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The DV format is taking the mezzanine video camera market by storm, dominating the market space from high-end consumer to low-end broadcast. In the multimedia world, DV cameras like Sony's VX-1000 and Canon XL-1 (each around $3,700) now represent the bulk of new camera purchases, pushing aside former stalwarts S-VHS and Hi-8.
The magic of DV is twofold. First, camera vendors like Sony and Canon have packed years of camera production experience into these new models, that produce quality comparable to cameras costing $25,000 only a few years ago. Second, the DV format itself-converted to digital inside the camera-has proven remarkably adept at avoiding compression artifacts, despite the 5:1 MotionJPEG compression it uses.
With these advances, the cost of producing extraordinarily high-quality video has become quite reasonable. To get the most from these cameras, however, you'll need a Firewire capture card.
So what is Firewire? Invented by Apple in the early 1990s, Firewire is an extremely fast serial bus which has become an international standard (IEEE 1394). Its speed and connectivity (up to 64 chained devices) convinced camera vendors to use Firewire as the digital port on their DV cameras. To communicate with them, though, you need a Firewire connector on your computer.
In addition to the simple port, most Firewire adapters provide software for transferring the video from camera to computer, storing the video in an editable format like AVI or MOV (QuickTime). All supply the cable that connects to the camera, and some also supply video editing software.
Five Windows 95-based systems are examined here: Adaptec's HotConnect Ultra 8945, Canopus' DVREX-M1, DPS SparkPLUS, Pinnacle Systems' DV300, and Radius' MotoDV. At the time of testing, Truevision had announced-but not shipped-its DV offering, and FAST Multimedia declined to send its DV/Master for inclusion. Also worth mentioning is ProMax Systems' FireMax-a highly regarded, but Macintosh-only, product for DV developers.
FEEL THE HEAT: EVALUATION STANDARDS AND METHODS
Each card was rated in three areascapture, timeline editing, and long-form rendering-and revealed a unique set of results ranging from fair to excellent across these categories. Output quality for all boards was uniformly excellent, so it was not considered in the final evaluation.
In the capture category, boards that captured using DV time codes especially those with batch capture-rated best....