I want to transfer a lot of family video tapes to my computer using a
VCR, edit the rubbish out of them and then put the results onto DVD
for my children and I have not done this before. I bought a copy of
Pinnacle 10.6 but can not get it to capture and during the discusions
that I have had it has been sugested that my Video card may be a
problem, that all other software should be turned off and that a
separate hard drive would help so I thought maybe a dedicated computer
would be best. If that is the case and bearing in mind that all I
want to do is to edit the rubbish out, add titles and add a voice over
what spec would anyone sugest?

The computer is a Mesh Matrix.

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)



Processor: 2.20 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 64 kilobyte primary memory
cache

512 kilobyte secondary memory cache.



Main Circuit Board: Board: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. A8V Deluxe Rev 1.xx

Bus Clock: 200 megahertz BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 1009.007
12/22/2004



Drives: 295.35 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity 207.62 Gigabytes
Hard Drive Free Space.



SONY DVD RW DW-D22A [CD-ROM drive] SONY DVD-ROM DDU1613 [CD-ROM
drive]



3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]



Promise 1+0 Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device (300.08 GB) -- drive 0



Memory Modules: 1024 Megabytes Installed Memory. Slot 'DIMM0' has 512
MB (serial number SerNum0) Slot 'DIMM1' has 512 MB.



Local Drive Volumes: c: (NTFS on drive 0). 295.35 GB. 207.62 GB free.



Controllers: Standard floppy disk controller. Primary IDE Channel
[Controller].

Secondary IDE Channel [Controller]. VIA Bus Master IDE Controller



Display: ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 SERIES [Display adapter].

ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 SERIES - Secondary [Display adapter].

ViewSonic VX912 [Monitor] (19.1"vis, s/n PPE045200737, December 2004)
(2x).



Bus Adapters: VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller. WinXP Promise FastTrak
378 (tm) Controller. WinXP Promise RAID Console SCSI Processor Device.
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller (4x). VIA USB
Enhanced Host Controller.



Multimedia: ATI WDM Rage Theater Audio. ATI WDM Rage Theater Video.

ATI WDM Specialized MVD Codec. ATI WDM Teletext Decoder. ATI WDM TV
Audio Crossbar. ATI WDM TV Tuner. Creative Game Port. Creative SB
Audigy 2 ZS (WDM)

"BML" wrote ...
What exactly is the source? VHS?
How are you connecting the source to the PC?

I don't see anything particularly wrong with your basic
PC as it is. It is better equipped than many computers
that people use every day for video editing.

Sounds like you have an unfortunate choice of software
(Pinnacle, which has a horrible reputation around here),
and not even sure what is being used to digitize the video
into your computer? The AIW card? Some people have
good luck with those but many others, like you, come here
with big problems. IMHO, neither Pinnacle nor AIW are
on the recommended list. You have first-hand evidence
of why.

If it were me, I would use Adobe Premiere Elements and
a firewire card, and a Canopus ADVC-110 (or ADVC-300
if your tapes are not in pristine condition) external DV video
converter box. These are all known to be solid performers
and give you easy editing and highest quality you can wring
out of old tapes.

You may be able to use cheaper hardware and/or software,
but you could end up spending all your time debugging and
configuring and never actually get to any video editing. You
can decide which is more important to you.

BML wrote:
You will get a number of recommendations.

One non new-computer based one that would work in your instance would be
to get a DVD recorder. Record the tapes to DVD and then use something
line Womble or Videoredo to take the junk out and put back to dvds. If
you can use RW dvds for the intermediate step.