Content area
Full Text
When Canopus introduced what it calls Scalable Video Technology in 1998, it pushed the limits of our imagination. It was difficult to believe several streams of DV could be decompressed without relying on hardware DV codecs. Even harder to accept was the idea that while decompression was proceeding, special effects could be rendered without hardware effects chips. (See my DVStorm review in the August 2001 issue of Video Systems.)
Since 1998, CPU processing power has steadily increased in the manner we have come to expect. That's good news for the Canopus DVStorm2, because with enough computing power and adequate disk bandwidth, DVStorm2 can uncompress five DV streams simultaneously.
Last fall Intel released the first Pentium 4 to fulfill its original marketing hype that described the processor as a successor to the P3. Intel accomplished this by introducing a 3.06GHz P4 that supports Hyper-Threading. In simple terms, Hyper-Threading means that a P4 processor is divided internally into two virtual CPUs and recognized as a multi-processor configuration by the XP operating system.
Dual processors are ideal for applications that involve multiple processes executing simultaneously. Moreover, providing this capability in a single chip makes it far easier to configure a relatively low-cost computer system. This, in turn, makes Canopus Scalable Video Technology more powerful and more cost-effective.
DVStorm2 assembles in one package a number of components that were previously available for use with DVStorm. Most notably, the DVStorm board remains the same. Video input comes from three connections: FireWire (four-pin), composite video, and S-Video. Video is output simultaneously...