On Tue, 08 Dec 1998 23:40:54 GMT, "Public Works - Environmental" wrote:
>bgl7669@my-dejanews.com wrote:

>> i'm thinking of getting on of those sony vaios for desktop editting. so far,
>> they sound like a good product however i keep hearing they drop frames.

>I don't think anybody has said they drop frames during the first few minutes of
>video capture. I think there has been speculation the VAIO ***might*** drop frames
>during a long video capture... say... 10 minutes into the continuous capture of a clip.
>
>The reason for the speculation has to do with the experience of the folks at The
>Electronic Mailbox. They've modified their views toward using single UDMA hard
>drives, however. At first, they were quite skeptical about single UDMA hard drives
>being used for MiniDV video capture. But with 100Mhz bus speeds and extremely
>fast new 400Mhz processors, a single UDMA hard drive can sustain MiniDV capture
>for at least a few minutes without dropping frames and The Electronic Mailbox folks
>have adjusted their position to concede that point. Of course, everybody knows you
>can use a Promise Fasttrak in conjunction with two UDMA drives and you can probably
>capture to your heart's content without dropping frames.
>
>So in that respect, the new Sony VAIOs are probably okay for editing short videos made up
>of short clips. Nobody has reported on how well they actually work when one tries
>to capture very long video clips (longer than 10 minutes). At least I haven't read any
>posts like that.

A couple of things... Are we talking about mini-DV (I assume so,
given the set-up of the VAIO...). If so, and if AVI files are used,
9.5 minutes is the limit for any one file of NTSC mini-DV (if not,
and the VAIO is using another format...;-) On the drives, a single
*dedicated* video UDMA drive should be just fine for mini-DV
capture/play without dropped frames (if it is kept defragmented),
but if that single drive is also used as the program drive, there
will be dropped frames at least occasionally. If you can easily
add another UDMA drive to the VAIO, it could be a good mini-DV
editing computer...