Table of contents
Background
How does it work?
How does video work?
Compression?
Why digital?
What do I need?
What's new?
Where can I find out more?

Background

Video and desktop video has finally allowed the average person to try their hand at movie making more so than ever before. Ever since I was young I wanted to make movies. When I was 11 years old my brother and I used my dad's silent 8mm film camera to try our hand at film making. We made our first documentary. Granted it was far for being a masterpiece but it does chronicle a period in ours lives that we will always cherish.

Home movies were so primitive then, three minutes per film and no sound. Today you have a complete TV studio in a box smaller than your average lunch box. You don't have any more excuses. There is software and capture cards out there that offer you more fire power than your local TV station had just a few years ago.

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How does it work?

Since I first started this web site the changes have been fast and furious. As it goes with technology we keep getting more bang for our buck. DV & Hi8 camcorders now sell for well under $350 US. DV may actually now be a cheaper solution. With an analog camcorder you'll need a capture card where as DV needs a 1394 firewire port. Lots of newer PC include this port. My older Audigy sound card form SoundBlaster has a 1394 port built in. It all depends on your budget & your needs.

Even if you have a DV camcorder you may be planning to output to tape. In that case you may needs a capture card that outputs analog video. I currently have a ATI all-in-wonder card that will capture analog and output analog. I could also pipe the analog through my DV camcorder. Then again you could burn a CD or DVD and/or copy the disc onto a VCR.

My first experiments with digital video were with a Video Blaster model CT6000 and a 486DX4-100. This card could capture video but could not output back to video. I had to capture at 8 frames per second if I wanted keep from dropping too many frames. In order to have good looking video you need to capture at 30 Frames Per Second. At full screen resolution that's about 10 megs of video bits per second for analog video. DV is about 3.6 meg / sec. A frame is a single still image.

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How does video work?

In case you do not know how motion pictures work let me briefly explain. Motion pictures (film) TV whatever are simply a stream of single images being flashed before your eyes with a blanking mechanism that hides the transitions or the switch between single frames. The eye has what is called persistence so we retain the image until the next one is flashed. This happens 30 times a second in video and 24 frames per second in film. Due to our eye's persistence the brain sees this as continuous motion.

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Compression?

How do you store or even handle all this data? The magic word is compression. One popular form used for analog video is M-JPEG. DV uses a similar scheme. Compression compares a previous frame to the next frame and only saves the information that have changed. Let's say a scene consists of two people talking face to face with a house in the background. From one frame to the next frame the house is not going to change so why update the data. If there is a lot of motion in the scene less will get compressed. DVDs use MPEG2.

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Why digital? or Non Linear Editing NLE

Why digital video you ask? When video is recorded on videotape the recording is linear. This means that to review a particular scene you have
to roll through the tape to find the section you need. With digital video on your hard drive etc. you can jump right away the place that you want to view. You end
up saving time. Digital recordings are just recording of 1’s and 0’s , so when you copy you are copying the exact code to rebuild the original recording.
There is no loss when copying. Think of analog copying as making a photocopy and digital as printing from the original Doc. Every time you copy the photocopy the image is degraded but when you print from a file the results are the same every time. Most capture cards come supplied with some editing software. You can add all kinds of effects and transitions. Almost every popular TV sports or news effect can be reproduced. You assemble your video by cutting and pasting dragging and dropping, sort of the way you use a word processor.

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What do I need?

Even if you still have an old 486DX66 you could still experiment. Look for an old DC1 card by Miro. You shouldn't pay more that $50 US or less. Check Ebay. This was the granddaddy of bi-directional capture cards. The critics raved about it. For most of the current capture cards you need a fast Pentium or equivalent with at least 128 Meg of RAM. The faster everything is, the better the results will be. Seven years ago I bought a Matrox Rainbow Runner. It came in two parts, a Mystique video card with the Rainbow Runner as a snap-on add-on. This card was discontinued and replaced by the Marvel. Now they sell the RT.X10. You'll need lots of hard drive space and speed. Currently you can find a Western digital or Maxtor 80 gig hard drive for around $70.00 US. Maxtor now has an 200 Gig drive for under $ 120.00 US. Go for 7200rpm or better. I currently use a Pentium III 1000 with 512 MEG of ram. Go for as much memory as your wallet can bear. Newer EIDA ATA hard drives are fast but you need a TX mother board to take full advantage. With a little effort, patience and talent you can dazzle you friends. Computer Video uses an incredible amount of bits per second. Without speed you drop frames. Always shut down everything you can before capturing. Defrag your capture hard drive. Believe me it does make a difference. I use a shareware called "traykiller" to help shut down all un needed apps. If you have a Pentium II, III or IV all the better. I'm still using an old Sony CCD-TR101 Hi8 stereo and a used Sony Digital 8 TRV330 (that I got for for $166.00) .

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What’s new?

The newest Camcorders that record to DVD& hard drives. Let me point out something here. Have you ever noticed? Prices are constantly falling until they come
out with a new toy. DVD players are falling below ( $ 35.00) VCR prices. So now they release recordable DVD machines at the price that the simple player
sold for just a short while ago. Just say a DVD burner can be had for under $ 50.00, dual side 16 X . Blank DVD media are selling for less than blank CD's. You can store so much more and RW media is just as reliable as tape. Using my ATI All-in-Wonder I can record TV or camcorder out direct to hard disk in MPEG2. If you have budget constraints and you have a CD burner you can burn to VDC. I'm still experimenting. I bought a Philips 642 DVD player that can handle DVD, VCD, SVDC, WMA, jpegs, MP3, DivX etc. With DivX you can burn a full length near DVD quality movie onto a regular CD. I have burnt up to 5 full length movies on one blank DVD in the DivX format. Think of DivX as being the MP3 of video. Sony has finally entered the DivX game. Saw a model in Paris in October ( 2005). Some DivX players going for around $40.00 or less.

Well digital video cameras are becoming affordable. Mini DV’s sell under $400 US. I like the Sony Digital-8 series. The interesting point is that it uses the same 8mm tapes and is backward compatible. You can play your old tapes in the same machine. Videomaker ran a test and the results are said to be close to the competitive DV's . It’s also nice to see that manufacturers are making digital cameras that look like cameras again. The prices on Hi-8 (the next best thing) have also been coming down. I’ve seen Hi-8 going for $300.00. There a trick that you can try. You can trick a reg8 tape into believing it's a more expensive Hi-8. Flip both a reg8 and a Hi-8 tape over and notice the holes carefully. The Hi-8 has more holes punched through than the reg8. Just punch or drill (be careful and use your brains) the holes to match the Hi-8 and your camera will think that it's using Hi-8 tape. Here again your are on your own. This is something that I did and it seems to work Ok. I haven't the time to investigate further. So if you are the adventurous type and are willing to gamble try this. Hi-8 tape is supposed to be a higher grade but is there really a big diff? Try it and tell me what you discover. I found that my old 8mm tapes work fine with my Digital8. With DV and D8 you can find capture card really inexpensive but you are going to need at least a Pentium II or better.

Most sales people unfortunately know little about Digital Video, so do yourself a great service by reading all you can and visit the links I have listed below.
Management would rather hire slimy sales types selling you useless extended warrantees than hiring people who know about the video products. Down load the Demo’s and visit the links.

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Where can I find out more?

One of my favorite link is www.videoguys.com. Click below. Their site has tons on info and links is a great place to start.

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Check out Videomaker magazine . Another interesting site is . The Electronic MailBox . These guys have lots of good links and good prices. If you have any interest in Digital Video try it.

Here are a few more video links

If you have any ideas to share concerning desk-top video please drop me a line at

satkin@videotron.ca

manufacturers

video resellers

magazines