I am trying to do real-time encoding from a MiniDV camcorder to MPEG-2 (for creating a SCVD). Anybody know if there is a way to do this on a PC? Otherwise, I need to get a new very large hard drive. If that is the case, does anyone have any experience with the Firewire hard drives? Are they fast enough?

-- MisterFan (michael.fan@alum.mit.edu), August 25, 2000

Answers

MGI has a product called VideoWave III that can do DV capture. There are others out there too, namely ULEAD.

-- scot virnoche (scot.virnoche@med.ge.com), August 25, 2000.

I'm not certain about this but I think you should take a look at the C-Cube equipped capture cards like the Pinnacle DV500 or (better?) Matrox RT2000 for real-time DV to MPEG-2 conversion. There may be cheaper solutions around but they may not be real-time. For example C- Cube make a cheaper version of their hardware codec which isn't as capable but may deliver what you're after. From memory I think the high-end chip is called 'DV-Explore' and the consumer version is called 'DV-Express'. Again, this is just off the top of my head so please take a look for yourself and don't be surprised if I've got some of this wrong...

Cheers.

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), August 29, 2000.

Sorry, I got the consumer and pro chips around about, the DV Xplore is the consumer version and DV Xpress is the one found in the RT2000, DV500 and DV1000.

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), August 30, 2000.