Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me.
by John
on
Aug 21, 2003 at 12:42:32 am
I am trying to develop a video tool for health care educators that would have them film a clip or two (some of which could be fast like running) drag mostly preedited clips and place them in a timeline--then render to DVD or VHS. Preview that and give it to a person.
They will value quick rendering time and simple software, oh and stability, stability, stability. It needs to go from Camera to DVD or VHS quickly most of the time with minor editing (slow motion) and sometimes without. Ability to preview the final tape would be handy. All for cheap of course. Video quality does not have to be stellar. Main points are:
1. Nonlinear video editing that is intuitive (these people will want to spend very little time figuring out the program or troubleshooting). What are the best simple video editing programs that allow a drag and drop timeline and one click voiceovers?
2. The final product would be either VHS tape or DVD and the run time of the video for each project will be 30 minutes or less--probably in the 15 minute range.
3. Time is of the essence (rendering time). Film to VHS or DVD quickly. Rendering is predominately RAM isn't it? How much does processor speed weigh in??
Any VCR's out there that would use a LANC connection and be controlled by the computer??
Should I go with a computer or something like the Cassablanca standalone nonPC--any new technology I don't know of?
I am going to possibly need a lot of them--anyone know of volume discount place--cow members?
Sorry that is so long winded. Appreciate your comments and expertise.
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by Steve on Aug 21, 2003 at 5:01:38 am
A freind of mine uses Casablanca and he swears by it. He doesn't have much PC experience so a PC-based NLE was out of the question. The Casablance was pretty easy to learn and rock solid stability. I wish my PCs were that stable.
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by phillyswiss on Aug 21, 2003 at 4:59:51 am
The Casablanca will not be a good solution. I have used it in the past and it is really 10 year old technology and often causes more problems, not less. Editing is somewhat intuitive but it does have some very unusual habits which can make some simple editing chores painfully slow. You would also run into problems with your pre-formatted video. The system is closed and the hard drives are not large. The only way to clear enough space to do a new project is to do a complete format of the hard drive. You would spend a lot of time in retransferring all your pre-made segments. It is vastly overpriced for what it does in this era. Stick with a computer.
Vegas is very hard to beat but I asssume that Vegas is more than you want from either a cost or complexity standpoint.
You might look at something like Pinnacle's Studio 8. It is a incredibly powerful yet very simple program - easy to learn, easy to use, unbelievably powerful for the price and has DVD creatiion right from the timeline. But be forewarned it is still a somewhat flaky program. Computer specs seem to be critical - some have used it flawlessly since day 1, many others have had nothing but problems. I never got it to work properly for me and once I found Vegas I pretty much gave up on it. But I think they have cleared up many of the original problems now.
You might also look at Vegas' little brother - I think they are referring to it as Screenblast now. It might be just what you're looking for. Less complex and much cheaper than Vegas. I haven't used it myself but there are probably others on this board that can vouch for it.
Casablanca by Greg Hales on Aug 21, 2003 at 11:36:44 pm
Hi Phillyswiss,
I would respectfully like to take isssue with several of your comments about Casablanca. I know whereof I speak - though I am a Vegas user now, I worked for MacroSystem for several years and did a great deal of their user training for them nationally.
Your comment about hard drives is not accurate. The system can utilize drives of up to 120GB. Further, with the Casablanca Prestige model, drives are in removable trays. You can have as many of them as you need. Further, the problemn you mention regarding the need to reformat to free up drive space - this that was a temporary bug. I believe that it was resolved over a year ago.
Considering that the Casablanca Avio starts at $995 (last I checked), it may indeed be a viable solution for the intended task.
Just today, I presented a Casablanca workshop for a school system, my Avio loaded with several hours worth of preformatted video. Worked like a charm.
Another to consider might be a used 'Cassie Classic'. I've seen them on eBay, sometimes as low as $400.
Re: Casablanca by phillyswiss on Aug 22, 2003 at 6:19:42 am
I have yet to see the "bug" actually fixed.
I have yet to see any bug fix from Macrovision that didn't create more bugs.
If it is so great why are you using Vegas now?
Perhaps, you got tired of the spending a couple of hundred bucks for a few more fonts, another couple of hundred bucks for a few more effects, etc.
You know perfectly well that the initial cost (which is still more than an adequate PC with Vegas) is nothing more than a continual sinkhole. By the time you get a system that can approximate the capabilities of a low end PC and low end NLE you have easily doubled or even tripled your original cost and you still have a system 10 years behind the times which can't be readily upgraded.
But then having worked for Macrovision I can understand why you are having a hard time adjusting to the 21st. century.
Re: Casablanca by Max Hellicar on Aug 22, 2003 at 1:39:36 pm
The Classic Cassie is a bug free, stable as a rock, workhorse editing machine that is ideal for someone who wants to be able to produce a quality video without having a learning curve the size of Everest!
Its real limitation is on the audio side but is a great buy for someone with limited funds and limited time to learn an editing system
(IMHO).
Max
You are wrong and it's MacroSystem (not Macrovision) by T LM on Aug 23, 2003 at 4:58:56 am
I don't want to start a format war but the comments made by Mr.Phillysis are inaccurate, out of date, and in the end just plain mean.
Name: phillyswiss
Date: Aug 22, 2003 at 1:19 am
Subject: Re: Casablanca
I have yet to see the "bug" actually fixed.
Maybe you should try and look again. I have a bug free Avio right here in front of me. It has been over a year since the bugs were fixed and the fixes were free.
I have yet to see any bug fix from Macrovision that didn't create more bugs.
Same as above.
If it is so great why are you using Vegas now?
Thats easy! Sony, Sonic Foundry, MacroSystem (not Macrovision), Matrox, Pinnacle, and a host of others make editing tools. Some tools work better than others for each job. Vegas does some Amazing things but some things are easier and faster with an Avio, Kron, Prestige or even the venerable Classic Cassie. Bottom line is that you use the tool that fits the job. Another thing to keep in mind is the user. Give BoBo the chimp the finest set of woodcarving tools made and the results are a big mess and an injured chimp. Give a master carver a basic beginner set of woodcarving tools and you will still get art. The tool doesn't make the talent, it just enables it. Additionally, John, in the post that started this thread, wanted ease of use and stability. MacroSystem (not Macrovision) products have that hands down!
Perhaps, you got tired of the spending a couple of hundred bucks for a few more fonts, another couple of hundred bucks for a few more effects, etc.
You know perfectly well that the initial cost (which is still more than an adequate PC with Vegas) is nothing more than a continual sinkhole. By the time you get a system that can approximate the capabilities of a low end PC and low end NLE you have easily doubled or even tripled your original cost and you still have a system 10 years behind the times which can't be readily upgraded.
I know perfectly well that an Avio DV comes with both analog composite and s-video AND digital inputs. To get a PC that will have both digital firewire and analog composite and s-video inputs will cost extra. Add this cost to editing software, an anti-virus program, a defrag utility that is faster than Microsoft's sluggish built-in program and things start to add up. Total it ALL up and the cost is pretty close. Start with nothing and add up all the equipment costs for the average person to get to the point of reliably editing video with analog and digital sources. Compare the cost to an Avio DV. Depends on the features that you want, but basic feature to feature it's close.
If you look under the hood of a MacroSystem (not Macrovision) product you will find many of the same chipsets that are found in Canopus, Pinnacle and Matrox. Hardly 10 year old technology is it? Now I know that I won't be able to send email, chat, do the bills and play solitaire on my Avio, but I will use it as one of my EDITING tools. I also know that my MacroSystem (not Macrovision) editor is stable, virus-proof and within minutes of taking it out of the box even second grade students can be editing and outputting great videos.
Bottom line is that the best tool for the job is what's called for. In this case it sounds like a MacroSystem (not Macrovision) product could be the ticket. But I know that it's not the ticket for every job.
A Hammer is better at driving nails than swatting flies off of one's forehead... but perhaps you already know that.
But then having worked for Macrovision I can understand why you are having a hard time adjusting to the 21st. century
Finally, Mr. Sillypis, you have to make it personal, Ouch!
Remember, it's MacroSystem (not Macrovision) that you seem to have a problem with.
To Quote Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does". Good Day
TL M
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by Michael Shive on Aug 21, 2003 at 2:15:08 pm
The only reason I would not recommend Vegas for your purposes is because rendering takes longer (if you're going to DVD) with Vegas than some other NLE's. If you're just capturing and outputting to tape rather than DVD, chances are you won't have to render much. Other than that, Vegas has everything covered that you need. I have read reviews and seen tests showing that Ulead Video Studio 7 has a very quick render engine, so you might want to download a demo of that and compare it to Vegas. I have not used Video Studio 7 though, so I can't give you any firsthand experience.
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by John on Aug 23, 2003 at 5:01:00 am
Wow,
Thanks for the information guys. Seems I will for sure want to test drive a casablanca system and see if it is worth it to me. I am so divided on this issue. In one way I like the proprietary nature of it all in that theoretically it should all work smoothly together in the Casablanca system--however I do think Casablanca systems are expensive for what they do. One of my issues is that a clinic may be rendering multiple clips--plus health care workers do not have time to screw with sound card issues, new patch updates for software etc..as I won't want this unit to be conected to the internet.
What do you think about a sony vaio stripped clean of all but the movie shaker??
I am thinking of going with a computer with a slightly slower processor, 2 gig of RAM, a DVD drive and a VCR/DV that can be controlled via the firewire--with a miniDV slot and VHS in the same unit. They could dub the DV to VHS if they didn't want the edit and they could print to tape if they wanted VHS with an edit, or to the DVD burner.
Is RAM the most important for a fast render??
What about a Mac--I don't use them but is that a good option.
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by glenn on Aug 24, 2003 at 2:53:40 am
It seems to me that RAM isn't very important for encoding DVDs or rendering. I would go for a fast processor as encoding and rendering depends a lot on your processor. Pentiums are faster at encoding DVDs than AMD processors so go the Intel route.
My experience with Macs is that they are very easy to use. iMovie2 is the easiest to learn NLE I have seen by far (compared to Premiere, Final Cut Pro/Express and Vegas Video). It might have problems with large projects (100+ clips and edits) but I don't think you'll encounter that. The control for speeding up and slowing down clips is on the bottom and it allows you to add voice-over easily. Overall I find the program and OS very stable. There was a problem in my school where 2 groups were doing their graduation projects and they had large projects with many clips and edits and somehow their clips disappeared (not sure what happened there...). For a shorter project I did (5 minutes, not 15 minutes like the people doing grad projects) iMovie worked perfectly (NO crashes or messed up print to video).
I have not tried iDVD but have heard it's really easy to use and some people hit all sorts of bugs after they upgrade to iDVD3. You can still easily print to VHS tape. Roxio Toast might be a choice for burning DVDs. There are also some DVD recorders that connect with firewire and they encode real-time or something like that (not the best possible quality but should definitely beat VHS). see http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/review_pana_3040_dvdburner.html These might work with PCs too. You might just want to skim the article.
PRO
-Extremely easy to use
-It just works
-Consumer Reports find that Macs have about half the number of tech support incidents as PCs do.
-Save on office decoration :P
CON
-Might get a freakish bug??? (a lot of programs have bugs and I don't know if iMovie is particularly bad or good)
-iMovie3 seems to be a step down from imovie2 see http://www.imovie-user.com/ (they are saying it is filled with bugs... so just use iMovie2 if you can get it)
iDVD is suspect
-The low end Macs are a bit expensive and aren't that powerful compared to PCs. I don't know how long speed changes take to render in iMovie (you could go to a store and test it out?).
-A bit hard to get more hard drive space on emacs/imacs since you can't put in another internal drive. You can get a firewire drive with a quality firewire cable but you might have to worry about fried ports if someone decides to hotswap the drive (crazy glue or a word of caution will probably fix this).
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by John on Aug 24, 2003 at 5:50:56 am
Glenn,
Thanks for the great info. It really helps since I have not used a mac at all. I am surprised that RAM does not speed up rendering time much. Do you think it might speed up rendering time on VV timeline stuff (shorter projects being rendered to .avi), but not on longer projects or DVD's.
I suppose do to the size of a DVD and the encoding, that occurs mostly with the processor like you said.
Re: Big Favor to ask the herd before they cull me. by glenn on Aug 24, 2003 at 4:07:16 pm
In Vegas Video more RAM improves the RAM preview, which "speeds up" rendering (you can now RAM preview more video). If your projects are really short you might be able to RAM preview your entire project. I don't expect that more RAM speeds up rendering.
This site doesn't find more RAM helpful in speeding up render times. If you mess around with the BIOS (pretty safe nowadays) you can take advantage of quality RAM and speed up rendering times.
CPU is a huge factor in rendering times and many real world benchmarks reflect this. A faster front side bus also helps. Pentiums are also better at encoding for certain programs (most MPEG2 encoders) as I already mentioned.
