[rescue] Video encoding

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 02:09:29PM -0500, Dunehew, Seth wrote:
> I know that this is really dangerous, but I have a pretty open-ended
> question...
> 
> I have tons of old video tapes that I am converting to mpeg and burning in VCD
> format.  My son's 14 and he's just discovered all the old Dr. Who's and Blake
> 7s that I recorded 16-20 years ago during high school.  The tapes are really
> starting to degrade.
> 
> The question is what is a good system for doing this?  I'm currently using my
> "pee-cee", but I would still like to play games, and such during the encoding
> process.

> Is a SGI O2 the way to go, or should I save up a little more and go with an
> Octane?  I'd really like something that I can get on the cheap.

Octane and cheap video capture never go in the same sentence.  An o2 would
work.  A mac with a DC30 card would work (there are better cards that cost
more, but I don't know of any better or equal cards that cost less).  A 
second PC w/ a DC30 card would also work, but I refuse to recommend that on
principle.

Almost any PCI mac can do the job, and some of them are really cheap.  Just
make sure you have a good hard drive array (a couple of striped fast narrow
drives should do the trick for less than $100) handy.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd