Pinnacle editing - need card??

[Nick Underwood]

Hi guys....

I have been using Pinnacle Studio 8 for the bulk of my editing and have just purchased Liquid Edition......(slowly getting my head around it!!)

My question is:

I was very happy with the performance of my editing with Studio 8, (I have a Radeon 9800pro graphics card) and it seemed to take 3d transition and effects in its stride......HOWEVER...!

What did take too much time was "rendering" the finished product to be written on to DVD. An hour finished production sometimes took 3 or 4 hrs to render and compile ready to burn onto a DVD......

So, (finally) would a dedicated piece of hardware do this job quicker (ie: a Matrox rtx100 or such like, or am I stuck with having to wait for things to render and compile before I can write my movie to a DVD?

Also, why would I really want to splash the cash for a matrox card or such like...what's the big advantage.....?!!!


Thanks !

[Adrian Douglas]

Nick,

Are you talking about rendering transitions or encoding to MPEG2 taking a long time? Liquid Edition has many real-time effects and transitions but some still require to be rendered and how long that takes will depend on your system. MPEG2 rendering usually takes quite a while and is totally dependant on your processor speed. There is a hardware solution you can buy for Liquid Edition which is basically the Edition Pro card which will help with your transitions and VFX. You can also buy hardware encoders for MJPEG2 encoding which will speed thing up a little and really improve your final products quality.

[Gints Klimanis]

Nick,

You didn't mention the specs of your computer system. For the price of a good MPEG2 encoder card, you could have a spiffy new computer. You need a fast processor, the fastest main memory and a 7200 RPM + disk. If your current disk is fragmented and full, consider cleaning it up.

For Studio8, you want to read your AVI files (DV25) from one disk and write your project to another.

[Nick Underwood]

Thanks for the replies guys....

Yes, I'm talking purely time taken to encode to mpeg2 to burn onto DVD taking the time. The transition rendering is not a problem.....

My computer spec is:

AMD 2800XP
512MB
120GB (partitioned with Windows on its own 10GB partition)
160GB for raw footage files
Radeon 9800pro Graphics
Sony DRU500a DVD burner
Win XP pro SP1

If I get a dedicated Mpeg encoder card (which do you recommend?), will I see a huge difference....?

As I said, it takes approx 3 to 4 hours to ready a 1hr DVD for burning......will a dedicated card drastically reduce that?

Thanks

[Adrian Douglas]

That's a fairly normal time for MPEG2 encoding. A hardware card may speed things up a little but where you will see the biggest improvement is in the quality.

[Nick Underwood]

Thanks Adrian...things are becoming a bit clearer now !

ould you specify "better quality" a bit more for me.....

smoother slowmotion?
better effects....?
better colour?

Thanks

[Adrian Douglas]

Basically you'll get a cleaner picture, less artifacts etc and smaller files sizes. They are not cheap though and are really only worth the expense if you are doing commercial work. There are a number of dedicated software encoders around that might do a better job, do a search and see what you find.

[Arnaldo Paixao]

Matrox RT-X100.

Real time complex transitions and effects.

Real time MPEG-2 encoding (one hour video takes one hour to encode) with good quality.

Not cheap.

Best regards,
Arnaldo