on 2/21/05 5:09 AM, Alan Kim at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > ansberry wrote: > >> I know that this old dinosaur will never really blaze through a DVD >> rendering/burning, but I'd like to get it down to 10 to 12 hours. What do >> you guys think? Would I be better off with the ide133 card? >>
The drive speed is really a moot point as far as DVD authoring is concerned. What is taking the time is the conversion of the video to MPEG-2, which is extremely processor intensive. I have an S900 with a G4/400 MHz upgrade, and it takes me approximately 10-12 hours to convert an hour of video to DVD. If you are using DV video as your source video format, you only need 3.6MB/sec (constant) throughput to/from the camera, so even the internal SCSI bus (10MB/sec) is fast enough. If fact, I purchased a Sonnet ATA133 card and an 80 GB hard drive last year, only to find that I was unable to capture video directly to it without glitches (blocky video, dropped frames), probably because of buss issues between the ATA card and the FW card. I had an internal SCSI drive that would capture video no problem, so I'd simply capture the video to the internal SCSI drive then migrate the files over to the larger ATA drive for editing/DVD authoring. Just recently I found the right combination of FW card and FW case that will allow me to do everything on one FW drive and it plays well with both OS9 and OSX (not an easy task - I tried three different FW cards and three different FW cases before stumbling upon the "magic" combination). As Alan mentioned in his post, you really have to decide whether it's worth sinking any more money into your Umax. It sounds like you're pretty maxxed out anyway (1GB RAM, G4/450 IIRC). Other than a processor upgrade, there's not much more you can do to your machine that will make it any faster for video/DVD work. For about the price of the fastest processor upgrade you could get for your S900 (which would only give you an incremental increase in speed), you could buy a Mac Mini and be into the newest generation of Apple that is designed for doing that stuff. Do I have any regrets - absolutely not! The S900 was one of the best investments I've ever made. Sure I spent enough money on upgrades to buy a new G5, but it has allowed me to upgrade as I needed (or wanted) and there's always been (and still is) a vicarious thrill in doing stuff on an "officially unsupported" computer designed in 1996? that is still pushing the boundaries for the newest line of Apples. When I decide to make the move to a newer machine, my trusty Umax will still be there (networked) doing the things it still does well, like surfing the 'net, recording digital audio, doing office tasks like word processing/spreadsheets and accounting, playing music, creating graphics, basic video editing, etc. etc. BTW, I've been doing some tests with DVD authoring on a newer G5/1.6GHz machine at work, and it still takes around 3-4 hours to encode one hour of video. To me, that still means setting it up to process overnight - what's the difference if you wake up in the morning and it's done either way? -- Gregg -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
