Computer too slow?

[dmstockt]

First, I'm VERY new to this... I didn't even take Video Production in High School, so recognize you're dealing with a computer/electronics tech guy, NOT a Video guy...

Hello all. I've spent the morning working the different settings. I used the VS10+ "primer" and set all of the settings to what was suggested, and when I'm trying to capture HD, the digital effects are very apparent on screen. This is especially noticeable when the images are moving, or the camera is panning. Steady shots look great. I was pulling down SD converted in the HC3 and sent over the i.Link and it looked very smooth. I have come to the conclusion that either my computer is too slow, or the IEEE 1394 PCMCIA card is giving me grief.

I've got a Dell Latitude 810 with 512M Ram. That uses a Centrino Mobile 1.73GHz

The IEEE card I've got is an ADS Tech API-601.

I figured that as long as it was a 1394 device, then that shouldn't be the bottleneck

I understand that the 512M Ram isn't a good thing, but is this laptop going to be able to capture the HD (1440x1080) even if I quadruple the RAM, or am I looking at a new processor. I've read a few certain things that say the Centrino M's are comparable to P4's even though they are listed as 1.7GHz.

I've got about 6 hours of HD Tape that I hate to dump it down in SD, but if I fall much farther behind in capturing the video, I'm afraid I'll never get it off the tapes. And I'm sick of buying tapes.

Thank You all very much.
Dan

[THoff]

Can you clarify what you wrote? What do you mean by "digital effects"? Are you previewing the video in Videostudio, or are you using a separate program like Windows Media Player? Are you working with proxies or are you working with the native HDV file?

[jchunter]

Dan,
Please follow the workflow that is described the high definition tutorial http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=13872

IMO, your computer is a bit performance-challenged for editing the HC3's HD video but you should be able to capture it OK in Video Studio 10+. Playback will be jerky in the editor but the output video file should play fine in Media Player classic. I would add another 512 MB of memory and make sure you have at least 20MB of free, unfragmented hard drive space.

[ggrussell]

make sure you have at least 20MB of free, unfragmented hard drive space.

I hope that's a mistake. Even 20 Gigabytes of free hard drive wouldn't be enough to work with High definition files. Ok, maybe for about 5 or 10 min capture.

[lespurgeon]

You will probably need an external hard drive to have enough space. I would get a firewire one - does your firewire card have more than one port? You can eat 20 to 50 GB easy on an HD project.

Make SURE you are using proxy editing.

When you render, expect to go to bed and find your work done in the morning - or when you get home from school/work tomorrow. Now the nice thing is, if all of your workflow is HDV and you do not re-render (such as effects that lighten/darken or are otherwise applied to the entire movie - then the file can be pulled together quickly.

[dmstockt]

All,

Thanks for the replies. This 4 letter word "work" has gotten in my way recently and I've not had much of a chance to work on my video stuff. I did upgrade the Dell with a 1G module (its supposed to be quite fast memory too).

The digital effects I was refering to is like a stumble whenever the video footage is in motion. Yes, that was pre-rendering. It looks really smooth on the camera LCD, but on the PC screen its too "digital".

I am going to have to get an external HD.

I'll keep everyone posted with my experiences; hopefully I'll get a chance to work on it in the next couple of weeks... In the mean time, I've added three more tapes to my collection (thats getting expensive!)

Dan

[TDK1044]

Hi Dan,

Sorry to pee in your cornflakes, but in my opinion your computer will never handle HD capture and editing to the quality you desire. You need a lot more processing power, Hard Disk space and and RAM to edit HD effectively. Your system with a 1.73GHz processor is only just capable of handling basic MPEG2 capture, for HD 1440x1080 you need to be looking at at least 2.8Ghz or higher.

[dmstockt]

Pee in the cornflakes. I'd rather deal with urine soaked breakfast than fight an un-winable battle...

On that note; however, I've read that these laptop processor ratings are kinda skewed, something about actual throughput being a truer measurement... I don't claim to KNOW the details for sure.

On a brighter note, my "BIG" PC (which is in storage in CA currently) will be arriving in MI in the next couple of weeks. If that won't do it, nothing will! It just got a freshen-up over the holidays. The only thing I'll probably do is add a seperate high-speed (10k rpm, 72G) drive for video only.

Dan

[TDK1044]

I hope it all works out for you, Dan. Power accross the board is the name of the game with HD. The articles I've seen reagrding HD editing with this kind of software, suggest that allowing for other variables, a P4 HT 3.0GHz processor and 2 Gigs of RAM does produce good HD results.

[DVDDoug]

Computer speed is only critical during real-time capture and playback. These are real-time events, and the computer absolutely must keep-up, or you will get data errors.

Once you have a digital file on your hard drive, digital editing is just "number crunching". It's going to take longer on a slow computer, but a slow computer isn't going to make computational errors.

I suspect that your capture is good. It's just "data transfer". Playback is more demanding, because it requires CPU-intensive real-time HD-MPEG decoding. Ummmm.... I think HD is always MPEG.

But, the problem is you won't know if you have a good HD video 'till you burn a Blu-Ray disc or an HDDVD and play it on a good stand-alone player.