[rescue] SGI... sweet!

[Joshua D. Boyd]

Actually, I just said that 12x was a lot of compression.  However, come to
think of it, Firewire and MiniDV only uses 4megs per second, and that
means that it is compressed even more.  Still, this rules out dual stream
editing, but you don't have the software for that anyway.  

Broadcast 2000 is GPLed.  It is mainly for linux.  It has a lot of
assembly in it, but then, there is an Alpha port, so the assembly must not
be too hard to get around.  Maybe that would be reasonable to port to
irix.  If you did, it probably would be quite popular, since the closest
thing to cheap editing software is premiere, which costs a lot more for
Irix than PC, and it reportedly sucks on irix. There are one or two other
GPLed NLEs, but they are no where near primetime (sync problems out the
wazoo for one thing).

If by LVM, you are talking about Linux Volume Manager, then there is
something like that for irix.  But I don't know if it costs extra or not.
The machine should be able to readily do software striping without killing
performance, especially if you upgrade the ram.  You also could consider
FDDI, which from what McGuire says should be much faster.  But, that would
set you back a fair amount two.

If you are comfterble with doing things the hardware, you can do editing
of video using the built in capture and playback programs, the programs to
convert video to sequencial frames, some perl/python/whatever scripts, and
flip (which requires Qt, which looked easy to put on Irix when I watched
someone else do it).  The basic idea is that you have the scripts help you
rearrange the frames, and use Flip for the playback tests.  But, again,
this requires more ram than you have.

However, until you upgrade the ram, you can capture, edit on linux (using
the scripting/Flip method, or Broadcast 2000), the dump back to tape on
irix again.

Really, there are so many ways to do things on that machine.  I wish I had
one (on the list of things to consider once employment for fall and/or
spring is confirmed).

--
Joshua Boyd

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Robert Rose wrote:

>  >As to the video capture questions, you are doing well if you can get 7.5
>  >mbytes per second over 100mbit ethernet. Personally, I don't know that I
>  >would want to count on getting more than 5megs. That means that you need
>  >to use at least 12x compression, which is a lot of compression.
> Hmm, well that answers that, I guess the answer should have been "NO, and 
> shame on you for even thinking it Rob".
> 
>  >If you don't care, than it should work OK. But, these days scsi drives
>  >are fairly cheap in the 4 and 9 gig variety, so if you can scrape together
>  >some spare cash after radically upgrading that machines memory, then why
>  >not capture locally?
> It was a thought as I have a nice AMI PCI raid controller with a large 
> cache and a dual PPro box both doing nothing at the moment. I've got a 
> stack (6) of Seagate ST34573WC (4Gb 7200rpm, although according to Seagate, 
> this model was never available with SCA) disks to use, should be enough to 
> get started with. All I have to do is find or build an enclosure for them 
> and the SCA backplane to go in. Is there an LVM available standard in Irix 
> or is more dollars?
> 
>  >PS, do you have any video editing software for it?
> No, just whatever comes with Irix. The box was originally used as a 
> firewall (don't laugh), hence the second ethernet interface. Once I get 
> some cashflow happening, I can probably afford to purchase something useful 
> to run on it.
> I really don't know what it's going to be used for just yet, depends on how 
> much memory costs and if I can sell my Indy (wife has decreed it must go).
> 
> Rob.
> 
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