Meet Spigot the dog

[Kraellin]

ok, i think i followed most of that....i think. a few more questions, though. is DV-AVI actually a format? i know what .avi is and .mov, but is dv-avi a format also?

and i got that you can use a digital movie recorder for pass-thru to a firewire port, but would this firewire card be just a standard pci slot firewire card or something special for what we're talking about? i'm guessing from what you said that it's just a standard add-on pci slot firewire interface card and that the codecs used with it would the important part of it. is that correct?

and i lost you on this part also:

but you don't really need that IF you have a video editor(NLE) AND have various color corection and noise reduction plugins designed for it.

what are we talking about here? and what's the NLE stand for? is this also a pci type card in the computer or a stand-alone device that would connect up with a computer if desired? or, is this some sort of software and if so, then i'd still need some way of getting the signal into the computer.

annoying, arent i i've always had an interest in cameras and photography, and likewise in electronics and computers. so, it didnt take me long, after getting into pc's quite a bit, to realize that a computer should be the heart of a system of electronics that would allow all these other devices to talk to each other. but, because of piracy issues and other stops, this isnt occurring in a natural order, or even at all, and those wishing to work in this arena are having to kind of 'cut and paste' these devices together to do what they want to do. i mean, it seems to me that a computer is a natural interface for all these other devices and that if all the other devices were digital at heart, that it should be simplicity itself to simply move the data from one device to the other. and even if some of it is analog, this should still be possible fairly easily.

so, getting back to the bottom line here, let's make this a bit simpler. let's say that all i want to do is convert a vhs tape to digital, capture it on my harddrive and save it to a dvd so as not to take up all the room on my harddrive and that this is nothing more than an archiving process to save my vhs tapes which are degrading. i've got a decent vhs deck. i've got a medium grade computer with tons of harddrive space and i've got a dual layer dvd burner with the media for that. but i dont have an interface (or am not aware of one at least), to get the analog vhs to the computer. it sounds like a dv camera to firewire would work, from what you're saying... if it has the pass-thru. or, also a 'dv converter', which i'm not familiar with, but ok, i get the idea of it. and the last is the video editor(NLE...whatever that it). i could use a pci or agp capture card, but you suggest i wouldnt be pleased with that because it would tend to either compress or distort or both. have i got all that right?

i've been tempted several times to buy something like the ATI 9800 all in wonder video card for all this, or maybe the Saphire one, but have never been quite sure about these. from what you're saying, this wouldnt be what i really wanted. these also incorporate a tv tuner into the card and ostensibly, one could set up a tivo-like rig by running the tuner part as your tv directly on your monitor and capturing whatever you wanted directly to your harddrive. i'm going to assume here that from what you said, this would be in mpeg2 format, though. i'll have to check on that. i seem to recall that some do and some can also do it in other formats, possibly even in .avi or .mov. that doesnt get me the vhs tapes converted, however, but i would think most of those types of cards would have an s-video in and out, or even .dvi input/outputs.

i do thank you for your time and patience. and i know i'm somewhat asking things you've already answered, as in the last paragraph about the capture cards. i guess part of my confusion is bits and pieces of data i've gotten from various sources and even a bit of research on my own and i'm just trying to get this all laid out a bit better in my head. talking with someone who knows this stuff helps

and btw, did you get your picture sorted out, spigot?

K.