[Allen Zagel]

Just a thought, but what if you played the DVD in your compuer and used a screen capture program like Camtasia? I would think you would have a fresh AVI file then that you could work on.

With Camtasia, you can set your quality settings. I haven’t tried it but it may be worth a try.

Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxmediaproductions.com

[Allen Zagel]

Thanks Ed
I do also own Tsunami. Can I get an upgrade price then? Send it to me at my email adress if you want.

I noticed a post here where you had a sample of a photo montage. I liked that.

Allen

[Allen Zagel]

You’re welcome. That N Carge is available at Best Buy for about $150 plus you have to get the plug adapter kit for $10 that matches your laptop. I had to recycle mine about 4 or 5 times to get it to hold a full charge though.

Specs say it gives you up to 5 hours extra battery time but doing DV with it powering a HD, I gues about 2 or 3 extra hours. My test shoots with it were only about 1 1/2 hours. First time it didn’t make it. Second time it did. Now after 4 recycles, the charge lights are still on after 2 days of leting it sit.

That 80Gb HD gives me about 4-5 hours of DV. I can buy a few more if I need as they weren’t too expensive.
Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxmediaproductions.com

[Allen Zagel]

Hello
You also didn’t say whether you’re looking for a portable laptop HD or externals for your main computer. There’s a big difference. Especially using a laptop in the field where you don’t have electric available. If you always have electric available then you can use any external Fire Wire drive.

For my laptop, which I have DV Rack on, I have a 2.5″ Hitachi 5400rpm 80Gb. I have it inside a aluminum “travel” case. This case is powered by my USB-2 ports and data transfers via the Firewire. As mentioned above, my camera plugs into the 4 pin IEEE-1394 port on the laptop and for the HD I bought a Firewire PCMCIA card 6 pin. I also have an N-Charge external battery for my laptop as the Toshiba laptop’s don’t have good battery time, but they’re powerful computers. Mine’s an A75-S229 3.2GhZ-P4.
Camera Cable
https://www.controlcable.com/details/item.asp?id=32270034|31133|

Hard drive case
https://www.xpcgear.com/ufe201.html

HD
https://www.xpcgear.com/hitachi08k0639.html

For my main computers I am currently using Maxtor Personal Storage 200gB Firewire. They are daisy chained and work good. I would not buy these again as 1 has already been replaced by warrantee and these drives do not spin down and shut off when the computer is off. Newer ones turn off.

If I’m not going to use them for a few days I pull the plug.

Personally I’ve not had good luck capturing DV using the USB-2 ports. I’ve been told that the Fire Wire is actually faster for DV but I won’t get into an arguement here about that. My personal preference is IEEE-1394 for DV work.

Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxmediaproductions.com

[Allen Zagel]

Well today I broke down and bought an HP computer. Seems good for the video work. HP a844n. P4 630 (P) HT 3.0 gHz with 1GB Ram. Intel 915GV chip. Came with the new 16x DVD +/- R/RW with DL LightScribe drive. This drive also writes to the new double sided disks. 250GB SATA HD plus I got 2 extra 200 GB SATA drives. 6 USB-2 connections adn 2 Firewire, 1 in front and 1 in back. Nice front panel so I don’t have to crawl in back to change from my Sony GV D1000 to my Canopus ADVC100 boxes. Right in front now. Plus it is an upgrade from my older 2.3 gHz chip.

I kinda wanted that MAC but in thinking about the fact that I’d have to purchase all new software, and much of my current software is not available for MAC, I decided to stay with a PC. Got a 3 yr warrantee.

My bad HD in the old machine generated 2 error codes on WD’s diag. I’m caling Abit in the morning about their bad MoBo. They should replace it and if they do maybe I’ll just upgrade my smaller networked internet machine. Or put it in the old editing machine and try to sell it all.

Oh well, guess you’re all stuck with me here! ha ha. I didn’t want to lose my VEGAS anyway.

Have a nice day.

Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxmediaproductions.com

[Allen Zagel]

Hi
Yes, you’re all correct and thanks for the shoulder to cry on. Funny, ran Ontrack recovery got everything back and onto another HD. Closed Ontrack and wala, the DV drive is back! ha ha

I think it’s the Abit MoBo. New MoB’s a lot cheaper than MAC OS-X,. I’ll hang onto it for a while.

Oh, I hear MAC uses scuzzy HD’s and that’s why they’re faster?

Thanks again all. I really didn’t want to give up my VEGAS!
Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxmediaproductions.com

[Allen Zagel]

Sounds to me like your hard drive is full! Only 26% free on a 250gb hard drive? That’s getting dangerous. You need that much or more to defrag.

Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxmediaproductions.com