User Story: Jumping Into DV Editing

 

 

 

 

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Getting everything to work (on a brand new system with no other software installed) was no problem! No tinkering with IRQs, no special setups, just follow the directions ... it was scarily too easy.

7) Then I hear reports that the DVMC-DA1 is having compatibility problems with the DV2000 (which is the same as MotoDV on a PC) and the DV300.  It works with MotoDV on a Mac.  Now what?  After a few stressful days of trying to hunt down confirmed reports and contacting technical support, these reports were confirmed true.  Radius could not tell me when they would be able to solve the problem, although they said they eventually would.  Then I heard that the DVRaptor already had a patch out.  So I reluctantly returned my MotoDV and ordered the:

  • Canopus DVRaptor
Finding a good price on the Raptor was hard (it's one of the few items not in the database at http://www.shopper.com), it seemed that the Raptor was in short supply.  I ended up getting it from the Videoguys.  At the same time, Canopus announces that they have new drivers and plug ins that work with Adobe Premiere.  I install the DVRaptor ... it works great!  Loading up the 1.01 Raptor update was just a little tricky in Win98.  I had to go to Control Panel -> Settings, and find the Raptor device and click the box that allowed me to "Update driver".  Prior to that, I tried to delete the device, but whenever I tried to install it, the old driver would be found and it would not allow me to install the new driver.

Then I connected the DVMC-DA1 ... works perfectly.  In fact, with the DVMC-DA1, all my connections are brought to my desktop, so I don't have to worry about getting the "Raptor Bay".  Getting a DVMC-DA1 now means you have to go to a place like Promax, so by the time you add shipping and maybe tax, you are over $400.

In Summary, I have:

Item Purchased December 1998 What I'd buy today
Monitor Optiquest V95 19" same
CPU PII-350 Fastest one I could afford!
RAM 128M PC100 SDRAM same
Motherboard Asus P2B motherboard Asus P3B-F or ABIT BE6 (the BE6 has 2 ATA66 and 2 ATA 33 ports which means you can hook up 8 IDE devices!  Imagine 4 ATA 66 hard drives, and 1 CDROM, 1 CDRW, one Zip, and one space still left over!)
CDROM 32X any (with MultiRead capability)
Floppy any any
System Hard Drive 10.1G Western Digital any fast IDE drive
Video Card ATI All-In-Wonder Pro 8Meg AGP Video Card same, or consider the Canopus Xplode video card with accelerated rendering, or maybe the ATI All-In-Wonder 128 (though I don't know if it is compatible with the DVRaptor)
Sound Card Sound Blaster PCI 128 same
Speakers Yamaha any
Modem none any
Case ATX Full tower ATX mid or full tower (full tower is HUGE!)
Keyboard any same
Mouse Microsoft Intellimouse same
Operating System Windows 98 same
Video Hard Drive(s) IBM 16.8Gig 5400 RPM Maxtor 40Gig, or IBM 37.5Gig (5400 RPM ATA33 drives are plenty fast for single stream DV.  The newer real time systems that need dual stream DV may require faster drives)
DV Card Bundle Canopus DVRaptor (includes MSPro & Raptor Navi) Canopus DVRaptor (includes Premiere, Boris FX, & Raptor Navi)
Canopus DVRex now has the RT option available... very cool, but more money.
Boot & Partition SW Partition Magic 4.0 same

The final price tag for the above computer system (not including the DVMC-DA1) with almost 27gigs of space was comfortably under $3K out the door (early December 1998)!  Ways to save more money: get a smaller monitor, get the ATI Expert@Play instead of the All-In-Wonder.

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