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Is this System good for Video Capture?

E

EvilAngel

Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2002
Messages
597
Hard Drives
(1) Western Digital Special Edition 120GB $85.00
(2) Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA $210.00

Memory
(3) Corsair XMS 512MB DDR PC-3200 $210.00

Motherboard
(1) ABIT nForce2 "NF7-S V2" $92.00

Processors
(1) AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton" $85.00

Video Device & Add On
(2) Hauppauge PCI TV Tuner Card "WinTV-PVR 250" $278.00

Subtotal » $984.00

This system will capture 2 live video/audio feeds simultaneously that will be then recorded to DVD, luckly i already have the DVD-RW drive.

It will also serve as a backup/file server for a small network (about 10 PCS). (mostly occasional documents backups).

This PC will be running Linux.

The video capture only happens 5 - 6 times a week, for about 1 hour and a half to 3 hours.

The way i have it figured is that the 2 raptors will be on Raid 0, and they will handle the OS and system files and the video capture. (remember that the video will NOT stay on the drives it will be burned immediatly after the feeds are over to DVD-R. And the 120GB will be used to store the files and backups it will be serving to the other computers on the network.

My main problem is that i dont want to overclock this particular system too much, its very critical that it doesnt fail when recording the video feeds, and i would like to get some extra power in the CPU department.

Maybe the max overclock i want it to do its 11x200FSB. That i think should be fairly easy for the processor to manage.

The PVR's have hardware Encoding, so they should put very little load on the CPU.

Maybe intel is the way to go, as the 2500+ OCed to 3200+ is beated amazingly by the 2.4 oced to 3,200mhz?

Im a newbie in the Intel world and i dont know if theres a better counterpart to this system from Intel and witch CPU and Mobo to get.

If someone might also suggest a better 64Bit (Opteron?) system it would be great also.

I cant go over $1,200.00 for the main parts (not counting the case, PSU, monitor, keyboard, etc) And the video card its not important at all. Ill throw in a PCI 16mb card and that should do it.

All comments are welcome.

Apocalypse 2000
 
Im not that avid in video editing. I have done a few things with adobe premier, just to tool with it. But i notice it eats away at resources. and you have Memory
(3) Corsair XMS 512MB DDR PC-3200 , so you have fine on that., and lots of space. with you have covered by theHard Drives
(1) Western Digital Special Edition 120GB
(2) Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA .
so you have yourself a tight video capturing machine there. What are you going to be Capturing.
 
quick few comments:

1. go with a (2.8) P4C instead. P4s are known to be better at video encidng. As for the board, an Abit IS7 would be a good choice.

2. WinTV PVR-350 is 180 bucks. why buy the 250(a lesser model) for 100 more?

3. RAM...meh. Get lots of Corsair. if you're -NOT- Ocing, you might be better off with 2gb of the Value Select rather than the XMS. I guess it's a matter of priorities; I've been running my 2.6c@250 with the VS at 200 (5:4) out of sheer laziness(and the fact that the RAM was bought for another system, and I ended up using it here instead of the $450 Mushkin)...and I didn't notice too large of a performance decrease...certainly nothing to cry over.
 
Originally posted by NecessaryEvil
quick few comments:

1. go with a (2.8) P4C instead. P4s are known to be better at video encidng. As for the board, an Abit IS7 would be a good choice.
Click to expand...


Yes, the thing is that the processor itself wont do a thing for the video encoding, as it would be the PVR card that does all the encoding.

2. WinTV PVR-350 is 180 bucks. why buy the 250(a lesser model) for 100 more?
Click to expand...
The price there is for 2 PVR 250, the difference of the cards is that the PVR 350 has FM radio and TV out with integrated decoder (and i wont use neither :( )

3. RAM...meh. Get lots of Corsair. if you're -NOT- Ocing, you might be better off with 2gb of the Value Select rather than the XMS. I guess it's a matter of priorities; I've been running my 2.6c@250 with the VS at 200 (5:4) out of sheer laziness(and the fact that the RAM was bought for another system, and I ended up using it here instead of the $450 Mushkin)...and I didn't notice too large of a performance decrease...certainly nothing to cry over.
Click to expand...

I plan to OC a little, and the tight timmings that Corsair XMS has are always a plus... and the lifetime warranty is great. I priced there 1.5 Gig of ram, that should be plenty, **i think**.

i have in my current system 512mb of XMS running at 230FSB witch is very good :D.

To TheTyrant:

The computer will be recording the live video feeds of Focus Groups for the company i work at, this is why an stable system is a must for me.

Im looking at the 64bit processors also... but im kinda clueless there. And Nforce3 is still not mature, and low performance compared to sis chipsets. So i dont exacly know witch board is good for an Opteron and the likes.
 
Looks fine, although an Intel 2.6C overclocked or a 2.8C with 1Gb of RAM (512x2 in dual-channel) would most likely outperform and AthlonXP setup. Opterons may be faster once a 64bit OS/capture utility, etc are common, but the Intel seems to be the way to go right now. If possible, you might want to wait a few days until the Prescott is released so you can benefit from massive price cuts.
 
I have a Barton 2500+ and a Leadtek capture card, I would say the Barton is not fast enough for recording at very high quality. Also if you want to record into uncompressed video you might need a larger than 120 GIG, it will fill up in no time.
 
Originally posted by jubs
I have a Barton 2500+ and a Leadtek capture card, I would say the Barton is not fast enough for recording at very high quality. Also if you want to record into uncompressed video you might need a larger than 120 GIG, it will fill up in no time.
Click to expand...

The capture card PVR250 do all the hardware encoding, so, the CPU is not stressed at all even with the max quality.

Also, I have a 2500+ at home and a cheap wintv capture card with no hardware encoding, and the thing captures GREAT quality xivd and divx in real time, i also capture SVCD in real time, so i guess its something wrong in the way you have your setup. (i do have my processor overclocked 8.5x225FSB)

MPEG2 DVD compliant comes right from the card, and its about 2 hours 13minutes x 4.7GB at DVD quality.

So 1GB its about 28 minutes... a 120GB drive (really 111GB) will do me good for: 51 hours of DVD quality recordings.
And i said i only need to store the video on the harddrive until its done, because it will be then be burned to DVD the same day...

But anyway, the 120GB wont even handle the video recordings, thats a job for the RAIDed raptors, the 120GB is only for file serving :)
 
How are you going to record two streams at the same time?

EDIT: OH, 2 video in cards. I would suggest having each card recording to a seperate drive. Each card recording to its own Raptor would be better than having both cards writing to the same Raid 0 array.

Also, you might have problems with driver conflicts, IRQ crap, and such running two of the same card. Then again, maybe you won't.
 
Originally posted by Retro Rex
How are you going to record two streams at the same time?

EDIT: OH, 2 video in cards. I would suggest having each card recording to a seperate drive. Each card recording to its own Raptor would be better than having both cards writing to the same Raid 0 array.

Also, you might have problems with driver conflicts, IRQ crap, and such running two of the same card. Then again, maybe you won't.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about that too, but only some times, less than half the time actually, the 2 streams will reccord at the same time, and the Raid raptors will give the whole system a boost.

What do you guys think? Raid0 or separate Raptors?
 
Originally posted by EvilAngel
this is why an stable system is a must for me.
Click to expand...

I am not sure Raid0 is your best bet. I would think the performance boost by having Raid0 would be greatly outweighed by the security risk of losing both drives if one were to fail. Personally, I would use the drives separately for each vid capture. However, as one that has been bitten by Raid0, I am not sure I am its biggest fan anyway. Other than that, I think the system should be fine.
 
3 drives, 1 for windows/apps, 1 for video 1 and 1 for video 2 would be much better than all three on a striped set.
 
also...you said you'd be doing 2 streams? you might want to look at an SMP system or a P4 HT...I know you say that the PVR does it on the card and CPU doesn't take the hit...but...my PVR350 didn't leave the CPU hitless...it helped out quite a bit...but it still put a load on the Barton I was running at the time....HT or SMP might help out more...
 
If your going to be doing video work you definately want to invest in a Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading. It will makes things alot easier and faster. A 2.4C is only $160 and will overclock over 3Ghz on the average. The Pentium 4's are faster in almost every benchmark out there against an Athlon XP. It will also be much cheaper route then SMP.

For a motherboard i would get the Abit IC7 or Asus P4C800-E.

RAID0 will be fine especially since your storing all the data on another drive out of the array. I've never lost a single hard drive in any system yet so the chance of failure really isn't that high especially with the new hard drives.
 
Originally posted by NecessaryEvil
also...you said you'd be doing 2 streams? you might want to look at an SMP system or a P4 HT...I know you say that the PVR does it on the card and CPU doesn't take the hit...but...my PVR350 didn't leave the CPU hitless...it helped out quite a bit...but it still put a load on the Barton I was running at the time....HT or SMP might help out more...
Click to expand...

The problem is you guys are thinking Windows...

It will be running under LINUX and according to MythTV mailing list here theres people running this card on K6-3 450mhz and getting only 12-20% CPU usage. And most of that is because of it being also playback, witch it wont, is direct to hard drive, in console, then direct to DVDR.

I do want to get more power in the CPU, but it isnt for the video Capturing, its just to have more juice in case i want to run other things.

My main question would be, how much general performance (not video enconding focused), would i gain by going with a P4 2.8c instead of the barton 2500+ OCED to 3200+ ?

Or should i go with a AMD64 3000+ ?
Or should i go dual 2500+ ? (witch is much, much cheaper than going dual Xeons IIRC.) (also, witch board will be good for this?)

Thanks again everyone,

Apocalypse 2000
 
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