Phares wrote in message <34DE6F61.246F2923@home.com>...
>Infinite Vision wrote:

>> I'm getting ready to buy a Seagate medalist Pro 9.1 eide drive and a
>> video capture card. Does anyone have any thoughts on where Spark stands
>> versus the AV Master or Editbay for capture from a VX-1000? I know the
>> AV Master and Editbay do not support firewire, however, I also read that
>> the Spark's software based codec faces slight degradation due to
>> quicktime conversion and that running the analog boards at low
>> compression make them comparable.
>>
>> Also, are media files limited to 1 or 2 gigs using the Spark? The new AV
>> Master has fixed this problem apparently. I have both Windows 95 and
>> Windows NT running under different computers if the OS makes a
>> difference.
>>
>> I've been wanting a Spark card but have been questioning some of its
>> limits for preview(I don't want a postage stamp size screen), file
>> size(I'll need more than 2 gigs), and audio control(I'll want to add a
>> few audio tracks in post or not use the audio digitized with video).
>>
>> Are you happy, angry or disgusted with any of these boards?
>>
>> William N McHugh

>I have a spark system. The preview leaves something to be desired and
>yes there is still a 2 gig limitation. The quality however is not
>degraded at all going through this board. If you do buy the Segate
>medalist pro it won't work with it. You'll need to get pretty specific
>on the drive for this thing to work. The only EIDE drives that work
>with it are those new raid drives by Medae' or the Fasttrack. Otherwise
>be prepared for SCSI. They recommend Segate Barracuda and Cheetah

I have a Spark system too - and the IBM SCSI-II 9-gig drives often
available at www.onsale.com for about $550-650 work well with the
Spark card (in a K6-200, 96-megs RAM, LOTS of fans, Win 95...). I
agree - the quality is not degraded going through this card. The
preview window is barely adequate, but it is not a big deal to render
short clips of critical material to send out through the camcorder
for checking on a TV. I am just now completing the editing of a one-hour
video using this system (with the Adaptec DV-Deck software used for
assembling the 8-9 pieces on tape as I complete them [unfortunately,
the DV-Deck plug-in for Premier that allows direct playback off the
timeline of multiple AVI files {as a work-around for the 2-gig AVI
file limit} does not work with my gear] - I add a 3.75 second leader
to each piece and get good matching at the assembly points). With a
FireWire-equiped DV camcorder, is there any reason for choosing an
analogue-input capture card?