On Monday, February 17, 2003, at 10:09 PM, R. Wayne McCorkle wrote:
Within the next month or so, I am planning to purchase a new computer.
The
primary purpose, besides just having a faster computer, is to convert
my
collection of VHS tapes to DVD. Along those lines, I purchased a TV
tuner
card recently to test out the setup.
I currently have the following setup:
CPU : Pentium II, 266 MHz
RAM : 328 mb
TV Tuner : I/O Magic PC PVR
Primary Video Card : ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro 215GP (PCI)
Secondary Video Card : NVidia Riva128 (AGP)
Disk Drive(s) : Slow < 7200 RPM SCSI and IDE drives
TV Application : xawtv
Capture Application : streamer
I was pleasantly suprised first with the hardware support and second a
the
quality of some sample movies I recorded. Note that while I recorded
only
at 15 fps and a resolution of 320x240, my old setup seemed to perform
rather well.
So onto the new computer, I would like to solicit advice on what
components matter most. Within a given budget, I can purchase a machine
posssessing two 2.0 GHz Xeon processors and 512 Mb of RAM, or trade
one of
the processors for another 512 Mb of memory. Can anyone state what the
impact of the trade off might be.
I would definitely get second processor over 512MB of RAM. Although
you do need the extra get the processor first and wait a couple weeks
for the RAM. Currently, 512MB of RAM is only $50 anyway (
http://dealram.com/ )
Along with recording at a relatively high frame rate (24 fps ?), I
would
like to perform some basic editing. Wipes and functions like that are
nice, but the real goal would be to eliminate sections of video,
commercials for example.
Then there is the matter of disk space and speed. My current plan is to
run the OS on a dedicated (physical drive) and therefore based on my
understanding ... the speed of that drive is not so critical. However,
my
research indicates the speed of the drive I record to is important. So,
the trade off I am considering there is an 18 Gb, 10000 RPM, SCSI
drive or
a larger, say 80 Gb, 7500 RPM IDE drive on the second IDE channel.
I would get the 80GB 7200RPM drive. A 5400RPM or even a 4200RPM drive
with sufficient RAM is ok for capturing video. You'll need the space!!!
While
we are talking about IDE channels, is there a negative impact in
putting
the DVD writer on the second channel along with the data drive. Or,
will
the writing process be interrupted by taking the data off the drive.
That probably won't be an issue.
Michael
