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[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

Hi guys, my church is planning to buy a comprehensive video editing hardware's. A good setup, for non-linear video editing suites.

My question is, what do we need? As I want to make sure that we are spending $$$$ in the right direction.

What I have been thinking is,

- A computer with an ample amount of processing power (cpu, RAM and HDD speed).
- A video interface box/card. (MOTU, Grass Valley, or Matrox)
- A DV/HDV external recorder and player (Datavideo DN-300)
- and of course, video editing software.

We might go to a PC based system, because most of us all are too familiar with a PC systems.

If we must go to a Mac based system, please tell us why.

Some of the goals are:
1. To save up some time (no more waiting to capture from the tapes).
2. Content will be shown mainly in the videostreams over internet.

Thanks guys... and GBU

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Christy L  Manoppo (okky) wrote on Thu, 21 January 2010 05:57

Hi guys, my church is planning to buy a comprehensive video editing hardware's. A good setup, for non-linear video editing suites.

What do you actually want to do?

I get the feeling that you want to capture and/or edit video that has been captured on media like tapes or DVDs. But, I'm just guessing.

I think you might be amazed what can be done with a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements ($80) and a good modern PC from the local office supply store.

I've done and I've seen done many very useful videos on that much hardware and software, or less.

But, again depending on what you want to do, the above could be like trying to canoe across the Atlantic.

[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

well, I'm trying to cut the time when we are doing the post production work.

Main media will be mini-DV.

or, do you have any other ideas?

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Christy L  Manoppo (okky) wrote on Sat, 23 January 2010 00:03

well, I'm trying to cut the time when we are doing the post production work. Main media will be mini-DV.

Been there done that many times. Mini DV is pretty easy to capture on a computer. The key is using Firewire.

If your computer doesn't have a firewire port, the add-on cards are about $20-30 (even in office supply stores) and don't require manual driver installation if you're running XP, Vista or Win7.  

The mini FW plug goes into a jack on most mini DV cameras and you play the tape back to capture it on the computer. Downside is that this has to happen in real time.

Once you capture the video, you can work it over with the Windows Movie Maker which is on most XP, Vista or Win7 computers, or some good inexpensive software like Adobe Premiere Elements (about $80).

Elements uses DV files as its core technology, minimizing conversions from mini-DV at file load time, which is a plus.

I personally prefer to capture with a stand-alone DVD recorder, to avoid actually handling DV tapes. You can load DVDs in a fraction of real time.

[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

Of course we must utilize firewire to capture mini-DV's my brother  
And again, the workflow that you wrote is the same like I did.

The only thing is, if the video footage is 2 hours, then we must capture for almost the same like the video footage.

Also, what did those expensive capture cards do? Like the ones from AJA, Blackmagic Design, Matrox and Grass Valley.
The cost upwards to $$$$$.

-link-

Will they decrease post production time? Like, transcoding, encoding, decoding...

Thanks guys, as I'm completely blind in this area...

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Christy L  Manoppo (okky) wrote on Thu, 28 January 2010 05:03

Of course we must utilize firewire to capture mini-DV's my brother   And again, the workflow that you wrote is the same like I did. The only thing is, if the video footage is 2 hours, then we must capture for almost the same like the video footage.

That's one of the downsides of Mini-DV, you have to transfer the video from the camera to the editing station at real time speed.

That plus the lack of frequent reusability of DV tape is what pushed me into using a DVD recorder wherever possible. DVD-R and DVD-RW media is dirt cheap. With care in handling, DVD-RW media can be reused dozens of times. We just burn DVD-Rs and put them into our archives after transferring them to our editing station.

Also, our video operator does some mixing in real time during the service. The DVD recorder is on the output of the mixer, using the same video we feed to the nursery, the green room, the family room, etc. She mixes between a live video camera and rescaled video from the 2 computers we use during the service to do video presentations for songs, announcements, and other videos.  The audio comes from the main mixing board.

Quote:

Also, what did those expensive capture cards do? Like the ones from AJA, Blackmagic Design, Matrox and Grass Valley. The cost upwards to $$$$$.

Our normal production involves zero capture cards. The function of the capture card is performed by the mixer and the DVD recorder.

I searched around and found an inexpensive capture card that has its own sound encoder so that the sound stays in synch over a period of hours. It is made by Diamond multimedia, and may still be available for under $150. I only use it to digitize VHS tapes and the like.

Quote:

-link- Will they decrease post production time? Like, transcoding, encoding, decoding...

You need a different kind of card to speed up post, and AFAIK most people don't go there.

A modern commodity quad core PC that you get from say Dell for under $1K will transcode video at the rate of several times faster than real time if your editing software supports multiple CPU cores, and Adobe Premiere Elements and regular Premiere do.

CPU speed helps 3 ways - it makes loading faster, editing smoother, and it speeds the transcode process at the end of job when you prepare the new media.

Loading and media preparation are the big time sinks - they are usually something you start and go get a cup of coffee, especially if you are working with 2 hour files.

I work with 80 minute files and I figure maybe 15-20 minutes to load, and another 20-30 to burn a finished DVD.

If I'm just pulling the sound out of the video, I can speed the process up quite a bit by using other software that ignores the video.

[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

Quote:

Also, our video operator does some mixing in real time during the service. The DVD recorder is on the output of the mixer, using the same video we feed to the nursery, the green room, the family room, etc. She mixes between a live video camera and rescaled video from the 2 computers we use during the service to do video presentations for songs, announcements, and other videos. The audio comes from the main mixing board.

OK... well, what you did in your church is really the same thing like us here.

So, what did those expensive capture cards do? what are their primary function?  

sorry, as I am still puzzled.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Christy L  Manoppo (okky) wrote on Sat, 30 January 2010 03:47

Quote: Also, our video operator does some mixing in real time during the service. The DVD recorder is on the output of the mixer, using the same video we feed to the nursery, the green room, the family room, etc. She mixes between a live video camera and rescaled video from the 2 computers we use during the service to do video presentations for songs, announcements, and other videos. The audio comes from the main mixing board. OK... well, what you did in your church is really the same thing like us here. So, what did those expensive capture cards do? what are their primary function?   sorry, as I am still puzzled.

The simple answer is that we don't have any video capture cards in our sunday morning worship technology, expensive or otherwise. We do both our audio and video capture with stand-alone optical disc recorders.

[Tim Urner]

Okky,

The video capture card "digitizes" the video signal so it can be saved as a data file on a computer. When you are hooking up your Mini DV camera via firewire the camera is the "capture device"

One of our customers uses the MOTU V4HD to capture HD video direct from their switcher to an iMac (Final Cut) The MOTU is a little overkill for simple capture but it is an upconvert box and a down convert box for almost any video media you can think of.

http://www.motu.com/video-products/v4hd/

Tim
PS how are your new monitors?

[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

Thx Tim.

One of our problems is the quality of the recorded video we are having. I think, some part of it is because of the amateur grade switcher we have using (sima sfx-9). And also because the quality degradation of using Live Video feed from the easyworship software).  
Also, because we record directly to DVD, and after that, the same DVD got some post-production work. So, more decoding and transcoding, so the final video quality suffers.

I've trying to figure out how to improve flow, time and quality, but I also discovered that, to achieve that... it's not cheap.

For the new monitors... they are fabolous! Thanks steeplesound!

[Kevin Willis]

You can use an off-the shelf computer, but you will likely find that it is extremely limiting. First, the integrated video cards are basically worthless when it comes to editing. Second, when you go to render, assuming you are rendering a full service, expect these computers to take several hours. For editing, I always recommend either building and good quality gamer-type pc or buy a multi-processor Intel-based G5 MAC and make sure to add lots of RAM, 8GB minimum. Newegg is an excellent source for ordering pc parts.

The main issue with capturing tape, regardless of the media, is that is real-time, meaning that a two-hour service will take two hours to capture. Focus Enhancements makes some great portable firewire hard drives that capture uncompressed video that can then be transferred to your the editing computer. This is a huge time saver!!! Recording to a DVD recorder uses compression which will degrade the image quality.

I'm not sure if this answers your questions, but I hope it helps.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Kevin Willis wrote on Sat, 01 May 2010 23:16

You can use an off-the shelf computer, but you will likely find that it is extremely limiting. First, the integrated video cards are basically worthless when it comes to editing. Second, when you go to render, assuming you are rendering a full service, expect these computers to take several hours. For editing, I always recommend either building and good quality gamer-type pc or buy a multi-processor Intel-based G5 MAC and make sure to add lots of RAM, 8GB minimum. Newegg is an excellent source for ordering pc parts.

I'm wondering what kind of video editing software runs that poorly, so it requires major CPU horsepower to even achieve 1:1 rendering times? Is it even trying to use multiple cores?

The same applies to video cards. What is it about your editing style that seriously taxes a modern on-board video interface?

[Kevin Willis]

Arnold B. Krueger wrote on Wed, 05 May 2010 08:08

Kevin Willis wrote on Sat, 01 May 2010 23:16 You can use an off-the shelf computer, but you will likely find that it is extremely limiting. First, the integrated video cards are basically worthless when it comes to editing. Second, when you go to render, assuming you are rendering a full service, expect these computers to take several hours. For editing, I always recommend either building and good quality gamer-type pc or buy a multi-processor Intel-based G5 MAC and make sure to add lots of RAM, 8GB minimum. Newegg is an excellent source for ordering pc parts. I'm wondering what kind of video editing software runs that poorly, so it requires major CPU horsepower to even achieve 1:1 rendering times? Is it even trying to use multiple cores? The same applies to video cards. What is it about your editing style that seriously taxes a modern on-board video interface?

Most real editing software, specifically Vegas or Premier, will take advantage of mulit-core or multiple processors, which greatly reduces rendering time.

As far as the video card, you need all the video ram you can get to be able to preview in as high resolution as possible, especially when color-correcting.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Kevin Willis wrote on Thu, 06 May 2010 13:55

As far as the video card goes, you need all the video ram you can get to be able to preview in as high resolution as possible, especially when color-correcting.

I don't have any PCs with on-board video on hand that *won't* run 2 1920 x 1200 displays at their maximum resolutions.

1920 x 1200 seems to be the point where further increases in display resolution have questionable practical benefits, and costs ramp up dramatically faster.

AFAIK memory for modern display adaptors, whether on-board or PCI-E have been sizing their RAM allocations to support complex 3D rendering processes at ultra-high refresh rates, as opposed to just being frame buffers.

For example, the frame buffer for a 2D 1920 x 1200 display supports about 2 megapixels, so running 32 bit color would take about 8 megabutes of RAM for each frame buffer. If you double that so that there is 16 bit color and intensity per pixel, there is still ony 16 megabytes per frame buffer.

Modern high performance graphics cards for gaming currently run 512-1024 megabytes, supporting my contention that their RAM was not sized to support high resolution displays.

[Karl P(eterson)]

Arnold B. Krueger wrote on Wed, 05 May 2010 08:08

Kevin Willis wrote on Sat, 01 May 2010 23:16 You can use an off-the shelf computer, but you will likely find that it is extremely limiting. First, the integrated video cards are basically worthless when it comes to editing. Second, when you go to render, assuming you are rendering a full service, expect these computers to take several hours. For editing, I always recommend either building and good quality gamer-type pc or buy a multi-processor Intel-based G5 MAC and make sure to add lots of RAM, 8GB minimum. Newegg is an excellent source for ordering pc parts. I'm wondering what kind of video editing software runs that poorly, so it requires major CPU horsepower to even achieve 1:1 rendering times? Is it even trying to use multiple cores? The same applies to video cards. What is it about your editing style that seriously taxes a modern on-board video interface?

Not to stir the pot more than it needs, but there are needs for more advanced machines in video editing.

Our current spec for a new editing station (Windows or Mac) is an Octo-Core 2.6 or 2.9 machine with 12GB mem and enterprise grade disk to get close to 1:1 render times in our DVCPROHD/Prores422 workflow. When we get a complicated timeline it obviously still stretches way beyond 1:1, even on this class of hardware.

This is all using Vegas or FCS.

Even those machines are close to 1:2 times for even a "simple" bounce from HD to high compression h.264 for the web. On the mac side we are using matrox compresshd cards with compressor to get that down to useable times, unfortunately matrox doesn't like vegas yet or they would be standard issue for us.

However you are correct in that any graphics card with access to over 256meg of memory (either onboard or shared from the main system) seems to work just fine for video editing. Unless we start getting crazy with GPU accelerated effects plugins/programs that is....

For a purely DV workflow you are correct however. We can still edit DV quite comfortably on a 6 year old workstation long since retired from our main workflow.

Karl P

[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

Quote:

--to 1:1 render times -- stretches way beyond 1:1--

What is "render times" ? I'm sorry if I sounded stupid, but I'm little bit confused here.

As Arnold said, we use DVD-R media to record our services, but when we want to store it into the internet for more viewing options, the quality is just dissapointing.

As I follow through this thread, it's obvious that we dont need that much of CPU horsepower for doing simple DV editing tasks.

FYI, here's the flow..



for post, we did like this:
from dvd (mpeg2), devode it to AVI, then all the editing goes in AVI, then back to DVD (mpeg2) again.

For now, I think some of the culprits for the bad quality of our recordings
1. We need a better mixer/switcher for key-ing. Our text and video goes to the projectors at the same time, this is done in the PC with Easyworship software, which has the "live-video feed with text" feature.
2. Instead of putting it all to DVD, maybe we need a Hard Disk Recorder, so we just need to copy the video files, instead of extracting the video from DVD, thus eliminating the encoding/transcoding process.

[Karl P(eterson)]

Okky,

When I say render times, I mean the amount of time it takes for the video editing program, after you've finished editing, to "spit out" the final product in a single video.

Rendering doesn't include when you are pulling the video from your device (copying DVD TS Files to your computer, or importing a stream from your (H)DV cam, that is called ingesting.

Rendering doesn't (normally) include how much time it takes to make the video ready to render, also known as pre-render transcoding (although hopefully if you did your ingest right, you won't have to do this).

Rendering doesn't include how much time it takes to record your finished project to media (either burn to DVD, bounce to tape, etc).

Your switcher doesn't look that terrible honestly, I doubt replacing it would bring up your end quality substantially unless it is truly the weakest link in the chain.

Does the quality on your preview monitor or projector look good? Does the DVD straight off the original recorder look good? The question I am trying to ask is where in your chain does the quality start to look bad?

Where the quality starts to diminish is where we need to look for the problem.

This may be in the camera itself, or it may be in one of the transcodes.

Your switcher includes the ability for Luma or Chroma Key, You should try letting the video camera go straight through the switcher and key in your words with Chroma or Luma.

Karl P

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Christy L  Manoppo (okky) wrote on Sat, 03 July

from dvd (mpeg2), devode it to AVI, then all the editing goes in AVI, then back to DVD (mpeg2) again.

What editing software?

When you say AVI which subformat of AVI are you talking about. Isn't your editing software using DV/AVI as your working format?

Quote:

For now, I think some of the culprits for the bad quality of our recordings 1. We need a better mixer/switcher for key-ing. Our text and video goes to the projectors at the same time, this is done in the PC with Easyworship software, which has the "live-video feed with text" feature.

What mxier? I haven't done a ton of keying with our mixer, but its not elegant, and it seems to do a good job. Our mixer is a Roland Krossfour.

Quote:

2. Instead of putting it all to DVD, maybe we need a Hard Disk Recorder, so we just need to copy the video files, instead of extracting the video from DVD, thus eliminating the encoding/transcoding process.

Hard disk video recorders typically compress the video data they store on their hard drives, pretty much the same as DVD recorders. I've used both. IME minimally compressed DVR video does an acceptable job in a NTSC context.

I woulod recommend that you do some troubleshooting, using a custom burned DVD with various samples and trdy ptterns.

Here are some xamples of video test patterns:

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/test-patterns/

[ProSoundWeb Community]