On 30 Oct 2001 23:13:01 -0800, nugget@ausfish.com.au (Nugget) wrote:

>I'm new so bear with me.
>As I understand it the only advantage of spending big dollars for a
>Firewire capture card (as compared to a cheap OHCI card) is the "Real
>Time" effects - it's like "what you see is what you get"! - as well as
>output options (some offer analogue output but be careful - some are
>only analogue for "preview").
>The analogue input/output option has little value from what I can see
>as just about every DV camera has analogue pass-through allowing you
>to input and output to analogue anyway!
>Therefore my querstion is - what is the best "value for money" real
>time DV card out there - it looks to me like the Raptor-RT.
>Does some other manufacturer offer something similar in quality and
>value for money?
>(Yes I know Sonic Vegas has "real time" preview of the time line -
>sort of.)

There is one more, maybe most important, characteristic:
the codec that is used for rendering. Most produce visible
changes in the image, especially when there are multiple
generations of rendering. See:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/original_vs_10th-gen.htm
for a multiple-generation test of the excellent Canopus
codec, and see:
http://members.home.net/dgcom/MiniDV/DVcompressors.htm
for tests of Canopus and other codecs.
BTW, the codec also affects render times, in addition
to render quality. Also, BTW, I have avoided "RT" editors
so far, for these reasons:
- the Canopus codec render times are short with recent
computers
- the "RT" cards are often RT only for analogue output,
and must still render DV output
- the RT cards that output DV in RT actually convert it
to analogue, then back to DV, on the fly, introducing
generations of A->D/D->A translations
- RT is good only for some effects/transitions/filters,
and only for a limited number of layers/tracks, making
working on complex projects or parts of projects
inconsistent in method, and often slower-rendering than
if a good card/codec like the Raptor is used in the
first place
- hardware requirements for RT are more expensive to
satisfy...
I go cheap and high-quality with the Raptor, but you can
also use a good OHCI card and the best of the codecs
tested in the second URL above, about $50 to buy...
I use renders only to aid editing, and when finished
I wipe out all the renders and render the whole project
as a piece. In my last project, a 2:25:00 "epic" with
maybe 1/4 the footage color and tone corrected, it took
only about 3.5 hours to render the entire video. For much
shorter videos, I see little value in RT just yet...