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Hardware upgrade for video editing

4

4153sh

Junior Member
I am relatively new to video editing. I have a system consisting of: 2.4 mhz Pentium 4, xp, 2x80GB SATA HD, Ati Radeon 9200 VIVO card with 128 MB,512 MB PC3200 Ram, sound card from the motherboard. Software used is Ulead VideoStudio 6SE. Its main purpose was for converting VHS tapes to VCD when it was bought 6 months ago. I have now mostly finished converting some 50 one hour tapes with varying degree of quality - some have diagonal lines or tiles and some reasonably good. I plan to upgrade my sytem to achieve better video quality for DVD recording mostly from digital camcorder. Should I upgrade the capture card, ram, software or the video card. One suggestion is to upgrade the vidio card to AIW 9800Pro, which I don't know if I agree, because I do't use the system for games nor I plan to watch TV with it. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
 
If you are doing DV camcorder -> DVD, it will be MUCH easier than the VHS -> VCD. All you need is a firewire port for the DV cam. Video card does not matter. DV file size is much more reasonable too.

PS
Welcome to Anandtech!
 
Thanks for your helpful reply. As I mentioned in my post, I was wrongly advised to upgrade to the AIW 9800 Pro for video editing. Would you or anyone else tell me what are the main reasons for using this relatively expensive video card besides playing games.
 
AIW is for people who like a TV tuner "TIVO" like functions and can be an analog capture source. And yes, it is a good gaming card. If you do not game, dont waste your money on the 9800. It wont help a bit.
 
I would definitaly upgrade that software... Get a full version of Ulead or Pinnical. You will be surprised at the diffrence in use and quaility. I bet you can't even produce mpeg2. vcd is mpeg1, svcd is mpeg2, and dvd is mpeg2(higher quality). There is a HUGE diff. in quality between mpeg1 and mpeg2. Invest $100 in ulead video studio 7. I bought it and it works great. Mpeg2 makes such a huge difference, and it will have new P4 extensions on it (sse1 and sse2) meaning it will run real nice on that p4 of yours...

Edit: I cannot stress the difernce bettween vcd and svcd enough. Its like night and day....
 
I was gonna mention that, but since he already di 50 conversions to VCD, I didn't want him to feel bad after all that work.

I went through the same thing before DVD burners were out. I converted ~ 25 8mm home movies to SVCD. I tried VCD, but wasn't happy with the quality. I used TMPGEnc and a VBR SVCD encode. They came out really nice.

A good low cost piece of software for doing the DVD work is Pinnacle Studio 9.
 
Originally posted by: oldfart

I converted ~ 25 8mm home movies to SVCD. ..... I used TMPGEnc and a VBR SVCD encode. They came out really nice.
A good low cost piece of software for doing the DVD work is Pinnacle Studio 9.
Click to expand...


I did convert one tape to SVCD using Ulead VideoStudioSE but I didn't notice any video quality improvement and also it only plays on one of my two dvd payers both of which plays vcd disks. Tell me more about "TMPEnc and VBR SVCD encode."

I wanted to upgrade to a full version Ulead VideoStudio 7 but I was told Version 7 had some issues(don't rememer what). I'll wait for Version 8.

I read a lot of favorable reviews about Pinnacle Studio. In my case, with 6 months of experience using Ulead, I might be more proficient using the same program - it has capture settings for dvd, vcd,svcd,Mpeg 2, 2 types of Mpeg 1 with slightly difft resolutions, and 2 types of avi.

If you, or anyone elso, are familiar with both Pinnacle and Ulead VideoStudio, I would be very insterested in the comparison of the two.
 
Okay, with the exception of the capture card (if you use one) the hardware will have no impact on visual/audio quality. That is software territory. New hardware CAN greatly reduce encoding times. Things to note:

*VCD compliant MPEG1 is HORRIBLE. I would NOT call this ?quality.? Think of it as a bad version of VHS. It will look ?okay? on smaller (19? or less) television sets, but that?s about it. MPEG2 is the way to go if you need something that can play on a stand-alone machine. Not all MPEG2 encoders are equal though. See below.

*CCE is arguably the *best* consumer level MPEG1/2 encoder out there right now. CCE is also very fast. Tmpgenc is free for MPEG1, but not very fast. With CCE my comp does 1.5x real-time encoding. With Tmpgenc, its usually less than real-time. This can be a big or small problem, depending on how much you encode.

*Make sure you are using a quality capture card. I do not use the AIW series as I prefer a stand-alone card. Try the Leadtek XP/2000 Expert. It uses a 10 bit chip and produces great results. I have a feeling that with the ATI card you will probably be stuck using their software. AIW guys pipe up and correct me if I'm wrong here.

*When possible always try to capture uncompressed to Huff. Next in line would be MJPEG?a *slight* loss in quality but greatly reduced file sizes. Then feed the captured stream to Tmpgenc or CCE via Avisynth.

*Avisynth. Google for it. Powerful editing/processing tool, and its free. Uses filters to remove noise, de-interlace, sharpen, adjust color, you name it.
 
VCD
Video:
1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 240 pixels

SVCD
Video:
max 2600 kbit/sec MPEG-2 (Audio + Video bitrate max bitrate is 2778 kbit/s).
480 x 480 pixels

The key is that SVCD in addition to using higher resolution, can do variable bitrate. The max bitrate is 2600 Vs 1150 of VCD.
TMPGEnc can encode using a couple of different VBR methods. By using a 2 pass VBR encode, the bitrate is varied as needed. High bitrate when there is a lot of detail or motion, low bitrate when there is not. The end result is a very good quality video.
 
Originally posted by: chocoruacal
....*CCE is arguably the *best* consumer level MPEG1/2 encoder out there right now. CCE is also very fast. Tmpgenc is free for MPEG1, but not very fast. With CCE my comp does 1.5x real-time encoding. With Tmpgenc, its usually less than real-time. This can be a big or small problem, depending on how much you encode.

....*When possible always try to capture uncompressed to Huff. Next in line would be MJPEG?a *slight* loss in quality but greatly reduced file sizes. Then feed the captured stream to Tmpgenc or CCE via Avisynth.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a beginner, there is so much to learn. CCE encoder, Huff, MJPEG etc are all new to me. CCE via Avisynth - I will check it out. In what software do I find Huff and Mjpeg?
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by: oldfart
VCD
Video:
1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 240 pixels

SVCD
Video:
max 2600 kbit/sec MPEG-2 (Audio + Video bitrate max bitrate is 2778 kbit/s).
480 x 480 pixels

The key is that SVCD in addition to using higher resolution, can do variable bitrate. The max bitrate is 2600 Vs 1150 of VCD.
TMPGEnc can encode using a couple of different VBR methods. By using a 2 pass VBR encode, the bitrate is varied as needed. High bitrate when there is a lot of detail or motion, low bitrate when there is not. The end result is a very good quality video.
Click to expand...
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All very helpful info to me. I will certainly give it a try.
 
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