on 2/21/05 1:50 PM, Gregg Gorrie at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 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?
Thanks for the info. I guess I'm lucky. I don't have any trouble capturing from my camera to my ide drive attached to the ata66 card. It does get some very slight blocky glitches when I encode the video, but I've been told that that is a problem with the Toast compression. Mike -- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------
