How low can you go in digital video systems and still get acceptable output quality to your TV or video recorder? That, it seems, is the question many users of low-end systems and potential purchasers alike are asking. One thing's for certain: there are a number of systems we consistently hear problem reports about. The software originally shipped with the Pinnacle Studio 400, some unhappy purchasers report, was fraught with bugs. However, a downloadable update improved things considerably and many users are now quite pleased, as many Usenet postings reveal. Its successor, the popular Studio 7, was, in the summer of 2002, the #1 selling video editing title -- and we're not surprised. It's a great little piece of software that sells for only US$79.
Things have changed a great deal since the mid-nineties, when PC-based video problems seemed to be the order of the day. All too often, we hear complaints about AVI video clips losing their audio sync, or the inability to capture more than 2 GB of data on a hard disk under Windows 9x, or various problems with Adobe Premiere, the FAST DV Master, or various Miro products. Generally, users seemed pleased with Miro's DC-30 product (despite the fact the company's tech support page warned that "upgrading to Premiere 5.0 will deactivate output to video, and defeat all Overlay functions"), but as it originally sold for about US$800, one would expect it to work well.
But, even now, would-be video mavens sometimes encounter unexpected snags. Those upgrading to Windows 2000 or Windows XP (or recent Mac OS versions, if they are on that platform), in an effort to build a more reliable foundation for their video editing efforts, sometimes find that drivers for these newer systems aren't available.
And sadly, spending more money doesn't always guarantee better results, as we'll see in some of the old and new examples below.
The Studio 400, which is the evolutionary descendent of a product called Video Director, is an external box for Windows PCs that acts as a sort of automatic rewinder, fast-forwarder, player & recorder robot for your camcorder/VCR. Connected to your PC via its parallel port, the device is a low-bandwidth capture device (providing postage-stamp size video "thumbnails" used to arrange your video edits), coupled with an IR/LAN-C remote control. It is, in effect, a controller for tape-based, automated dubbing. Thus, it's suitable for linear editing but not non-linear digital editing.
Miro (subsequently bought out by Pinnacle Systems) characterized the Studio 400 in its original promotions as an "off-line non-linear editor." Your video, explained company spokesperson Mike Iampietro, is captured at low resolution -- according to Pinnacle, the maximum capture resolution is 160 x 120 at 15 frames per second. The low res captured video is used to build an edit list. When you create a "final" tape the low res capture video is not used. Instead, he notes, Studio 400 performs a linear tape to tape edit, using the original camcorder tapes. Thus, you produce a full quality, full resolution video tape, with minimal disk space required - 150 MB for each hour of video edited.
The Studio 400, its fans report, gives excellent titling and transition effects for basic projects, at an affordable (about US$220/C$350) price. And, because the Studio 400 is all external, it is suitable as a capture solution for notebook computers, as well as desktop models. However, because the editing capability of Studio 400 depends on your VCR hardware's tape transport, it is not accurate enough for work where numerous, precise, edits are required. Details at http://www.pinnaclesys.com/consumer/studio400. There is also a Studio 400 Web Forum at http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/~2/
Similar off-line non-linear editing capabilities eventually showed up in various other products, such as Pinnacle's Studio 7 and Apple's Final Cut Pro 3. It's a great innovation that helps speed the task of working with long video segments or clips with many edit points.
By comparison, the now-discontinued Iomega Buz, which was available until for Windows PCs and G3-based Macintosh computers, proved far too incompatible with newer PC designs (especially those with AGP cards) and was discontinued in mid-1999. It was, for those who could put up with its finicky behavior, an online non-linear editor based on fairly inexpensive (about C$350 for Windows; $500 for Mac) but surprisingly powerful video capture hardware.
Buz provided a dual-function PCI card with very high data rates (utilizing the same Zoran chipset as the Miro DC-30), bus-mastering to your PC's DirectDraw graphics card, an UltraSCSI controller (Win98 identified the SCSI as an Advansys 3050), and a full-rate video compression engine with an external I/O box. To create a video tape, the video captured by Buz was output from the PC back to tape. To create full-resolution, full-quality tapes, you had to capture the video at full resolution, and, if you wanted decent quality, you were forced to limit the amount of compression used. This required large amounts of disk space -- about 4 to 8 GB per hour, depending on how much compression the user was willing to use.
Its fans called Buz "the best hardware from Iomega," which was both a plaudit and a backhanded reference to the number of complaints about hardware failures and data loss problems with the company's Jaz and Zip products.
MGI VideoWave from MGI Software (now owned by Roxio) was the video editor included with the Buz; MGI PhotoSuite was supplied for image-editing duties. Apple QuickTime Pro, a recording utility and multimedia tutorials are also included. (The Mac version lacks the MGI software titles but provides Adobe Premiere LE). In either configuration, Buz was certainly a good value for those who wanted to buy an Ultra SCSI card -- it was like getting a video capture system thrown in for free. (The Buz provided a standard high-density "SCSI-2" external connector, but it also included a standard 50-pin "SCSI narrow" internal header.)
However, the Buz, like many multifunction I/O products from that era, all too often created havoc with its quirky incompatibilities. At the time it was discontinued, there were several outstanding compatibility problems and even its biggest fans conceded that the existing drivers were still in need of further refinement. Unfortunately, a message appeared on the company's website, saying "Iomega has decided it will not ship any additional units of the Buz™ Multimedia Producer for the PC to its distribution channels." And that was the end of that.
The lesson here is to be sure that the video editing product you choose works with your hardware and software setup. The easiest way to do this is to visit the technical support forum of the company in question and snoop around. Or, try a search of the Groups section at Google.com. You may also be able to find a third-party FAQ or "unofficial" product page, where, more often than not, you hear the real story about problems the product manufacturer may be trying to suppress. Apple, for example, is notorious for deleting posts critical of its products from its technical support areas.
You should also be careful to meet (or, preferably, exceed) the system requirements. A third-party FAQ at http://www.trix.com/buz/faq.html detailed issues Iomega, as it turned out, was playing down. A site called BuzClips (look for http://paradigm.uor.edu/~harshman/buz/ using a tool such as the WayBackMachine) was another web resource dedicated to low-cost video production, with an emphasis on the Iomega Buz. The BuzClips site is long gone, but thanks to Web archives, its helpful tips live on. You can find similar help pages for just about any product if you do a little searching.
There are other video systems based on the same high-quality Zoran MJPEG chip used by the Buz and the DC-30. Video buffs with a Matrox graphics card were prime candidates for the company's Rainbow Runner capture system -- originally sold for several hundred dollars and now available for about $120. RR fans say output to SVHS tape at 8.3:1 compression is practically as good as the original tape. Priced about US$280, the RR includes Ulead Media Studio 5.0 VE, a package we've reviewed in its full form elsewhere on this site, and provides good quality S-VHS resolution output. Like the Buz, users report that the RR, at the time of its discontinuance, had several outstanding software "issues."
We have, however, had very good results from the Matrox Marvel, a 2D/3D graphics card which, like the RR, provides M-JPEG video capture and playback support. In fact, the Matrox Marvel G200-TV is still the best quality analog video capture system we've seen in an under US$300 package -- and we've seen quite a few. Its main problem was the fact that it was an incredible disk hog at its highest resolutions. The capture quality of late-model (MPEG-2 capable) ATI All-in-Wonder cards is almost as good, and the resulting files are much smaller. Still, Matrox has made a reasonable effort to provide updated drivers for just about every version of Windows (even Windows NT), and the Marvel G200 or G400 are available at bargain basement prices on the used market these days. The G200-TV is discussed in the Lab Test on graphics cards at PCbuyersguide.com.
Indeed, for the video enthusiast wanting an inexpensive, all-in-one solution for 2D/3D graphics, video capture, TV on the desktop and video output in the under-$500 price range, the Matrox Marvel or the ATI All in Wonder 128 (preferably the 32MB version, which has a better Rage Theatre chip onboard than its 16MB sibling) are excellent choices -- and Canadian-made, to boot. ATI's All in Wonder Radeon series of cards are probably the most full-featured analog capture cards -- they sport "time shifting" of live video recordings, TV capture, and much more. The latest All in Wonder Radeon 8500 DV even has onboard Firewire (IEEE 1394) ports for all-digital video capture.
Indeed, avoiding analog video capture entirely is the path to superior quality. Of course, if you original video source (say, a VHS video tape deck) is analog, then you'll have to capture it with an analog capture solution such as those mentioned above.
However, if your video source is digital video, as it would be if you own a DV video camera with an IEEE 1394 output jack, you can add an inexpensive ($65) FireWire card to your PC and capture all of the original video's quality as pure digital information. For the best possible results, keep it in the digital domain during the capture and editing process, then output the final results back to your digital video camera or write the digital video to CD or, better still, a recordable DVD.
Video Buyer's Guide recommends the ATI or Matrox capture products for the best results under $1000, unless you already have a FireWire digital video camera or IEEE1394-based editing deck system, in which case a FireWire (IEEE1394) I/O card is a better choice.
In either case, you'll want to invest in some big hard drives. We recommend a high-performance model such as the Seagate Barracuda IV (and a UDMA 100 controller card, if your motherboard does not provide onboard ATA 100 or ATA133 support). There is a certain advantage to going with a RAID system (video buffs usually use RAID 0 for enhanced video capture performance), just as there is a performance boost achieved by spending a lot more on an UW SCSI system, but the best thing you can do without blowing a lot of money is -- and this is important! -- use two hard drives. Don't try to capture to the same hard drive your operating system and applications are on -- it really slows down the capture performance. By installing a second, fast hard drive and capturing to it, you'll be pleased with the results, even on a mid-range (<1 GHz) PC. Keep the hard drives defragmented and don't run any other programs in the background for the smoothest possible capture.
You should also, of course, invest in a high-capacity backup system for the storage and safekeeping of your projects. We recommend a CD recorder or, if you can afford it, a DVD recorder.
As for how much storage space you'll need, that depends on whether the video is stored in a compressed format or not.
Compressed video typically results in "near broadcast quality." Near Broadcast Quality is a generous term describing approximately what S-VHS or Hi-8 delivers: a better than composite-quality signal, with strong chroma and luma definition.
VHS quality is, it seems, an even more generous term that is somewhat of a euphemism for "fairly poor quality." High quality S-VHS or Hi-8 seem to be the terms used to describe the quality you can achieve with 5:1 or better compression at data transfer rates in the 2-3K/sec range.
See Connecting a PC to a VCR for more details.
As the FAT file system used by Windows has a problem dealing with video clips greater than 2GB at a time, the ability to assemble clips to tape or disk is important for longer projects, but you won't need to worry for a 20-30 minute video. Although you cannot get "true broadcast quality" for $1500 (or even triple that), you should be able to store 20 minutes of near broadcast quality video in less than 500 MB of disk space. If you've got 10-20 times that much disk space to work with during your editing and a good video capture/output card, such as the Matrox Marvel G200-TV or its newer and more powerful sibling, the Matrox Marvel G400-TV, you'll be able to get very nice quality.
A typical video capture board, for example, as described at http://thetechnozone.com/videobuyersguide/software/DigitalVideoToolkit.html saves files as AVI, and can sometimes convert them to MPEG-1 (as does the All in Wonder 128 or the G400-TV) to save disk space. From a 1.30 minute video, a typical MPEG-1 capture file will be something like 28MB in size. For comparative purposes, a single stream of professional-quality D-1 uncompressed video requires 22MB per second. So-called "Dual-stream" editing systems (which professional editors require) would therefore require 2x 22MB/sec. See http://thetechnozone.com/videobuyersguide/q+a-SCSI-or-IDE.html for details.
We'll add more info on low-end digital video systems to this page in the near future. Check back soon!
Also Compare:
Snazzy, about US$200. Real-time MPEG-1 capture board. Supports captures at 352x240 (MPEG I frame video and MPEG layer 2 audio).
Hauppauge WinTV, about US$80. Captures 320x240 @30fps (BTYUV format, 8bits/pixel).
For further reading:
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