On Sat, 22 Aug 1998 18:02:47 -0500, "Michael T. Sechelski" wrote:

>Our training department is starting to incorporate
>avi clips in our online documentation (CD-ROM).
>
>We're currently using a Canon Optura digital camcorder,
>and are considering purchasing a DPS Spark direct DV
>editing system. Can anyone comment on this combination?
>Is there any other way to get video directly from the
>camcorder into a computer without a capture/transfer
>board? If so, how? Also, is the massive amount of hard
>disk space required just a fact of life? How much disk
>space is "typically" required for storage and editing?

I have not used this combination, but there should
be no problem with the Optura-Spark combination,
especially if you are willing to manually control
the camcorder when recording from and playing to
the computer. The FireWire port is needed for transfer
of the DV material. For drives, figure about 1-gig
for every 4 3/4 minutes of video (with a 2-gig AVI
file limit, but the Spark ver.2 software can play
back to the camcorder multiple AVI files seamlessly).
This is not terrible, since drives like the IBM
(IDE) 8 and 14-gig drives are relatively cheap and
they are fast enough to handle the 3.6MB/sec mini-DV
data transfer rate (which is constant). Space is
tight for this, but I have been able to do one-hour
videos with two 9-gig drives plus about 5 gigs
available on my "C" drive. (I would probably try to
go with 3 or 4 14-gig drives the next time around,
though...;-) I store very little video on the
computer long-term, since transfer out to tape
(and back) is lossless.