DV Master - Going for speed

[Nigel Longman]

Firstly I realise that this is slightly off-topic, but since there is no DV Master forum - presumably because Fast have decided to discontinue this admittedly ageing card - I thought I would risk it and post here.

My question is simply this. I would like to upgrade my PII/400 system to a PIII/800-ish system in which I can still use all my PC100 RAM. Does anyone have any suggestions for a suitable motherboard? (I can run win98 or NT).

TIA

Nigel

[FAST]

DV Master should work with just about any modern motherboard, except one which has a VIA chipset. The VIA chipset is the only incompatibility we know of. Ideally, it should be a motherboard with an Intel chipset. Specific manufacturers we recommend are: Tyan, Abit, Asus, Intel, Supermicro, Gigabyte.
However, do not expect a huge improvement in rendering speed with the faster processor. Most of the rendering is done by the DV Master card itself, not by the system's processor.

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FAST UK Technical Support

[This message has been edited by FAST (edited 13 December 2000).]

[Nigel Longman]

Thanks for that information.

[gerald@mcmullon.com]

Moving on a year from the previous question - I have a DV Master along with a Sony PC100 with iLink, a Sony VCC5000 and a Sony Digital 8 Walkman, a pair of IBM SCSI 10000 36Gb drives and a pair of 18Gb 10K drives. The first time I tried the DV Master set up which took 6 months to afford to put together the 9Gb IBM drive with the NT and software on it crash at the point of saving the imported Hi8 video. I had frequent crashes and blue screen NT and it has but me off using the system. I hope to now resume work on transferring Hi8 to DVC and to edit the film, merge DVC and Hi8 footage and add titles and commentry. I also have a digital 8 walkman with iLink and may save the finished video to Hi8 tapes and not DVC.

I have had problems sourcing an Intel CPU based dual motherboard with no sound card and that will take an AGP card (I have an ATI Magnum, which seems to work with the DV Msster). A pair of 2GHz Pentium IV would be nice (the PC is used for other things and I would have a drive with Windows XP on it and SQL server and so on). I would like a good sound card (Sound BlasterLive or what ever and not everything will use the sound part of the DV Master - like webcam internet video conferencing) but have been told that I should avoid systems that have a sound card.

Besides the editing and saving of DVC/Hi8 video I would like to create video clips for a Sci-FI quiz (personal use only- as I have several year play back of Sci-FI TV and films - a bit of VB, a database and a few hundred 15-30 second clips) and finally output of the DVC/Hi8 camcorder video to DVD format so I can give a useable copy to family to view in NTSC and other Pal countries - saving Pal only and having playback on a PC is sufficient - if US sold players will handle DVD In Pal format.

So what do I need to add to my hardware and software to make the best use of the hardware I have. I'll even consider dumping the DV Master (at great pain because it was more than the rest of my hardware put together) if I can achive my tasks in a better way.

Gerald


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