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Real Time Capture – 3 Cams to One Computer – Anyone tried it?
Has anyone tried real time capture of multiple cams to a single computer?
I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work… Each Mini-DV data stream is 3.6 Megabytes per second… right?
Why couldn’t you put 3 Firewire Cards in a good PC to get the video into the computer
And then save all 3 video streams to an externial hard disk via a USB port.
Firewire and USB 2.0 are around 40 Megabytes per second… much faster than a Mini-DV video data stream.
You could use WinDV or some other small capture program… (no need for using a full editor like Vegas for this simple job I would say… right?)
Has anyone tried such an experiment?
Thanks for any comments.
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5 Replies
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I have read of at least one account that more than one DV stream was captured using Scenalyzer.
Gary Kleiner
Learn Vegas and DVD Architect
http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com
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Gary,
I’ve talked to the guy at Scenalyzer via email and he sees no reason it wouldn’t work.
I was hoping to find someone who had actually done it and see how much computer they had to use and what configuration.
Somewhere along the line I picked up that using a separate firewire card for each computer is the way to go and it makes sense to me. Each card probably converts the serial data to parallel data and then signals the processor to come and get it. And, quite possibly the firewire card has some buffering/memory onboard which would further reduce demands on the processor.
I also heard that it is better to save the video on a disk other than the one the Operating System and Capture program reside… again this makes sense as it would mean the disk saving the video data would have no other job to do… thus reducing demands on it.
If anyone has actually tried this or has additional thoughts on it let me know. We are probably going to try it in the next couple of weeks when we can get some time to set it up.
Will
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Here’s a response from one guy on another forum.
BTW, his machine was only a 2GHz.I don’t recall my disc setup, but I plugged three cameras into a Firewire hub, put in three tapes, and opened three instances of Scenalyzer. In each instance I selected a camera and started capture. They ran for fifteen minutes with no errors or dropped frames, so I ended the test. It would make sense to use different drives for the capture.
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That was me.
I just did a shoot where both cameras were close to each other, and both were connected to a Firewire hub on a 2GHz laptop. I had two instances of Scenalyzer running on the laptop and captured live video from each camera into a single Firewire external drive.
Steve Mann
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[Steve Mann] “both were connected to a Firewire hub”
Steve, can you point us to a source or brand/model number for one of those?
Gary Kleiner
Learn Vegas and DVD Architect
http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com
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