I will be building a PC for video editing. I want to create broadcast dvd quality video on the PC. I plan on using Xeon chips so I can drop another one in there when I need a faster computer.

The questions I wonder are what Video Software is good and relatively easy to learn and use? I hear Adobe Premier, but know there is a big learning curve there : . Any products comparable or just stick with adobe. Matrox rxt100??? <--is this overkill


Also, using a Xeon chip what would be an affordable :mrgreen: good spec for a pc with XP Pro? Which Video cards?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thank You,

ddoggin

>> broadcast DVD quality.

Broadcase quality and DVD quality are two distinct things. The FCC has technical specification for what can be considered broadcast quality.

Some consider BQ to be anything above 30 fps at 800x600.

Broadcase quality generally refers to TV. Low res TV systems use a 4.2 MHz bandwidth with 525 to 625 lines per frame (USA). Then there's medium res and HDTV (8 MHz or more of bandwidth).

If that's what you are looking to do check out Avid. For systems like that - you can't build them yourself. You'll need to use an Avid approved Xeon workstation (usually from Fujitsu Siemens/HP). Or you will have no end of headaches.

RT.X100 is severely underkill. If going with Matrox you will need a Digisuite setup.

Producing "broadcast quality" would be reliant to a greater part on the video inputs, i.e the way in which the video is recorded. To this end, you'll need a Professional DV camcorder - typically in excess of £2k.

At the present time, the standard for TVs in the UK is 25fps and this (probably) won't change with the introduction of HDTV. where High-definition TV will differ is the adoption of progressive rather than interlaced video and (suprise, suprise) higher resoultion want 16:9 format (widescreen).

Once you've got your "broadcast quality" video, you'll need to adhere to the DVD standard when creating your video. You'll therefore want to preserve the quality of you DV video in the conversion to MPEG2, and to do this you need a high quality encoder...

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