Media Ripping Spec

hybrid

hybrid

hybrid

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Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone could help spec up a decent machine for ripping media (video and audio) from VHS, DVD and audio tapes. Also to record live TV from Freeview.

Thats all the machine will be used for.

So i was thinking that maybe a shuttle or SFF machine would do the trick?

Something with a fairly decent sized HDD (250GB+)

Saving the video would need to be fairly quick too. So maybe a Dual Core? 1GB RAM mininium?! Would that handle everything ok?

Also, would it be advisable to stay with an Intel chip for this, or go AMD x2?

Which capture card would be best suited for the job? Need something to keep the CPU load down, so a good card would be great. It also needs to have Freeview built into it and have composite inputs.

Baring in mind that the machine may have to be transported easily from site to site.

Cheers :-)
 
Not much help considering all the questions asked...But I would expect you having to go to 2gb ram, considering you're wanting good quality and speed...1gb would do the job, but I feel you would notice the difference with 2gb...so if you can sqeeze it in your budget, do it
 
To tell the truth you dont need anywhere near that spec, get a capture card with onboard mpeg-2 encoding if you want to make dvds out of the vhs tapes and mpeg-4 if you want the best compression, that way it doesnt use the cpu for encoding and recording freeview doesnt need transcoding as its already in mpeg-2 format.

x2 and 2gb ram is way more than you need, ripping audio cds and dvds is hardly intensive (I doubt there are programs that would take advantage of dual core) and neither is capturing low res vhs videos. 1GB and a 3000 would be more than sufficent. However I wouldnt reccomend using composite to record the video from vhs, s-video is miles ahead. All you need to be fast is the hdd. If you want upgrade ability then get a conroe, that may help speed up things if your ripping blu-ray or hd-dvd. However the 3700 is stupidly cheap this week so ordering one of them may be a good idea.
 
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Excellent advice!!

Thank you very much!

So would a shuttle barebones kit do the trick? Then i'll just add the bits of kit in afterwards? As i say... its basically due to transporting it about.

The quality of the video will be MPEG4 and will then be transferred to our streaming publishing points for use on the network.
 
Shuttle is fine.


FS-047-SH Shuttle XPC ST20G5 Aluminium Barebones System - AMD 64 (Socket 939) (FS-047-SH)
£211.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£79.95
MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
£59.95
HD-070-WD Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-070-WD)
£64.95
CD-031-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-031-NE)
£21.95

Subtotal £438.75
VAT £76.79
Total £515.54

This would be a good starting point. Ocuk dont sell any tv cards with mpeg-4 encoding onboard so youll have to get one elsewhere but the 3700 is dirt cheap so no point in not getting one.
 
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mpeg 4 cards

I've been looking for an mpeg4 digi tv usb thing for a while and can't seem to find any other than a K-world stick...but even their website doesn't really reassure me as to whether it really does record in mpeg4- something about mpeg 4 analogue recording


Anyone got any idea of a good usb2 mpeg4 dvb stick that definately records in mpeg 4 off freeview?
 
Cards dont encode in mpeg4 off freeview because its already in mpeg2. Mpeg 4 encoding is for analogue video through the composite and svideo inputs.
 
bloody hell i can remember ripping dvd's with a barton 2500 and 512mb ram with no problem at all, using a popular dvd shrinking problem it took about 30 mins per disc to make a copy and down size it.

To just rip the disc to the machine was 10-15 mins
 
Chicken #16 said:
so the only way to compress it is to record it in mpeg2 and then divx it?

Seems abit of a wasted opportunity

and I'm lazy
Click to expand...

There might be software that will let you record freeview to mpeg4 directly, but your pc would have to be fast enough to handle it. I just record to mpeg2 and then transcode to x.264 or xvid.
 
Thats exactly what we need to do... record from a freeview stick into MPEG4.

Any good programs you would recommend to use to convert it to MPEG4?

I think we will be going for the specs above... and also we need to source out a nice MPEG4 card... so if anyone can recommend me one, do so and i'l go searching. :-)

Cheers for all the help and specs so far... really cool!!
 
What codec are you thinking of using? Divx, xvid, x.264 sp/avc?

Virtual dub is good at converting files to mpeg4 you can use any codec you want and its completley free.

http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php Is good for searching for tv cards.

Because mpeg4 cards dont have digi tv as well, you'd get 2 seperate cards, one for mpeg4 analogue and one for digi-tv mpeg2.

If you really wanted hardware mpeg-4 you could get;

TerraTec Cinergy 2400i DTV / MCE Pci-e $150
and
Aviosys DVD Plus 3210 Mpeg4 Pci $150

That way you could record vhs in mpeg4 and digitv in mpeg2 at the same time. It is actually possible to record digitv in mpeg4 by connecting the gfx output to the mpeg4 card when viewing digitv.


For cost purposes its better to either hardware encode in mpeg2 and convert later or use software mpeg4 encoding. Its also possible to buy a standalone box that can record in mpeg4.
 
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Excellent piece of advice there Energize.

Thanks very much. :-)

As I wont be recording much Digi-TV I was thinking about just getting one of those MSI MegaSky USB dongles, recording the footage then using the CPU power to encode. With the above specs, that should be fine, shouldnt it?!

Also, thanks to everyone in this thread for the help. :)
 
Yeah should be fine. I shall be picking up one of those 320GB drives so that should hopefully be enough. :cool:

cheers
 
Depending on how long the recordings are and how long you are going to be keeping the videos on the computer I'd say you may want to double the HDD.

For 12mins raw footage (from a DV camera) I've got a 2.8GB file, and for 15mins I have a 3.2GB file. If you plan on recording lots and keeping it on there then you will want more space, if however you are just recording it and removing it then I wouldn't worry about HDD size as 320GB should be fine for a few hours of video :).
 
Uncompressed video takes up a lot more space than dv video though, about a gigabyte a minute you may need to encode to mpeg2 as you are saving it and then re-encode later.
 
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When it comes to saving in MPEG4 which is the best codec to use? The idea is for the data to be streamed across a GBit network to workstations across the site.

I've heard some people saying divx?!
 
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