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Today in DCC Workstation
Building
a Digital Video Editing System --Good, Fast and Cheap: Pick Two.
The PC Hardware You Need for Good, Better and
Best Digital Video Editing
by Charlie
White
--INTRO--;
--GOOD, BETTER, BEST DEFINED-- ; --GOOD--
; --BETTER-- ; --BEST--
; --CONCLUSION-- ; --TABLE
1: Video Storage Requirements-- ; --TABLE
2: Sample Configurations-- ; --TABLE 3: For
further information-- .
GOOD,
BETTER, BEST -- DEFINED
We've narrowed
the world of video down to three categories, where varying degrees of
video quality are necessary to get a variety of jobs done. This technology
is changing so fast, in a year expect to see each of these categories'
price ranges lower a notch while matching the capabilities of the higher
category.
Good (under $5K): WEB/CD-ROM
CD-ROM and Web video production requires the least amount of horsepower,
simply because the frame rates and images required are not as taxing on
your PC. When putting together video to be streamed over the Web, if your
frames are larger than 320x240 pixels and frame rate greater than 15 frames-per-second,
few surfers will be willing to wait long enough to see your clip. That's
slowly changing, however, as broadband connections to the Internet become
more prevalent. Even so, when authoring for CD-ROM distribution, smart
developers aim for the lowest common denominator, where the majority of
CD-ROM players in the installed base can handle, generally either 2x or
4x, at 15 frames per second. 600 MHz consumer-level Pentium III PCs are
at the point that with a few slight modifications you can author this
kind of video on a machine you'd bring home from CompUSA. Just add a low-cost
capture card and software (that many times is included free with the capture
card) and you're ready to go.
Better ($5K - $10K): CORPORATE VIDEO
Here the requirements are more demanding, because for corporate training
tapes and presentations, TV-bred viewers demand TV-quality production
values. The target of your productions will probably be VHS tape at a
rate of 30 frames per second. The quality must be better than bare-bones,
and may even edge into broadcast quality. The good news for this category:
This is where digital video's tremendous amounts of technological progress
is bearing fruit -- it's the sweet spot of the DV market. You'll see that
this category demonstrates how the line between corporate "pro-sumer"
equipment and broadcast gear becomes murkier as high-end systems move
downmarket. Many of the features that were only available in systems costing
many times more just a year ago are now available to this market segment.
Best (up to $40,000): BROADCAST QUALITY
Putting together TV commercials for clients or producing presentations
that will end up on the tube? It's time to spring for the highest quality
you can get your hands on. For the purposes of our discussion, we've limited
the cost of admission to $40K, but it can go much higher -- up to a million
dollars. But you'll get a lot for your money in this category, where often
the only difference between this equipment and systems costing ten times
more are special effects and layering rendering speed and the ability
to use uncompressed video.
Lead
on to Good
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