New PC specs - video capture capable?

[SickPup404]

I know I'll be asking for a lot of comments here, but here goes:

A friend of mine just asked me to help him build a new machine. It will be his first, but will be my "umpteenth" (very experienced). He has a bunch (he said 1000+) VHS tapes of family and custom movies that he wants to convert to DVD.

His minimum "general" specs are: 80gig HD, 17" monitor, video capture, DVD burner, network the old PC for ICS (for the wife), and enough horsepower to do good MPEG/DivX compression.

I'm looking for any and all recommendations that I can get with regards to the video capture (and related hardware). I can put together a nice PC for him, but never having even looked at video capture, don't know what else would be required. If possible, please also give some comments on why you choose what you do, and don't worry about spec'ing a complete system if you just want to touch on the most important stuff.

So general ideas I've already got:

- Case would have to be large enough to circulate sufficient cooling air due to the compression time - and hold enough fans.
- Good processor (Intel vs. AMD in this situation?) and HSF
- RAID1 or 0+1 with 100gig drives (IDE vs SCSI?)
- 512meg PC2100 CL2
- Motherboard to support all the above
- 19" monitor minumum

He's stated that he's willing to go up to $2000. Can we do it?

Any and all help/comments are GREATLY appreciated!

Thx!

[jrb420]

I've never built a system like this, but I do have a few suggetstions based on whta some of my friends have told me about video editing and DVD-R.
1) Speed is sometimes not as important as power. Basically, for video capture and editing, you would be better off with dual P4 @ 1.5ghz than with the newest 2.2ghz.
2)SCSI. SCSI hard drives are faster, more reliable. I tried to do a little video editing with my system and my hard drive couldn't keep up with the rest of my system.
3) Have at least 512MB of ram, either Rambus or DDR.


I may be wrong, and if I am, someone please correct me before I give someone bad advice. Personally I would use a Dual Athlon or P4 motherboard with built on SCSI. CPU @ 1.5ghz. Pioneer DVD burner. 1 gig DDR. 2 Ultra160 SCSI 80GB hard drives.
Don't know about video capture card, but a system like this should provide the "horsepower" you need. Other people may be able to help you more than I can with the specifics. I just had to put in my 2 cents

[SickPup404]

^BUMP^

Come on people, I KNOW there are tons of people with two pennies, so let's hear your 2 cents worth!

[SickPup404]

OK, Did some "window shopping" today, and here's what I have so far:

Case ????
CPU AMD Athlon XP 1700+
CPU fan CoolerMaster DP5-6I31C-A1
M/B Abit KR7A-RAID
Memory Crucial CT3264Z265 256meg PC2100 (x2)
HDD Maxtor 6L080J4 80gig ATA133 7200RPM (x2 for RAID)
Monitor Hitachi CM721F 19"
Video Card ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon AGP
DVD-ROM Panasonic/Creative Labs/Toshiba
DVD-RAM Toshiba/Pioneer
Floppy generic
Keyboard generic
Mouse MicroSoft IntelliMouse Optical
Modem 3Com #2977 OEM
Soundcard Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Speakers Altec Lansing AVS500W

All of it is available at Newegg except for the Vid Card...

Bad choices?

[RayH]

Remember, SCSI provides a CONSTANT data rate transfer. I know that at one time, people used Macs for these types of applications because they had SCSI drives.

Personally, since Mac is touting these features, I go investigate what's inside a Mac and try to do the same thing with a PC or just have your friend get a Mac!

[SickPup404]

Thanks for the points, RayH. The constricting point he's come up with though is he wants RAID1 for redundancy/data security, and total system price (to include S+H) no more than $2k... It's tight, but I think it can be done - SCSI would be nice, but costly, I guess IDE (ATA-133 on this M/B and drives, plus the drives are 7200 RPM) has to be the way to go here....

I've read several glowing reviews of the KR7A-RAID and it does DDR, so that will help. I was looking for a nice video card that would do it all or a combination of 2 cards. The ATI Radeon 8500DV looked really nice until I saw it only works with Me, 2K, or XP (he wants 98SE), so that's why I picked the All-in-Wonder Radeon - still gives lots of input/capture options and 2D/3D performance too. Plus, ATI has the DV-Wonder with 1394 ports for when he gets his new DV Camcorder.