a friend of mine asked for help in editing a movie, and now i need to create a home-based PC NLE system. I am now using Vegas Video 3.0 on w2k athlon 1200 with 512 ram, 2 80gig 7200rpm hd, Nvidia Geforce2 Gts and Geforce2 MX (for dual monitor support) with an Adaptec FireConnect 4300 firewire card (cheap but good card)

i am now looking for advice on a cheap (the cheaper the better) video monitor, should i just use a cheap 14 inch TV? (Tv does have less resolution..)

also, what is a good video card to use in a student NLE such as this

Matrox 550? ATI Radeon? Do they have video-out superior to NVIDIA cards? Better OpenGL performance? (for effects in combustion, etc)?

also

should i buy Avid XDV 3? i played around with it at school, but not long enough to determine if its superior to Vegas.

and all other advice on system changes/upgrades is very welcome!

hope the message is not too long or too off-topic ; -)

igor'

Igor,

By the sounds of things I'd just go for a TV, like a good Sony or Panasonic. 14" is a good size, but if you can swing a 20" bigger is always better. However, I'm not famililar with the TV out capabilities of graphics cards and can't say for sure if you'll get a true representation of your video.

The usual method for using a TV/Reference Monitor to preview is to take the feed from a Breakout Box connected to a capture card or from a DV deck that is connected via firewire.

XDV is quite a bit superior to Vegas Video but also quite a bit more expensive ($1300 vs $300). Considering you already have VV I'd stick with it. It's a great NLE app and quite a few members here use is and recommend it.

I'd also stick with the graphics cards you have as they have more than enough grunt for DV and motion graphics. I'm still using a 16MB Matrox G400 Dual Head card and it does the job well. High end cards are really only necessary if you are into serious gaming or full on 3D animation and modeling.

OTOH...

My suggestion is that you look at an ATi Radeon 8500DV card. This card is fundamentally a gaming card that is constructed to work for video capture. It features analog capture as well as an IEEE1394 interface port. The graphics display is totally awesome and it gives you the choice of a monitor, a TV or both as a display. Seems like it fits your needs...but, it's a little pricey. nevertheless, a very good video card.

right, i forgot a breakout box!

so then in order to properly preview my effects with vegas on a
video monitor i need to get either a ADVC-100 analog-dv coverter

(299, from canopus, uses canopus codec, good)

or a cheap DV camera, or a DV deck (too much)?

the canopus box is nice and cheap, but with a cheap DV cam ~500
i would be able to output/input from a dv tape, would the DV-analog conversion be as good on a cheap DV camera as on a canopus box?

what is in you opinions best price/value (quality) ratio?


igor'