willing to do almost anything to own the DV market.
my setup (Score:2)
As for storage space, you should get a Medea VideoRAID (find it on www.videoguys.com). These things can do 24 MB/s sustained, even when the drive is full. Moreover, it just plugs into a scsi chain and requires no drivers or striping tools. I attached it to my machine, and suddenly linux saw
Try Digital Origins (Score:2)
I'm starting to like it a whole lot, so I'll probably upgrade to the full version of EditDV. For an inexpensive intro with upgrade to full capability, I don't think you can beat these guys.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
UDMA (Score:2)
There are also some Linux compatable cards and software if you look at some of the old Slashdot posts.
Re:Try Digital Origins (Score:2)
I recently purchased the full EditDV, and it has worked out very well. Do not use it on Windows 95 or 98... Windows NT is the way to go if you are stuck on an MS platform. I'll be shifting more and more of my special effects rendering over to Linux as time goes on. EditDV has really nice import and export features, so this should not be a problem. I think I purchased the EditDV with 1394 card for $700 as a combo package. Another $300 for a 45 gig IDE drive and I was in business. You will want at least 128MB of RAM and a really high quallity video card of course.
I've heard of a package called MainActor (I think) that will do non-linear editing on Linux, though I have not had a chance to check it out yet. I am beginning to build a linux rendering farm for some homegrown effects rendering, so I will probably give MainActor a look fairly soon.
Thad
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Video Requirements (Score:2)
I think you got it backwards... If you are going to use IDE at all (which in video editing I'd say is a bad plan) it should be to hold the
software... Software is read off of disk once each time you launch the app and never read again. The place were you want low cpu
utilization (where scsi excels) is when the cpu is busy with... oh say compression/video capture tasks... and thats when their is high disk
activity as well because you are streaming data to it...
Does anybody actually use their CPU to compress video as it's being captured these days? Either you capture raw video with no compression and then compress it later after editing, or if you have a good capture card your video card automatically compresses the data before it's passed along to the CPU. IDE is okay for capture.
Re:media 100? (Score:2)
"It works good for small& longer video clips up to about 18min..after that its no good due to 2Gb limit on filesystem?"
The HFS+ filesystem itself doesn't have a 2 gig file size limit, but until recently the system calls Apple provided for accessing HFS+ disks did have that limit.
Apple removed that limit in Mac OS 9.0, but most software hasn't yet been updated to use the new filesystem calls that support larger files.
If you want to bother the vendor of the software you're using, you can remind them that the docs on the new system calls are available here:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macos8/File
This preliminary document describes the File Manager application programming interfaces introduced in Mac OS 9. These interfaces allow your application to access files larger than 2GB and use long Unicode filenames. The Mac OS 9 File Manager programming interfaces are emulated for volume formats that don't support these interfaces directly.
Re: Video Toaster NT (Score:2)
There is an inherent assumption in the question, that the source and output media will be the same. First off, I might have MiniDV source and I may be outputting to DVD. These use different compression algorithms. Second, I may be outputting to an analog format, like VHS, Betacam SP or 3/4" tapes. Finally and probably of the least impact, there is a difference in how different recorders encode even the same format.
When you take source material that's already compressed add edit layers and effects then recompress it you get compression artifacts.
Better to take the source (camera) material decompress it. Edit it uncompressed add any uncompressed effects and titling, then compress that. You get fewer artifacts.
If you are just using NLE for some simple cuts and arrangements and adding some simple titles, handling the material compressed may be acceptable for all but broadcast level reproduction. The more you do to the source in post-production the more you need to handle the material uncompressed.
If I have a composite shot of a rendered vehicle, rendered background, foreground actors and set, studio sound then titling, that's five layers of material. Any of that is subject to editing for multiple camera views. If you try a shot like that using one of the DV boards that handle everything compressed, you are going to have one ugly composite final cut. Even with good DV source material you'll end up looking like you shot with an old cheap VHS consumer camcorder.
An example of the above shot would be the Babylon 5 Command deck or the Bridge of the Enterprise on Star Trek. You have the Captain and someone talking in front of the viewscreen/viewport. The viewscreen has some activity in it, a ship or planet moving or rotating or whatever. The background of the viewscreen is a rendered starfield. The ships/planet are either rendered or are models bluescreened in. On the set you have a bunch of computer terminals with changing output, that has to be added in post or else you get that flicker effect you see with monitors on the news. Finally you throw in some opening credits along the bottom, you know guest stars etc. In Babylon 5 they once had this shot set up from the perspective of a news camera that superimposed its station identification in real time.
Those shows both shot film, so they had a lot of problems with those shots, they end up costing a lot. They simply can't be done (yet) to broadcast standards with editing boards that handle the video while it is compressed. Of course a lot of those boards can't put out broadcast quality at all, I refer to the ones that claim to do so.
The Video Toaster is among those systems that can accomplish this shot to the highest video production standards. It is right up there with the AVID and Media 100 systems as far as quality goes. As a matter of fact, Babylon 5 used Video Toasters for a great deal of their work, so the shots cost them a lot less than Star Trek shots cost. (Using film makes it harder to edit the source material, and forces you to go with higher resolution renderings. You also have a conversion step. That is why B5's shot cost a lot more than the same shot using a Toaster and DV/MiniDV source material.)
Slightly offtopic, but I can't resist...The reason B5, X-Files and Star Trek are shot on film is to create a darker deeper image. The result using film also looks sharper. High Density Video may well change that. [drool]I can't wait to get my hands on an HDCAM and a system that can handle HD in/out... [/drool]
Re:Any experience beta/demoing UltraDV for Be? (Score:2)
You can ask there, I am certain someone will know. Expecially on BeNews there are quite a few video anthusiasts hanging around.
Re:Stay away from Windows (Score:2)
Also, of course you're having problems capturing video. Dropping frames right? Add some more RAM and for the love of God, use SCSI!
Linux DV editing (Score:2)
On my Linux system I saved about 20 min. worth of raw digital video footage using a little command-line only utility: dvgrab [schirmacher.de]. Not even one dropped frame, all scenes separated neatly into individual files. About 4 GByte total.
After that I edited the video using Windows98 and ULead VideoStudio 3.0. It crashed only once. Right now it is rendering the final MPEG movie.
The hardware, not exactly state-of-the-art:
a 5 year old PC with an AMD 333 MHz, 64 MByte RAM and a 10 GByte IDE disk
a 1394 card (EXSYS-6500, about $100 including software)
Sony PC-100 DV camcorder
Currently I am looking for a programmer who could help writing a DV codec. When we have this, we can do basic DV editing completely using available Linux software. The major missing component however is the codec. If you have some knowledge in this area, please send an email.
Arne Schirmacher [mailto]
Mac beating Avid (Score:2)
Basically you show people your work, they say let's change this, you do it while they stare over your shoulder, then you hit render, and let the guys fall asleep on the couch. Video can be fully on disk or part on tape. Extremely cost effective even on an 8400 Mac, though G4 is what you would want now 30 gigs will disappear in a flash, get yourself dat backup. Get a mixing board for music input or maybe you could do it on the Mac.
There were some problems with Premiere that could crash the system if you touch files that Premiere is working with, but this kind of interactivity and customizability is a new thing.. the only problem being that studio types and operators also are used to Avid.
Biggest bitches seem to be the need to replace hard drives when they die (apparently 3-4 months sometimes), and also dealing with video card manufacturer.. a very expensive video card is important. These two points mean that you need to have some knowledge of hardware.
Re:Linux DV editing (Score:2)
I use blender to mix Video(dvgrab)+Pictures(gimp)+3d-scenes(blender).
I usually use 640x480 (looks good on TV and on a PC).
No problems so far.
(Well there is a problem with the newest 1394 kernel patch, but it's still alpha - so what)
I usually render the endresult with the Ulead video-studio, since it can do MP4-AVIs.
Just my 2 cents ...
ciao
Anti
PC editing is Slow (Score:2)
It will be substantially slower than you are expecting, the same as compiling. For any non-trivial project, compile times become enormous. Doing conversions in Premiere, for example, from
If you want to do professional work, however, you need to go with an AVID system. They are brutally expensive, but it is what the pros in Hollywood use.
Re:So far my experience says DV support sucks, per (Score:2)
Yeah, but Apple's the current leader in the DV market. You can't say that the market sucks based on your experiences with #2.
The iMac with iMovie is a consumer product. A G4-based system with Final Cut Pro (and possibly Premiere and After Effects) is what you should have looked at.
Also, you should know that Adobe optimizes their software for NT. I've supported their software on 95/98 systems, and quirky problems tend to crop up.
What does all that add up to? Probably that Windows is not poised to conquer the DV market just yet.
Re:Video Requirements (Score:2)
emachines reality check (Score:2)
on the low end, for power-users seeking to save money, shop around for a used blue-and-white g3 (perhaps with scsi, your preference)... you can get deals on the software, camera, everything you need, but you have to be knowledgeable to save money.
bottom-line is you have a higher likelihood of distressing down-time with a cost-cutting wintel box. there is a reason apple dominates this market (since when have you seen such a macintosh-positive thread), borrow/rent/test-drive a real setup to see why.
and whatever you do, back up. dv source tapes are the primary backup, but you want to have your final rendering backed up, and you *must* have the edit list (project file) backed up.
if money is not an issue, buy whatever hotrod box you like, you will be able throw together some kludge to do most of what you want or need, but do not think you can save money on a cheap wintel box when working with media (print, audio, visual, whatever).
big picture: most people will not really save money that way, other expenses related to using junk hardware/software will eliminate the savings.
Re:New Avid system (Score:2)
Low(er) budget professional studio (Score:2)
Anyway...we investigated and selected hard-/software and other components necessary to replace our expensive out-side video consultants. They did awesome work with extremely expensive analog tools (we're in SoCal, so these studio firms are plentiful). But, we could not afford them. So we hired some professional graphic artists (with video experience) and built an in-house studio.
We were producing audio programs for international radio distribution using MS Win computers running SAW 32 [iqsoft.com] and were able to do pretty good work with a low budget. But we definitely realized we could not stay with Windows machines for our new video studio. Main reason? Our lead video expert is a Mac-head. Ding. Sometimes it's not the platform, but the personnel.
Ok, then we got hold of Mac G3's and Adobe Premiere 5.1 & After Effects (like I said...not too specific). The Mac G3 had built in IEEE1394 and we used the MAC DV codec. We also had a Sony DV Cam (essential; freed up our Cannon XL/1 for shooting instead of playback).
For storage we bought some Utra-SCSI II LVM IBM 9 GB disks and built a cheap little 4 drive RAID 0 unit. This was the only way we could suck down video without dropping frames (an essential requirement for pro video, duh).
But, Oh Boy! Premiere is ss-ll-oo-ww! We had a 45 minute initial video program to produce (of course, under an extremely tight schedule, which we spent most of the time building the systems...including trying to find the *exact* SCSI terminator required for the drives we bought at Fry's; eventually, we called the IBM-specified terminator mfg company and they, Oh, what is their name??, sent us a *SAMPLE* terminator fReE! Overnight, Saturday delievery! Why? Because they had no distributors in LA! Wha?... but I digress...heh) and (I'll wait while you back reference to get context....ok) Premiere took over 24 hours to render the final production. Arrrrggghhh!!
Then we moved to Final Cut Pro by Apple. Sweet! Fast! Intuitive! The same video production that took us so long on Premiere was accomplished in 1/100th the time. Same people involved, too.
And the G4 helped, too, when we could get one.
All in all, we have 3 workstations (Mac G3, Mac G4, PowerMac--poor guy!), 1 Cannon XL/1, numerous MiniDV cams(all Sonys; Sony has the best optics), 2 Sony DV Cams (to free up the cameras during playback). We use FCP and After Effects and produce some pretty radical stuff.
The studio we previously used visited us and saw one of our productions. They were stunned at what we could do with basically consumer equipment. Since then, they've invested in similar equipment, because it's almost as good as their analog studio but much faster.
Then, at home, I have a Pyro Firewire card ($160), an AMD K6-2 333 with a couple of drives ($378 Jan 1999), including a 10GB 7200 rpm IBM ($150 at Fry's last Fall), and use the Ulead Brain-Dead Studio Software (I think that's the name) that came with the Pyro IEEE 1394 card, and a Sony TVR-110 ($600). With this I was able to film the birth of my firstborn son (sorry, nothing graphic) and put it on the 'net. I'd give you the link, but it's already next to my name). It's not pro (or even amatuer) but it made the grandparents across the country cry.
Video Editing.... (Score:2)
Re:Linux software solutions (Score:2)
BROADCAST2000!! [linuxave.net]
Everything you need to edit stuff from web content to film.
Don't forget the GIMP [gimp.org] either. Works great for all sorts of effects if you know a little Perl.
Be sure and check out Sound & MIDI Software For Linux [bright.net] for a whole slew of audio tools.
The makers of Broadcast2000 have some great mpeg-2 encoding tools as well.
Use Linux for your project! It gives you total access to your media, it's stable and cheap. I've been using it to edit my documentary [blur.cx] and I'm really happy with it.
System I use: Video Toaster NT (Score:2)
A quick run down of the system I use:
p3 500
512 ram
tnt2 V770 VIDEO CARD
Video Toaster for in/out
We went with the Video Toaster NT for one main reason... Uncompressed NTSC for CHEAP!!!
The card is packaged with Speed Razor SE(non-linear editor, its capable, but for real-time i would suggest its big brother, Speed Razor RT), Newtek's AURA which is a really handy video paint/compositing/photoshop kind of app that is EXCELLENT..Newtek's LIGHTWAVE VT..(its a stripped down version of the excellent Lightwave 3d which is used on Voyager, Starship Troopers, and a ton of others..this version of the software is adequate for most needs, especially if you are new to 3d, but we have the full blown Lightwave runnin on our machines because we need the advanced features..The VT package also comes with a few other handy apps..
One of the main selling points about the VT is that its completely software based...not like the old Amiga Flyers, which were dependent on propriety hardware..This system depends 100% on software operations, so if you decide to do some more advanced stuff later on, just upgrade your system processor, you'll be good to go.. I might add that our p3 500 handles all of the applications quite well.
One other consideration:
The (REALLY DAMN HIGH QUALITY) uncompressed video that the VT captures and spits out takes up hefty chunks of disk space..To even capture vidoe your drives need to write 21megs a sec SUSTAINED! WE accomplish this through a cheap ($99) PROMISE FastTrak RAID Controller..four 20 gig ATA66 drives get put though that...it turns out to be damned cheap and gives you tons of space with a storage solution that can sustain 23megs-a-sec..
So anyway, I'm very happy with what we got for a kickass price(Remember, Uncompressed 720x480 30fps!)
any other question s lemme know, i'd be glad to anwer any
The Budget Solution (Score:2)
That said, I bought a Sony VAIO [sony.com] Digital Studio desktop about 8 months ago. PIII/500, 256 MB RAM (128 comes standard), 16MB ATI Rage Pro 128, 20 GB 7200 RPM drive, DVD-ROM, CD-R/CD-RW burner, and nice USB and FireWire ports right on the front panel.
The newer ones have (I believe) a PIII/650 but are essentially the same machine. Cost around $1700 w/o monitor. For a monitor, I use a Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 100e 21" (around $1000).
The best part about this package is you unpack it, set it up, and it comes with all the video capture and editing software you need (at least for home movies, which is what I use it for). It's been a pretty decent machine overall, once I got the right FireWire software (the package it came with caused system lockups a lot, the new VAIO may have fixed this though).
For the price (about $2900 w/monitor & additional 128 MB RAM), and the ease of use, I'd recommend it. Don't know if it holds up to professional standards though
I really... (Score:2)
Adobe Premier (Score:3)
I've captured about 20 hours using a dual Pentium II, dual SCSI (40 meg) and a variety of SCSI drive combinations under Windows NT Server -- backup domain controller actually :-). Twin 9 gig, 10K, striped drives work under all conditions. Single 36 gig, 7200 drives work if there is no fragmentation.
For work, we have a dual Xeon, 10K boot drive, and a 75 gig Medea Video RAID using the Canopus Rex (like Raptor, but with better hardware, slightly better software, analog in/out, and a hardware CODEC that speeds rendering). Adobe Premier and Real Video as back-end technologies.
UDMA drives can work on very fast systems if their isn't much fragmentation. You roll the dice as the machines gets older, if the UDMA doesn't work, etc.. Dedicated RAID hardware is best, SCSI second, UDMA dead last. Failures are obvious (won't capture) and missing can be expensive (as you have to buy new hardware.
The video camera is the cheapest aspect of the system (Computer first, decent audio hardware second, camera third -- usually -- buy a real pro camera and audio will cost less).
Professionals buy DV decks (circa $3,000 +) and real Cameras (circa $7,500 +). I make do with a cheesy Canon ZR because it looks like a still camera and folks often don't realize I'm taking DV video (did this at Comdex last fall -- three hours).
elarson@a big university working with an A/V teaching group.
Low Cost Proffessional Quality System (Score:3)
This setup gives you a hardware DV codec, which makes editing sooo much faster. I wouldn't even consider a software codec (ie MacDV, or whatever chintzy capture card you can get for under $1000 for the PC) if you're planning on doing anything professional. It'll take forever. Software solutions are fine for editing your vacation videos, but will cost you money (ie time) for a pro job.
The system accepts DV format video via ieee 1394, or standard audio/video via rca(YUV and RGB in both NTSC and PAL/SECAM), 1/4 inch jack, and S-Video, and puts out signal to all of these formats.
The DV Master comes with a special version of Speed Razor made to interact specifically with the DV Master hardware. Because we have a hardware codec, we can edit DV format files, instead of capturing to quicktime files then dumping back to DV. It's a really great system.
Watch out - digital is where to go (Score:3)
My own personal experience has been with the Miro DV500 - one of the best DV cards out there. We hooked it up to the Sony DV Camera and were up and running in seconds. If you want to see amazing capture quality, snag 30 seconds or so from a DVD to the DV camera. After that the copy protection circuitry cuts in, but MAN is that great looking.
Don't get fooled into buying an analog capture board. They're nice for ripping TV shows to AVI or something, but if you're like me and want to eventually get your footage on DVD, make sure it's digital. There's a Linux firewire project going on right now, but I don't know how far it is along. Windows is your only bet for this right now, but this is definitely going to change in the future.
I'm tempted to get a DV recorder for use as a VCR. The quality is so far above analog it's not funny.
Editing (Score:3)
Many people will be glad to sell you whatever they want, or tell you something else sucks, but if you don't know the specs and what you want to do with it you'll wind up with the wrong system.
For example, you mantion using a DV Raptor with a 30GB hard drive. You do realize that DV is 18GB/hour? That hard drive will be full before you can sneeze, much less get any work done. Unless you're doing all 2-3 minute projects without much footage lying around on the disk.
Also, there is still a 2 GB file size limit on Mac/PC. This is the biggest obstacle any beginner (inexperienced) editor runs across because you usually don't hit that wall no matter how hard you're pushing a system.
Find out how the system you're using gets around that limit -- does it require a special program to do editing and read the file? If you want to use Premiere, then make sure the board does Premiere capture and export.
Frankly, for all the greatness of DV, the file sizes are insane. MPEG2 boards can cut5 down file sizes by setting compression level, and if you're doing one-off editing projects youll never notice the difference.
If you're doing web delivery, you might want a board that will capture at 320x240 so all you video isn't 10 times the size you need it. DV and many MPEG2 boards won't let you do anything aside from full DV frame size (~720x640, depending).
This is a lot of data, but any UDMA66 drive can nadle it. Even at 25Mb/second (which you won't go over) you can save money by not buying SCSI. This is not 1987 any more -- IDE is plently fast.
Gotta go to a meeting, but you might want to do more research before buying, it doesn't sound like you're sure what all the specs you're dealing with are. You needs lots of disk space, and no less than 128MB RAM (256 is better, I use 512)...
Re: Modern Video Production on Amiga (Score:3)
If you have no limit to your spending, you're going to want the best. Using an Amiga would only be a solution if you're happy with 640x480 video and can afford acceleration boards (if they're still available). Jurassic Park was --not-- done on Amigas. Some of the dinosaur rough-up proof-of-concept animations were done on an Amiga with Lightwave, but all of the final work was done on high-end workstations and edited the old fashioned way on film.
An Amiga equipped to do desktop video with a Video Toaster can do full broadcast-quality resolution (784x492 or whatever) in 24bit color. Lightwave on the Amiga can also render to that resolution or better.
If one were to purchase a Video Toaster-equipped Amiga in this modern world, he would want it to be an Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster 4000. Any _new_ VT/Amiga system is exactly that. The Amiga 4000 has the updated AGA graphics chipset which can do higher resolutions at more colors (compared to the OCS/ECS chipset in earlier Amiga models such as the A500, A2000, and A3000). The VT4000 takes advantage of the AGA chipset, so it can do some neat things the old original Toaster can't.
There's also the Video Toaster Flyer, which has a spider-like 6-way (?) SCSI controller on-board. It does high-speed on-disk video editing. Remember that the old Video Toaster and VT4000 are not for editing video clips stored on disk, they switch between video sources and fade and grab video and genlock and change colors and render text and apply 3D graphics and all sorts of other neat things -- and it's all done in hardware, so it's blazing fast.
I have never seen the Video Toaster Flyer in action, but I hear it is neat. Seems that it can do almost all the things that its big-name competitors have implemented, while perhaps requiring more creativity. That is to be expected, though, since it is a product on the Amiga, the choice for creative professionals. ;)
And yes, accelerators are still available, both used and new, for all Amiga models. A few places to check would be Software Hut [softhut.com] and Compuquick Media Center [infinet.com]. They seem to be two of the leading Amiga dealerships these days.
Check out Newtek [newtek.com]'s website, they have had a number of deals lately on their Video Toaster line.
The only problem with getting into Amiga production these days is researching all the software available. A lot of it still sits on shelves at the older Amiga dealerships, waiting to be bought and used. When combined well, the old software packages all mingle to form one really powerful system (again, when used creatively). Remember that the Amiga was years ahead of its time, so though a program may have a (C) date of 1993, it could still be very useful and productive. Also, most decent Amiga applications can talk to each other (and the Toaster / Switcher) through ARexx scripting. Combining the Toaster with the kick-ass ImageFX [novadesign.com] package and a modeller like Pixel3D can really melt an audience's mind.
Linux Proffessional Video Project (Score:3)
I am working on a research project to use Linux to record and edit professional quality video such as S-VHS video cassettes. We are using frame accurate methods to record so editing is pretty minimal.
Each frame is rendered on a Linux Beowulf cluster and stored on a large hard drive in PPM format. Next each frame is loaded into a frame buffer that supports component video out. The image is then recorded onto a Sony LVR/LVS 5000. A Linux machine completely controls the LVR. (Code is GPL'd of course.) From there we use the rs-422 remote control interface of the LVR and a JVC S-VHS VCR BR-S822U to edit and make S-VHS and VHS recordings.
The problem that I have is finding a frame buffer card for Linux that supports component video out. There is lots of stuff for getting video in but that is not what I need at this point. Currently, I am using an SGI O2 for video out. Unfortunately, the video hardware is crippled forcing me to reduce the quality of video it will produce. Any one have any suggestions about a frame buffer?
With the proper frame buffer I will be able to quickly record with excellent quality each frame. (These frames make up a scientific animation of myoglobin.)
Please take a look at the website at http://prisant.ncsu.edu/~neely [ncsu.edu]
The website is a bit out of date but will be updated soon. You can also e-mail me at jjneely@eos.ncsu.edu [mailto] with any questions, comments or sugfgestions on video cards. You may be interested in the group of people I am researching with. Please see http://prisant.ncsu.edu [ncsu.edu]
One of the outstanding goals of this project is to create a complete Linux and Open Source solution. We would also like to create DVDs of these animations but that's a completely different story.
Jack Neely
Re:Stay away from Windows (Score:3)
Re:Video Requirements (Score:3)
Our setup requires a bit of render-then-output tweaking to get Beta-SP quality video out, but the cost to results are better than any other combination that I've found. If you need more drive space, you can always plug into the FW/1392 ports. In my experience, this setup (on Mac) is much more stable than the same software on Wintel -- been doing this sort of thing about 6 years.
ZI
Re:media 100? (Score:3)
You are wrong
Media 100 is great, but veeeeerrrrry exspensive (but less then avid).
Their bottom of the line "DV" model (was the le model) is "only" $3500. The DV has no Insert & Assemble Edit, you must get the lx model for $8000 if you want that (you do). Once you are to that level, go ahead and go one step up to the xe for $11000 and get realtime audio. For $2000 more you can get the xs model and get realtime video. For studio online qualtiy work, get the xr for $18000.
If you can pay that though, you get by far the best editing system out there. The GUI is sweet, it is very stable (exespt for the built in graphics program, use after efects), and it is easy to learn for a newbie (took me about a week to learn fully at age 15
Otherwise, I recomend Final Cut Pro. For $1000 you can do DV quality editing in a great interface (very similar to Media100 actualy) with a G3 (I recomend a G4). I am useing it now, and it works great.
Re:Storage (Score:3)
Well, that isn't true at all. I just spent the majority of this weekend editing an ~ 20 minute video and used a Maxtor DiamondMax 7200 RPM 40 GB hard drive and everything went just fine. The original data was just over 6 GB and the machine didn't even flinch.
Here is my complete system:
*WARNING* I had major problems with the video capture under Windows 2000. It would capture about 30 seconds or so just fine and then it would shutter and stutter (nice technical terms eh?) and the rest of the video would be completely unusable. I ended up capturing the video on Win98 SE and transferring it to the Win2K machine to edit it. Note that the captured video is HUGE and I really don't recomment transferring multi GB of data over a 10 Mb network.
Re:Video Requirements (Score:3)
Matrox and Apple Announce Real-Time DV Editing for the Mac [apple.com]
NAB 2000 Convention [nab.org]
Matrox Video [matrox.com]
NAB2000, LAS VEGAS--April 10, 2000--Matrox Video Products Group and Apple® today announced the first PCI video card for real-time digital video (DV) editing on the Macintosh®. The RTMac, architected by Matrox and Apple engineers, is tightly integrated with Apple's award-winning Final Cut Pro(TM) video creation software to provide real-time editing, effects and compositing. Fully configured systems are expected to start at under $5,000
There is also a rumor [macosrumors.com] that Matrox may replace ATI as Apple's video card supplier.
Video Requirements (Score:4)
Take a look see.
think i/o and final product, not specs (Score:4)
Capturing.
How are you going to log your tapes? Most productions have waves of interns logging the in and out points of all the juicy bits of video on a given reel. The producers then grab the logs, look at the pieces they have to deal with, and puzzle together a show with it (a jigsaw puzzle without benefit of a picure). They do this by generating an EDL (edit decision list) which contains the reels and smpte in/outs of all the clips they want to use. NLE software uses this file as an instruction sheet, and controlls the decks to send video to the capture card.
Output:
Are you outputting to the web? NTSC? PAL? 601DV? The NLE solution you need may be much cheaper if you don't have to deal with the hack that is NTSC.
So it is imperitive that you take into account what video formats your tapes will be in (if analog, then you'll need a capture card and software that supports it, if DV, you need firewire and your NLE must have the DV codec). You may want to standardize on input format if analog, to save money on decks (you don't want to use your camera to send video to the NLE, what if you want to capture and shoot at the same time.) Output is important, because you may not need an expensive NLE if your putting movies on the web.
Unfortuneately, most of these suites are for NT (SCSI is a black art on these boxen), but some are cross platform. M=mac, W='doze, L=linux/D=DV codec, A=analog video:
suggested suites:
Edit (discreet logic) W/A
Avid (avid) MW/A
Final Cut Pro (Apple) M/DA
Broadcast2000 (Open Source) L/A
Premiere (Adobe) MW/A
If output is for the web, don't bother encoding in your suite. Render uncompressed and large and use something like media cleaner pro to encode while you sleep.
Hardware:
One word...SCSI, RAID if you can
I just built a machine for this purpose.... (Score:4)
o P3 600 Coppermine
o 256MB RAM
o 15G UDMA66 IDE HD, 7200RPM
o U2W SCSI Controller w/ 9 G U2W drive (for capture/playback)
o Pinnacle DC30 Pro
(all on Win98 unfortunately, with premiere 5)
While most of the system is pretty straightforward and inexpensive, the two most important parts are going to cost the most $$$
The SCSI controller and drive are important because you'll want to be capturing your video to it's own device, preferably on it's own controller? Why? You don't want the drive getting bogged up doing stuff like swapping and general system stuff. The faster and wider the better. If I get more $$$ I'll add more drives on the scsi chain....
The DC30 is a dedicated analog in/out board. So far I'm pretty happy with the results. No dropped frames. It ran me around $500 something. Nothing beats 'all-in-hardware', plus I've got the outs for a tv monitor and out-to-tape.
For DV, you're going to need A LOT of FAST disk space, and keep in mind that DV *is* 7**x4** resolution (forget the exact numbers) and you HAVE to capture at that res. at the DV frame rate.
and for back out to DV it's got to stay the same.
Do your research on motherboards, too. You don't want to get a cheap motherboard only to find that it can't hack the throughput.
My $.02
Some thoughts (Score:4)
Do you just need to edit down some video you have? NTSC video tops out at about 720x480 (that's also the resolution of a vanilla 4:3 DVD). Or perhaps you want to digitize and edit some film at a much higher resolution. Maybe some special effects.
Platform
If you have no limit to your spending, you're going to want the best. Using an Amiga would only be a solution if you're happy with 640x480 video and can afford acceleration boards (if they're still available). Jurassic Park was --not-- done on Amigas. Some of the dinosaur rough-up proof-of-concept animations were done on an Amiga with Lightwave, but all of the final work was done on high-end workstations and edited the old fashioned way on film. Silicon Graphics solutions do exist but will cost you a minimum of $10,000 for software, I am un aware of any freeware packages that with give you anything more than the common cut, paste, and a few overlayed titles and credits. Your best bet is with a Power Macintosh or Windows PC system. Consider spending plenty of money on a good disk subsystem (drives and a controller card) and RAM.
Capture
You need to get the video in there. If you're going to start from scratch, do yourself a favor and get a DV (digital video, Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394) compliant camcorder and a Power Macintosh G4, G3, newer PowerBook G3 or newer iMac DV as well as Apple's new Final Cut Pro software. Many of the pros are using this setup and aside from a minor luminance-clamping issue, it works like a charm and Apple is actually listening to its users.
If you're going to start with an analog source (VHS, Beta, Betacam SP, etc) then you're going to need a damned good capture card and some fast hard drives. Consider a mid-range Miro card, maybe an Avid or even a second-hand Radius if you can find the drivers. PCs and Macs are pretty equal, just be sure to get at least an Ultra/Wide SCSI card and plenty of drives. (maxing out your onboard IDE with 4 x 40 GB 7200 RPM IDE drives may not leave you with enough disk space).
Edting
There are several good software packages out there for editing. Don't look for feature lists or spec sheets, ask around, see what folks are using. Final Cut Pro [apple.com] is getting -A Lot- of users and awards. Many people are dissing Adobe Premiere, but the fact remains that it's still the most popular in its area (but even I will admit that it is aging). There are even plenty of consumer and even some free packages that may do everything you want. These would be fine as long as you don't need some of the higher-end tweaking and quality features, the most important aspect of editing video on a computer is Getting It In There, so spend most of your budget on a good capture system. Or, do yourself a huge favor and go DV, then you won't be digitizing, just transferring.
Bundles
Many camera and video catalogs offer preconfigured Power Macintosh and Windows PC systems, filled with RAM, drives, software, and capture cards or bundled DV camcorders. Some companies like Avid offer decked-out custom jobs with hardware and software for a highly-supported and highly-respected editing suite.
Re:BeOS (Score:4)
It all depends on what you want to do. (Score:5)
Further up the scale, a Mac G4 couple with a Targa 1000 or 2000 video card would be a great choice for editting, because you've got all the expandability of the G4's, plus the ease of use and plug and play of the Mac... Video capture cards are very finnicky creatures, so it's nice to not have to worry too much about if device 1 will work with device 2 while on motherboard 3.
If you really want to have 3D effects, an NT based system would probably be the way to go, since most of the 3d developers target NT workstation at the low end, and either Solaris or Irix at the high end. Yes, there is some stuff available for the mac (Lightwave, though it lacks the 3rd party plug in support of NT, Infini-D, Electric Image, Strata Studio Pro all ship on the mac... missing from that list is 3D Studio, most notably).
Moving past the low end, you mightt also want to check out systems from Avid and Media 100... They sell turnkey solutions, based on the Mac OS, Windows NT, and Irix.
Without knowing budgets or goals, it's hard to recommend a video editting solution... One thing is, there just aren't any open source tools, or tools that run on the open source operating systems, that can stack up against the proprietary tools.
Lastly... If you end up on a Mac or Windows machine, you'll probably want Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects for your editting and compositing. Throw in Photoshop and Illustrator for titling, and you've hit almost $2000 on just software, so be warned it's not at all cheap!
Linux software solutions (Score:5)
First of all, there is Broadcast 2000 [linuxbox.com], a GPL non-linear editor. For your video capturing needs, try dvgrab [schirmacher.de] (assuming that you've got a IEEE-1394 compliant capture card). And as a cheap plug for my own program, I am the author of gvplay [jtang.org], a simple Gnome/GTK video player. I wrote gvplay to help render my special effect (object replacement through tracking and edge detection).
Video Toaster NT (Score:5)
I have previously used Newtek [newtek.com]'s Video Toaster Products, so when I started into this I naturally thought of them. I was surprised not to see any mention of their newer VideoToaster NT.
While the original Toaster and the Toaster Flyer are not suited to NLE (non linear editing) the newer Toaster NT is well suited to it.
The system comes with outstanding software, Speedrazor VT and Lightwave VT are the biggies.
There are options that allow you to handle IEEE 1394 in/out.
The big advantage of using a Video Toaster is that your video is handled UNCOMPRESSED. That means, given a digital source, that you will have no quality loss no matter how many generations or layers you use in your projects. You have to step up to very expensive AVID systems to get better quality.
This does come at a price though. You will need a LARGE and FAST disk subsystem capable of handling a sustained transfer rate of 23.4MB/s. You can also plan on about 1.3 GB per minute of video. Medea [medeacorp.com] offers some excellent systems that can meet these needs. I suggest their VideoRaidrt series, which are actually based on IDE DMA drives that'll plug into the external connector of your fast SCSI controller. This makes the drive arrays very affordable. I think you could build a similiar HD array using Linux and an IDE RAID controller, but I don't know how to get it to act as a drive and communicate across the SCSI channel like an ordinary SCSI device. That approach would no doubt save you a pretty penny though.
You will need a fast system, I think a system with two Pentium 3 600 Coppermines is a good start. Look for 256MB RAM or more. You also need a high qualtiy PCI sound card. I am still looking onto those, but you can always start with Soundblaster. I am using a GeForce 256 DDR video card. You could probably use an older card, but I'd urge you to get as nice a video card as you can.
The Toaster itself is about $3000 US dollars, and you can expect to spend about $5,000 US on a system and drives.
You didn't mention camera's. I am using a Canon XL1 for most of my work. The camera has interchangeable lenses and with a converter can use any EF series photographic lens. An XL1 will run you about $3800 US. If I had the budget I'd look at the JVC GY-DV500 which has larger CCD's and uses standard professional video lenses. It also has better low light performance and a more professional look and feel. This means that if you have to hire a cameraman, they'll probably be reasonably familiar with teh camera. It runs about $5,000 US. The lenses are harder to find and more expensive than EF lenses. I plan on using a Canon GL1 as a second unit camera, when my budget allows me to acquire one. ( Of course if my budget allows I'll probably go after the JVC and using the XL1 as a second unit.) All these cameras use MiniDV cassettes and have IEEE 1394 in/out.
That said, I have to forewarn you to remember that you will need to budget for lighting equipment, professional microphones, particularly if you are going to shoot outside on windy days tripods and LAN-C or Control L controllers that will allow you to operate the camera while it is on a tripod. If you are going to try to move the camera I reccomend a steadicam. Also for the XL1 I reccomend using a shoulder mount that will counterbalance the camera as it is "front heavy" with most of its lenses.
web sites to check out (Score:5)
and
www.matroxusers.com [matroxusers.com]
You'll find a ton of info on these sites - about Pinnacle, Matrox (IE RT1200), and others.
Cheers.
Coolfish
You need to ask better questions... (Score:5)
For most people the answer is going to be the simple home movie, publishing back to the cammera, or mabey to the web for short videos. In both cases my recomendation is an iMac DV or Special Edition, mabey replacing the Hd with a larger one. This gives you a quality computer with enough horsepower to work on video, built-in OS supported FireWire (1384), and a great consumer level editing package (iMovie.. i have given 2 hour courses on its use, and it is simple to learn, and very powerful for the usual stuff, I highly recomend it for most uses). I would recomend having someone demo iMovie for you once, as it is a great piece of comsumer level software! the size of te Hd is a consideration, but not as big a one as you might imagine, as most of the time you are not woring on more than 20 minutes of video, and you just toss stuff back onto the cammera when you are done, if you are going to be doing hours of video at a time, get a profesional system...
On the next level of stuff.. TV broadcast quality work, I would recomend a G4, a Cannon XL-1, and either Apple's Final Cut Pro (my personal recomendation), or Adobe Premere, and a copy of Media Cleaner Pro, oh and a copy of Apple's QuickTime Pro (the best value tool you will find out there!). If you really feel that portablility is important (say to cut together a news clip while you are russing back to the station in the van), the new FireWire powerbook can serve as a nice little mobile station. Incidentally, this seems to be the combination that ABC has chosen to send it's teams into the field with.
And the final level that I am going to be talking about, the high end content creation level: Here I would go with a a G4 or a SGI (depending on what your company is better at supporting) decked out with a Arora or Avid card (top end is $10,000+ a card), a Gig-and-a-half of memor (remebering of course to get 2-2-2 memory), a fibrecannel Gigabit interface, Dual Channel SCSI-160 (one for scratch, 10K RPM of course), and maybe one of those nice quad-processor digital co-processor cards (4 G3's on a card... not real multi-processing, but even better fo DSP stuff...).
Hope this helps someone out there, and if anyone is in the Madison, Wi area, I am more than willing to do short demo's of the lower end products mentioned (I am not a salesman...). I do have a pro-mac bais, and in this case that is really where the professionals are going, so the bais is justified.
News from Apple (Score:5)
The first one is a summary of an announcement made by Apple, Matrox, and Pinnacle Systems concerning a new "Macintosh Only" uncompressed standard-definition (SD) and uncompressed high-definition (HD) video solutions. The second article describe the latest release of FInal Cut Pro.
Re:What about Avid? (Score:5)
IEEE 1394 is key for capture (Score:5)
In any case, the isochronus transfer keeps you from dropping frames as even the fastest of asynchronous busses like SCSI can. It locks down a guaranteed bandwidth for devices that need it(and DV devices are the classic example of somethign that needs a certain amount of guaranteed bandwidth), so no spike in bus usage can lose you a frame that you can never get back.
The device-to-device communication is nice for keeping things light, but apparently not absolutely necessary when you consider laptops are not that bad to work with.
-N
Digital Video (Score:5)
Okay, so it has a pricetag the average consumer might poop themselves over, but it's worth every penny. I produce medium length (5-20 minute) videos for local campus groups at my university, and I've found that if you've got the cash to shell out for the camera ($1000 and UP!) you can afford a system to go with hit. Primary examples would include ProMax Technologies [promax.com]setups complete for a beginner or some guy with a pro-based background. No, there's not much out there in terms of PC stuff, not unless you want to drop $30k on a system. Granted, a G4 system may run up to $20k, but that will include a WHOLE lot of stuff that's worth your while.
Now while Digital Video is just a fledgling industry, there are some great sites to check out. I highly recommend the 2-pop.com [2-pop.com] site for questions about ANYTHING related to DV. Another good reference point is ProMax [promax.com]. Don't forget the Apple [apple.com] site for their software (FCP is WAY better than iMovie.