building a reliable PC?

that's not alot of money, especially if you want a firewire card. In fact i'd say you'll be lucky to get a complete system minus the dv card for that price.

components to look out for would be a udma100 hard drive, at least 256meg of ram, a geforce 2 or 3 graphics card (not mx version).Also, your monitor would be the biggest part of your system and certainly the most expensive, spend as much as you can on it as you will be rewarded for this extra outlay with a screen which is a pleasure to use and not bad for your eyes. i would recommend a 17" minimum for video editing and preferably a 19"

Hi Moysey
Thanks a million for your helpful tips.
I am able to up the budget if thats whats needed.Any ideas on motherboards?The more I read,the more confusing it is.I gather from what I read that I need an agp capture card or would the happaugeTV Wizzard card be up to the job?
Thanks again for the advice.
Steve S

hey steve
for motherboards i would choose the Asus K7V i think it is.Also, with the motherboard choice you have to decide what kind of ram you want.SDRAM is cheaper but not as fast as the much newer DDR Ram.As for quantity, 256meg is a minimum for either type of ram. Personally i'm an intel fan but if you have heard good things about athlons then go for it. Make sure you get a case with at least a 300watt power supply as athlons are power hungry and an agp graphics card uses up more than it's fair share of power too. the main thing you need to decide on the video capture front is are you going to want to capture just analogue, just digital or both types of video?
This decided, it is simpler from there.
Going on to the pc side of things, i have a coupel more questions abotu just what you want to do on it. do you want to play games? this will influence your choice of graphics card. If you want to play games i'd recommend a geforce 2 or if you can afford it a geforce 3.If gaming isn't an issue go for a matrox millennium g450 or something liek that, avoid gefore mx or tnt2 mx as these are severely underpowered.These are all agp graphics cards.Post your needs on here and i'll see if i can suggest some good kit to you.

Hi Moysey
Thanks again for the tips.
AS regards your queries,I have a SONY PC110 which has Firewire I/0 .I only want to use the
computer for video editing,internet and c.d.writing (until d.v.d writing is cheaper)
I also have a small recording studio about
10 metres away which is based around a Macintosh(604e processor,logic audio software)
It would be really nice to send video down to my studio from the DV supercomputer and send it back the supercomputer after adding audio to the vid.I can open Quicktime Movies in logic audio.
I hope this is'nt an immposible dream.I just want to get more bang for my buck by going the Windows route.

Thanks again for the advice.
Steve

hi Steve
Sorry for my slow reply, been kidna busy.
Well, it'd silly not to use a firewire card beacuse the lossless editing is loads better than standard video. A pinnacle systems dv200 will capture just with firewire. great but means that you won't be able to take video from a normal vcr. A DV500 also by pinnacle systems allows video to be captured from analogue and digital sources. The hauppage card you talk about will not provide you with as many features nor as high quality results. Shop around for prices on these as there is sometimes large variation. As for cd-writers, any drive which is "burn-proof" is gonna be fine, i wouldn't bother going down the scsi route as it's extra expense for no gain really. As for addign audio to the video i would say you're gonna want to do that on the pc in Adobe premiere. Doing it on the mac could be difficult if all your rpoject is based on the pc. Are there any formats of audio you can save in that will work on the pc as well?
I'm no mac expert, how old is the 604e and does it have a network port builtin or is it possible to add one?

I'm afraid that to add all these features will require more than your initial budget suggestion of £700. Perhaps if the video editing is more important to you, you could add the cd writer and/or the mac connection later. In my experience, when someone tries to get everything they want right from the start they either end up using substandard components or well over budget.

Hope some of these tips are helpful

Moysey

Hi Moysey
I do want to record analogue video .em
My Partner decided to go ahead and order some bits today.I hope they work together .They are as follows.

AMD Athlon 1.4ghz cpu
256 PC2100 DDr ram
Epox 7K7A3 mobo AMD 761 chipset
Memorex 16x10x40 CD-RW burnproof
300watt CWT p.s.u.(amd approved)
80ghz maxtor ATA-100

I just need to work out the rest.Oh well
regards
Steve S

Hi Steve, once again, sorry for my late reply, been sooooo busy lately.
Those components you listed all look good to me.Processor is nice and fast, so's th ram, the motherboard soudns fine and the hard drive is a nice size too, you could perhaps patition 10gb for the OS and Apps and use the other 70 for storing yer video on.Guess when all this arrives if it hasn't already you'll have to decide which OS you're gonna run, 2k or ME. If you haveany more questions then just ask away, i'll do my best to answer them.
l8r
Moysey

hey Moysey
Are you in the North America?
Good to hear from you.
We are now thinking that all we need are:

UDMA Boot Drive?

Maxtor 450 etv ?

Modem ?
Not sure on the OS.Maybe you could advise.Also ,how big a boot drive?Will the agp card provide the firewire socket?

As you can probably guess I am learning how to build a PC and your tips a extremely welcome.

Steve S

Hi Steve,
I'm actually from england, london to be precise.what about you?

For the boot drive i'd try and get a 7200rpm UDMA100 drive by IBM. IBM make bloddy fast drives so you can't go wrong with them, as a secondary choice check out Quantum, they are also FAST! 10-15gigs should be ok for the boot drive.

As for the matrox 450etv, that will only do analogue video capture. If you want to use the firewire IEEE1394 output on yer camcorder you'll need a capture card that does just firewire in addition to the matrox card or you'll need a card that does both analogue and firwire capture. If you choose the second route (analogue + firewire card) then you won't need the matrox card, just a standard AGP graphics card. Just to clear this up, your graphics card will be AGP and the capure card PCI (these are just different slot types on your motherboard).

As for a modem, well, if you are using a phoneline as your dialup then i would say any modem would do, whatever is cheap really. As long as it is labelled as being a "hardware" modem then you can't go wrong. To chose the exact model for you i would say just read the box and see which one has features that you think you'd use. Internal or external modem is up to you. I prefer an internal modem as it makes less mess and cables.

The OS is a hard one to decide really but if this is your first project PC then i would say go with windows ME. You can't go wrong with it really. You could always change to windows 2000 at a later date if you want to. I use ME because some of my devices don't work too great with 2000.

Hope this info helps.

MOYSEY

PS keep the questions coming :P

How's the pc coming then steve?

Hi Moysey
Apologies for the lenth of time its taken to get back here.
The good news is I am writing this from the new computer.
WE went for
Gforce 2
sound blaster5.1,adobe premiere 5.1

Everything works great . I can capture video via firewire but no audio with it.
Any ideas.The cd plays back OK.I,m sending 12bit audio from the camera.
Any suggestions would be most welcome
Regards
Steve

im sorry moysey but you can go wrong with win me, it is very unstable and it basically just a fancy version of win 98 se with more bugs, so i would stick with win 98se if you dont want to go the 2000 route. The boot drive shouldnt really matter also, 7200rpm is a bit off overkilli wouldve thouh for a drive thats only purpose is to store the aps and os on, 5400rpm would do just nicely and maxtor also make damned good drives. i wouldve got a 5400rpm drive and spent the leftovers on lots of ram.

bye

Steve s,

Premiere 5.1 doesn't work properly with standard OHCI FireWire cards unless you do some tricksie stuff as per this FAQ: http://www.dvdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000034.html

And, one of the options there, MotoDV seems no longer to be available (though you might be able to get a copied by putting a Wanted ad in our Classified forum).

Care to tell us what FireWire card you are using, and whether or not it's a standard OHCI one or a non-standard branded card (such as, for example the Pinnacle DV200 or DV300)>

Bob C

quote:Originally posted by steve s:
Hi Moysey
Apologies for the lenth of time its taken to get back here.
The good news is I am writing this from the new computer.
WE went for
Gforce 2
sound blaster5.1,adobe premiere 5.1

Everything works great . I can capture video via firewire but no audio with it.
Any ideas.The cd plays back OK.I,m sending 12bit audio from the camera.
Any suggestions would be most welcome
Regards
Steve

hi bob
thanks for replying.
the firewire card is unbranded.I tried your suggestion with no joy exept everything now is ixelated:? with no audio.
Should I choose Quicktime or Video for Windows?
Steve S

steve s,

I don't understand the question.

If you are using the MainConcept Codec, then, as per the instructions, that's the Codec you choose.

Care to tell us what you did actually do, in terms of following the instructions?

Bob C

Hi Bob
I just get the option in premiere,settings,video, to choose quicktime or video for windows .The compression is Main actor codec 2.04
I downloaded Main Actor demo and codec.Tried to capture with the DV Capture. Still no luck.I'm tempted to scrap thisforay in to the windows world and fork out the extra for a Mac that will work!
Yours Frustratedly
Steve S

I bought myself Pinnacle Studio 7 and am overjoyed to find my new computer capturing audio as well as video.The article didnt exagerate at all.It is a great program.
Thanks for everyones help. Steve S