[MacDV] Re: question about which G4 to buy for digital vido

[Illovox Media]

this was a great post.  thanks.

on 6/1/03 3:44 AM, Granville Kennedy at gskiii at telerama.lm.com wrote:

> So far, Jim has covered pretty much all the bases except for the audio
> and MIDI.  For that I'd suggest a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 PCI card.  My
> father sent me his since it won't work in his StarMax and I've been
> real pleased with it.  Being able to run my really old Grateful Dead
> cassettes through a 24-bit converter instead of the built-in 16-bit
> audio of my dual 867 has made a world of difference.  I can actually
> run them through the noise reduction in Amadeus and not have it sound
> like there are holes in the music.  It provides analog in and out,
> S/PDIF (digital coax on a RCA plug) and MIDI in and out.  I've got the
> MIDI in plugged into the MIDI out of my Beheringer V-Amp modeler, but
> I'm not sure if I need MIDI software to get it to play through the
> speakers connected to the computer.  The card also supports 5.1
> surround sound on the S/PDIF lines, which I guess can be run into an
> A/V receiver - but the only spare receiver I have can only emulate the
> effect and I'd need to get some more speakers anyway.  Besides, you
> need some pretty expensive software to create anything with 5.1 sound.
> Right now I'm not willing to spend $99 for SoundSoap, especially since
> I can get good results with the 2496 card and the shareware Amadeus -
> which btw was recently upgraded to handle AAC files among other goodies!
> 
> For doing documentaries and shorts, you may be able to make do with
> Final Cut Express, but if you can get Final Cut Pro at the education
> discount price, by all means go for that.  FCP may be able to handle
> all of your audio needs as well, but I'll work some more on the MIDI
> stuff, like maybe some night when I can't sleep and I've found one of
> my missing guitar picks...
> 
> As for DV cameras, most folks on this list recommend Sony's - but I've
> been real pleased with my Canon Optura 200MC.  It is the cheapest and
> smallest Canon that has the optical image stabilization system, but
> since it has only one CCD it really isn't suited for professional DV
> work.  For that you need a 3-CCD camera.  Generally, optical image
> stabilization is better than digital image stabilization, 3-CCD's will
> give truer color reproduction than 1 CCD, and the better the optics,
> the better the final result.
> 
> For the sound you will probably want to use some different microphones.
> Any built-in mic on the camera is going to pick up the noise of the
> camera working and other extraneous noise as well.  All the stuff I've
> read suggest that folks are much more forgiving about poor camera work,
> but will quickly dismiss anything that has poor sound quality.  At
> least get a shotgun mike that can clamp onto a brace on the camera,
> perhaps a lav mike and something to work with for the voice over stuff
> as well.
> 
> Regards,
> Joey Kennedy.