Digitizing with Liquid Edition


With the right hardware, Liquid Edition has the ability to digitize the three basic video formats listed below. Using just a FireWire card and a Mini DV or high-definition (HDV) camera it's possible to capture either

  • AVI, from a Mini DV camera

    or

  • MPEG, from a HDV camera

With additional hardware, such as the Liquid MovieBox Pro or the Liquid Edition Pro AGP card, it's also possible to capture

  • Analog, from VHS or similar sources

The DV/HDV option

Mini DV and HDV cameras use a digital format to record what is in front of the lens. This is then compressed by the camera into a space-saving form before being recorded as digital data to the tape (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1. A JVC HD10 High Definition (HDV) camera and a Sony Mini DV camera. Both use Mini DV tapes.


The advantage of this is that when you digitize DV or HDV footage, you are in fact simply transferring digital data from the tape to your hard drive via a FireWire card. This is a relatively simple process and doesn't demand too much from the computer (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2. A Pinnacle FireWire card with FireWire lead.


The analog option

Using the MovieBox Pro or the two Legacy productsthe Pro AGP card and the MovieBox Deluxe (Figure 2.3)you will also have the option of digitizing from an analog source such as VHS or Hi-8. However, there is an important difference here in the way analog is captured.

Figure 2.3. The MovieBox Pro (top-center), the Pro AGP card (bottom-left), and the MovieBox Deluxe all give Liquid Edition 6 analog capabilities.


While you are filming, the camera is recording an analog signal to the tape. When you try to transfer this to the computer, Liquid Edition must convert this analog signal to digital data for storing on the hard drive.

This will make great demands of your computer, and to do it successfully, you need a fast, well-optimized system. See the Appendix, "Troubleshooting," for help on this subject.

HD or DV?

HDV or High definitionDV is a new TV standard that increases the picture quality from 704 horizontal pixels by 480 vertical pixels (Mini DV) (Figure 2.4) to 1280 horizontal pixels by 720 vertical pixels or 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels (HDV) (Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.4. An example of a Mini DV camera shot.


Figure 2.5. The same shot using an HD camera.


In a similar fashion to Mini DV, the HD camera converts what you are filming into data before recording it to tape. The major difference is the superior quality of the picture; also, MPEG encoding (the same standard used by DVDs) is used instead of AVI.

Capturing HD media clips is an identical process to capturing DV; the only difference is that you will be capturing in M2V format instead of AVI or DIF. This changes auto- matically once an HD camera is detected by Liquid Edition (Figure 2.6).

Figure 2.6. A native MPEG capture is automatically selected once an HD camera is detected.





Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 for Windows
Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 for Windows
ISBN: 0321269160
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 245
Authors: Paul Ekert

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