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Pinnacle offers a wide variety of video-editing packages, from the cheap and cheerful to the highly professional. The mid-range DV500 boasts real-time native digital video (DV) editing with 3D effects that will satisfy enthusiasts and professionals.
The package consists of a single PCI card, an external analogue input/output box and a host of software. The card features three 1394 ports - also known as Firewire or iLink - that are used to connect DV camcorders or decks. Most DV camcorders feature a 1394 DV socket that will digitally send out a signal, but you'll need a model labelled DV in/out to receive a signal back again for digital recording.
The external box features composite, S-Video and stereo audio connectors for both analogue input and output. The software includes Minerva Impression CD-Pro for creating short-length DVD-style projects on CD-R, Sonic Foundry Acid for audio, Titledeko for titling, and full Adobe Premiere 5.1 with Pinnacle's own dedicated real-time plug-ins. Pinnacle's DV tape scanning, capture, control and printing utilities complete the package.
Uncompressed PAL video is an unwieldy beast, measuring around 25Mbytes/sec, so some kind of compression has to be employed to make it more manageable.
It's down to a Codec to compress video during capture and decompress it again for playback, and this can be done in software or hardware. Even in this day and age of super-fast processors, you're still going to need a hardware Codec to achieve anything near broadcast quality.
Most video capture devices employ a hardware Motion-JPEG Codec, which uses JPEG compression on each frame to achieve smaller file sizes, while retaining editing capabilities. Pinnacle's DV500 cunningly employs a hardware DV Codec, similar in theory to M-JPEG, but in practise, identical to the system used by DV camcorders. This means that the DV500 captures clips from analogue sources in the DV format, ready to put straight into your DV camcorder without the need for lengthy format conversion. Obviously clips captured from DV sources are also kept in the DV format, allowing you to mix digital and analogue material without conversion.
That's clever in itself, but the DV500 goes one step further. Pinnacle includes a range of transitions and effects that can be applied in real time, without the need for time-consuming rendering in Premiere. Under the right circumstances, you could capture video from analogue or DV sources, edit and apply specific effects, and immediately print it directly to DV tape. Your work is also output to the analogue connectors, which could be feeding an analogue VCR or TV monitor. The 3D transition effects are also very good, and these would normally require lengthy rendering in software or need specific hardware support. The DV500 uses any existing 3D graphics card to accelerate the process.
Pinnacle recommends using Windows 98/NT/2000 on at least a 333Mhz Pentium II with 128Mb of RAM and plenty of free disk space. The DV format is fixed at 25Mbits/sec, which works out at 3.6Mbytes/sec. That's the speed your hard disk will need to sustain, and you're also looking at 200Mbytes/minute or around 12Gbytes/hour of material. The DV500 supports files up to 12Tb.
We captured analogue clips from VHS, Laserdisc and off-air using the S-Video and composite connectors. A Canon XL-1 camcorder provided DV material. We merrily edited our project in Premiere and output the entire thing both to an analogue VCR and digitally back to the XL-1 over 1394. Admittedly, some effects required rendering, but by keeping everything in the DV format, we faced the minimum of fuss.
The DV500 also offers an export to MPEG-2, the native format of DVD.
Our 128Mb Pentium III 550Mhz took 25 minutes to convert an eight-minute 1.79Gb AVI project from DV into a 527Mb MPEG-2 file (442Mb video/85Mb audio). This was done using a variable bit rate with an 8Mbits/sec video peak to match the DVD specification. Minerva Impression CD-Pro could then write this high-quality, eight-minute video onto a recordable CD with DVD-style menu graphics.
It's certainly an impressive package, covering just about every base for projects involving analogue and digital material. Using the high-quality DV Codec for both analogue and digital sources is inspired, and the MPEG-2 export is a welcome bonus.
Contact Pinnacle Systems 01895 442 003
www.pinnaclesys.com
See also:
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If you have a digital camcorder, you will want to grab your films off the camera and put them on your PC for editing. The Studio DV makes that task simple with its Firewire interface and easy to use software. 01 Feb 2000
Matrox has an excellent reputation for making good quality graphics cards and te Marvel G400-TV is no different. With not one but two video outputs it is ideal for video editing, as well as being a mean games card. 10 Jan 2000All Device Adapter
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