Interesting site. Thanks.

Don't have answers to all your questions, but I thought you'd find the following links helpful in reference to making a Tivo-workalike on your PC:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/technology/circuits/01BASI.html (you need to create a free account to be able to read unfortunately)

http://www.snapstream.com/products/sspvs/

http://www.avermedia.com/products/multimedia.html



While we're on the subject of dream Vegas boxes.. Didn't SF recently announce some 'turn-key' Vegas Video workstation? Best I could tell it was just an OEM PC with Vegas loaded.. But I am wondering if SF has any plans to contract anyone to offer a realtime card that will work with Vegas or work with any existing card manufacturers to write Vegas drivers for their cards.

<Didn't SF recently announce some 'turn-key' Vegas Video workstation?>

Yep...the BOXX is a custom built unit with Vegas installed.

For information on speed vs durability...and for ideas on fastest stuff on the planet...try reading "MaximumPC" mag. Very interesting.

This month's issue has a Dream Machine (costs $7K), but also has a $1K machine that outperforms the Dream Machine (and every other machine they've ever tested) in video rendering (using Premier)...parts were off the street parts....quite a story!

David

What I don't understand is SF and Boxx offering a machine loaded with everything we already have. WHY do they expect us to pay for it again?

We don't expect YOU to pay for software you already have; the bundle system is for people who are in need of both nice hardware and nice software they don't already have, all pre-installed, no setup, turn-key, etc. If you want a similar BOXX system without the software, BOXX would probably make one for you, but since SF would be out of the loop on this, why are you asking us? On the other hand, the bundle price might be close enough to the stand-alone price that you'll buy the bundle system and sell your old copies of the applications <g>.
///d@

I too wish for some words of wisdom vis-á-vis W2k Pro vs. XP Pro as I have the former installed and just received the latter while away on a business trip and before I unwrap the XP Pro, it would be nice to learn what I can learn.

Unfortunately, nobody has said anything regarding your second question about operating systems. Or the third concerning dual-CPUs for that matter (though a search through this forum will give clues. For what it's worth, I ended up doing a dual Xeon machine, but friends say I have more money than sense and have chastized me for not buying Athlons instead. There's a post about what I built (yes, I roll my own usually) called "Dude, you're getting a Dell" (or somesuch).

Fourth question; I bought an AO4 but haven't tried it yet so, I can't help, but conventional wisdom inclined me that way and I've learned nothing since to change my mind.

On the subject of operating systems, I heard the following over at http://fast.bcastvideo.com/ where if you go the FAST Video Machine forum and look for "Is Vegas Video a vianble option for VM/DPR owners" you can learn some interesting stuff.

Unfortunately, this is a professional videographers forum and while you can lurk free of charge, participation calls for you to pony up $150/year. Most amateurs won't see the wisdom of this, but lurk away as you can learn a lot. Most of it isn't applicable to Vegas Video users because as far as I know, there are only two or three of us from that forum who have purchased VV3 and the fellow who runs it is an opinionated fellow who isn't interested in supporting VV3 (our loss unfortunately).

John

I suggest you go with XP. It is the most stable Windows yet, and it has a several improvements over 2000. If you're upgrading from the Windows 98 universe going to either will involve some cultural shock. Both are more secure and because of it several things you are use to doing in Windows 98 SE work a little differently in 2000 and XP. The biggest plus is getting NTFS. No more file size limits.

I am one of the people from the other forum that John speaks of and he and I talk occassionally on this thought we have different goals at this time. I too am getting ready to build my system for the VV3 and one other hardware system as well. So Win2K or XP is on my mind as well. I figure XP because it will be the default as time goes until of course the next OS but for now. As to the information John mentions at the FAST BAR and GRILL as we call it, the Vegas is supported on the free portion of the system. The paid group is where the professional items are discussed but Vegas is a part of that group outside of the paid arena. It is at http://www.bcastvideo.com/ and other VV3 users are there as well. But the discussions on Dual or not and such have a lot on the FAST portion of the site as John discusses. I have been checking out the COW on that subject and the MP vx MPX issue as well which is talked about at the place discussed and at the COW. So check around. As I said, I am building my machine for VV3 and probably another system as well. But VV3 for me is great and way above Premiere for my tastes.

Gary Ashorn, PE

Yeah, but there are reports of SCSI trouble with XP which aren't fixed in the upcoming servicve pack.

The actual URL is http://systems.bcastvideo.com/expand?514 and when you get to the page, select a user name and password and bingo you're in. You don't have writing priviledges, i.e. you can only lurk, but that's OK as lurking is enough to learn a lot. Also, you can select the person's e-mail and open you application and querry them directly.

I think some would find in instructive to visit the FAST VM/DPR section and check out a threat titled "Is Vegas a viable option for VM/DPR owners?" which got quite long, rather heated in spots, yet very, very good technically in places - and actually a fairly good indicator of the quality of the discussions which can be had (this is both good and bad sometimes :>)

I do not propose this as an substitute for this excellent forum, I suggest it as an additional resource (of course you'd have to pony up $150/year to participate and that's of dubious value to VV3 owners at present).

John Beech

Yes Boxx will build you the same system without the software---just email them.

I just ordered the CD of SP1 for XP and it reportedly resolves the slow hard drive acess access problem (SCSI even slower). It's Knowledge Base article Q308219 for the curious.

We just built an XP system and I"m pretty happy with it. We went with Xp Pro because of the number of drivers already installed. I hooked up my firewire card and XP already had drivers for it plus saw my Mini DV deck hooked up and installed it as well.

Don't forget to go NTFS on the HD partition. I was suprised how fast I ate up a 120 gig HD.
-D

I have some hardware advise. Don't puchase this type of machine from a normal channel computer vendor. You will get at least twice as much out of a custom built machine for the same money and all the parts will be name brand top of line components. If I were you I would build it myself.

The most important part of a good DV computer station is the Hard disc performace and space. You will need copious amounts of very fast hard disc space. On your budget the answer is an IDE Hardware based RAID array and four 7200 RPM Hard discs with 8.5 or better access times. Put simply, in a PC a hardware RAID array consists is PCI card controller that attaches to your hard drives. You need an ATA 133 RAID card. I would look at ADAPTEC and PROMISE for that piece. You configure your drives to be striped which increases thier speed by at least 1/3. Also you get the added benifit that all four drives will be in essance 1 big drive. So if you bought four 200 gig drives you would then have an 800 gig drive which is enough continous uninterrupted space to do anything you want to into the forseeable future. Keep in mind that you will need a fifth hard drive for your operating system and software applications. That one would use the onboard IDE controoler on the motherboard. Also you will want to use larger than normal disc sectors when formatting your striped hard discs. Finding the exact best size in more art then science.

You will need to research the software apps that you are going to use to see if they support symmetrical multi processing. That means do they utilize a second CPU if it is made avaible to them. My hunch is that yes most will. Which means you should go with a dual CPU set up. As of right now, with windows as your OS you have 3 choices.

1) dual AMD atholon MP's (advantages: fast, lower cost, can be overclocked). Disadvantges: does not support the SSE instuction set that P4's do, some apps run faster using SSE. and AMD chips produce roughly 1/3 more heat than Northwood based P4 CPU's.
2) Dual P3's (older technology)
3) Dual P4 Xeon CPU's (Probably your best solution if money is no object)

P.S. Sony just annouced a DVD burner that is can burn bith DVD-R and DVD+R media.


Good luck

Marty

Can I put something out here that might fly in the face of current thought? I saw an article on CNET a few weeks back that really got me thinking about HD specs. The article (whose URL I can't seem to find) spoke of the lack of real difference between the 5400 rpm drives and the 7200 drives as well as the differences between the higher speed interfaces (ATA 100 vs 133 vs SCSI). The bottom line was that there were no huge increases in data rates between them and that SCSI was more or less a waste of money on a desktop system since the demands being put on it were nowhere near what a server would.

Decided to see for myself and I went out and picked up a little 120gig 5400 rpm HD for my video drive and have had no real problems. I am dropping some frames, but I think it's due to a system configuration and not speeds since the drive is only being hit sporadically and I can capture from an analog source dang near flawlessly.

Am I way off base on something here or am I only seeing a part of the picture?

thanks
-D

Western Digital 7200rpm 120 gig hard drives can be had for $170 online. I am putting together two of them along with a 40 gig system drive ($75) in a case with an Asus P4S8X motherboard ($140 with built in 1394, raid, sound, USB 2.0, ATA 133 and support for DDR333 memory). The Intel P4 2.53Ghz processor is around $270 now. It may not be a dual Xenon, but it will be fast and economical.

My 2 cents. At one time I edited with a 40 gig 5400, but found only about 20 was usable. The drive got too slow near the end. Ever since I've gone to 80 gig 7200 (Maxtor, Western Digital) I can use the whole drive with no capture problems and even in a fragmented state it's still fast enough (although theoretically you could reach a threshold of fragmentation). When I'm finished with a project I just erase the whole drive and start over.

I just logged in from the road and am surprised (and glad) to see the long responses to my original post. I really appreciate all the advice, especially the referrals to MaximumPC, the Boxx systems, and the various professional forums. I will follow up on all of them.

I am typing this on a brand new Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop that I helped configure for my dad and which I've spent the last day or so getting up to speed. It is running XP, but despite amazing specs, and the fastest hard drive that Dell offers in a laptop, it cannot keep up with Vegas (actually Videofactory, since I wanted something small that I could use to test out editing performance). Very disappointing, especially since I was leaning towards XP for the dream desktop machine that is the original subject of this post.

Based on the comments in this thread, as well as information I've gleaned elsewhere, for my dream system, I am probably going to purchase a system from Polywell or Boxx (not their pre-configured editing systems, but just a really high end computer). I've become pretty well convinced that a dual processor isn't going to buy me much. Also, I think I may be able to get the "Tivo functionality" (i.e., live MPEG recording) cheaply and easily with an external Dazzle product that "speaks" analog in both directions and connects to the computer via 1394. I don't think I need anything fancy for hard drives since DV only needs 3.5 MBs. Therefore I'm going to get two 120 Gbyte drives, 512-1028 Mbytes of RAM and a 2.5 GHz processor. For the display card, I'll get a Matrox G550 with both an LCD screen (for my rapidly failing eyes) and a standard 17" monitor to be able to do precise photo work.

It's all coming together, except for the O/S. This computer I'm using at the moment (the Dell Inspiron 8200) is WAY too fast to have continuous hiccups in the video, so I'm really suspecting the O/S.

If you are using the system hard drive to also capture and playback video, that may be the problem with the Inspiron 8200. Since the Inspirons have builtin firewire port, you are better of using an external drive for your video storage.

Is an external firewire drive fast enough for video? Not sure what the throughput is on those.
-D

The drive is faster than firewire, and firewire is 400Mbps. DV is only 30Mbps. Even if you daisy chain the camera and the drive to the same port that will only require 60Mbps. It will be plenty fast enough for the job.

Thanks. Was thinking about getting one of those.
-D