Gudday there folks, newbie here with a couple of sumb questions.
Just got a chunk of money and thought I would blow it on camera and new computer for the purpose of editing. Although I hear the apples are great for this, I would like to stick with what I know more about, the home computer. Thankfully I have a good cheap computer place near by. What I wish to know is, When using a computer for editing purposes.. how important is the graphics card used? I ask as the prices range from A$100 - 900. I know they increase the quality of the vision is on my screen, but does it help with the all over finished product.
Also, what is best when trying to scan in from a VHS video (wanna keep some old home movies on DVD).. what improves the quality there, better card or faster processor power?
Thanks for this in advance. I appreciate it.
Ray
"Computer says No"
Graphics card is pretty much irrelevant as long as it's supported by the software: for example, Avid only officially support nvidia, though most things work with ATI cards. About the only other significant factor would be video in and video out if you want to use it for analog video.
For VHS I usually just copy the tape to DV by S-Video (my camera has S-Video in) and edit from there with Firewire: I do actually have an analog capture card in my PC, but it's made by Pinnacle so it's never been too reliable :). The other benefit is that if I ever need to re-edit the footage I can batch capture it all from the DV tape using the timecodes after deleting it from my hard disk.
Otherwise, if you're not running XP, you might be able to find a cheap Miro DC30+ card for sale used to do the VHS editing: I had one of those and it was the best Pinnacle product I ever owned, giving good quality for analog editing in Premiere and being pretty reliable. I know in the UK they're sometimes for sale for about 20 pounds, since Pinnacle never released XP drivers so they're useless with new PCs.
