Since then the idea of using my two Macs for doing some video capturing and editing has prompted me to purchase a Spigot Power AV Card and a crossover cable to network the two machines.

The Q840 has: 24MG of RAM; 1MG VRAM; the orig Quantum 230 HD and additional 1G Quantum 7200rpm drive; and the orig 2x CDROM

The PM7300 has 90MG of RAM and a 2G Quantum drive.

Using 8.1 for OS and have 7.5 on the second Quadra drive.

I currently have an old 14" Compaq monitor that I have connected to either one of them.

So any thoughts on a generating a whish list for my editing room?

Here's what my video editing rig looks like:

CAPTURE/PRINT-TO-TAPE STATION:

Quadra 840av (40MHz '040)
128MB of RAM / 1MB of VRAM (soon to be 2MB!!)
SuperMac SpigotPower AV Card
FWB JackHammer Ultra-Wide SCSI Card
Radius PrecisionColor 24Xk Video Card (to be eventually replaced by a DigiDesign Audio Card so I can run ProTools)

2GB Ultra-Wide SCSI drive running OS 8.1 and hosting all the applications/etc.

Two 4.3GB Ultra-Wide SCSI drives in a striped RAID array for capture/playback.

Apple 15" MultiScan monitor connected to the onboard video and a Sony 15" 15sf monitor attached to the Nubus video card

EDITING STATION:

PowerMac 7500 (233MHz 604e)
384MB of RAM / 2MB of VRAM (eventually will be 4MB)
ATi Xclaim 3D+ 8MB video card

2GB SCSI-3 drive running OS 9.1 and carrying most of the applications.

23GB SCSI-2 drive for mass storage.

Apple 17" 1705 monitor.

TRANSFER METHOD:

External 2GB SCSI-2 hard drive.

Essentially, I capture video on the Quadra, then copy it to the external 2GB hard drive, and swap the drive over to the 7500. There, I edit and render the video, then copy it back to the external drive and swap it back onto the Quadra so that I can print it to tape. I likewise tried transfering using serial or ethernet/appletalk, but it was just too slow. Using the external drive, even though it means shutting both machines off and rebooting, is alot faster (and more reliable, I think).

I still need a few things though. The Quadra needs four mour 256k VRAM SIMMs so that it can max out at 2MB of VRAM. You should do this too, as it will improve the capture quality of your SpigotPower card and allow you to view your footage at 16-bit color depth off the onboard video. Eventually I'm going to take out the Nubus video card, since I really don't need it in there, and put in a DigiDesign card, either an AudioMedia or a SoundAccelerator card, just so that I can run ProTools 3.5 on it.

The 7500 needs stuff, too. I'm going to replace the USB card with a FireWire/USB combo card so that I can (eventually) capture video from newer/digital cameras, too. I also want to put an Ultra-Wide SCSI PCI card in it, so that I can have an Ultra-Wide RAID in it, as well as the Quadra. I also want to max the onboard VRAM at 4MB so that I can have a two-monitor setup on it. Oh yeah, and I also want to put a 500MHz G3 daughetrcard in it, to speed up the rendering process (among other things!).

I also need to get some new video hardware. Right now I'm capturing from an older Video 8mm cam (like yours) and printing to standard half-inch VHS. I'm planning on getting a hold of a Sony VX3, a 3-chip Hi8 camcorder that's still the best Pro-Sumer analog camcorder around, and a Sony Umatic three-quareter inch video tape deck for dumping. But, anyway, here's what you'll need, at least right away:

FOR THE QUADRA:

More RAM! You'll want at least 64MB, but preferably 128MB. Don't bother buying anything less than 32MB 72-pin SIMMs if you're short on cash, just wait until you can get either 2 or 4 of them.

More VRAM! You'll want 4x 256k VRAM SIMMs to max out the onboard video.

RAID! The onboard SCSI host just isn't fast enough for video capture. I'd go for an ATTO Silicon Express IV, they tend to get better transfer speeds than my JackHammer. Then, pick up 2 Ultra-Wide SCSI drives of the same model/size and configure them in a striped array.

For the 7300:

More RAM! You'll want at least 128MB for older video apps (Avid Cinema, Premiere 5.x), or at least 256MB for newer ones (FCP 1.x/2.0 or Premiere 6.0). Don't bother getting anything less than 128mb 164-pin FPM RAM DIMMs!

More storage! You don't need a RAID on the 7300 so much as on the uadra, but it couldn't hurt. For the time being, though, you just need more space. Try getting two 9GB SCSI drives instead of the one 2GB.

You may also want to think about getting a firewire PCI card in case you ever get a hold of a digital camcorder, or also a G3/G4 upgrade to speed up rendering.

Hope this helps!!

666th poster and 666th thread-creator
Mod of the Mac II series Forums
Total 68K Macs liberated: 7
Regular Disappear!

Another question:

Would a ACard ARS-2000FW IDE to SCSI work in the Q840?
I thought this my be an interesting option since the IDE's are so cheap.

Thanks again for all your help

The whole purpose of using the ACARD is so you can get a big IDE drive and save money, right? Well, that's all well and good, but the bridge is getting to be fairly rare, and is going to cost you an arm and a leg to procure in the first place. Well, I guess if you already have one or get it for free/cheap, it's not so bad.

But, by saving money, you're literally killing your performance. If you use the ACARD bridge on the Quadra 840av's onbaodr SCSI host, you're now trying to push data back and forth from a 5MB/sec cap SCSI bus through a bridge and onto an IDE drive and by the time your done, you're going to be lucky if you see 2MB/sec data transfers. That's just not going to cut it for digi-video.

If nothing else, I'd suggest you get the biggest 7,200 rpm 50-pin SCSI drive you can find and put it in one of the other drives bays, so that you can run your OS and apps from the one you have and capture to the second. This is the minimum setup you want for digital video, and remember to keep the capture disk empty and defragmented in either case! You may want to run a low-level format on it as soon as you get it and then do quick formats every week or so (depeneding on how much capturing you're going to be doing).

I have an 840av specced as follows:

104MB RAM
2MB VRAM
500MB Quantum 50-pin (original I think)
ATTO Silicon Express IV Ultra-Wide Card
9GB UWSCSI Seagate Cheetah (10,000rpm)

I'm currently in the process of moving it back to OS 7.5.5 and an older version of Quicktime (probably 2.5) to allow expanded support from the DSP and Video Sub-system (ha- you see 8.1 ISN'T the be all and end all of the 840av!). Apparently support for many of the features were dropped in 7.6.1 and QT 3.0 so having anything higher than 7.5.5 cripples the very thing that makes the machine so great. And before you take ma apart for not using HFS+ there are 2 justifications for not using it. One is it's slower on 68k Machines. the other is that on continuous stream of data of 4 or 5 GB does not suffer the problems with block size that 5GB of small files does on HFS volumes so video capture is actually fine and in some ways better on an HFS drive. Oh, and I get perfectly adequate write speeds from my ATTO card without RAID, about 16.1MB/s sustained.

I also have a Spigot PowerAV card on it's way over from the USA (very slowly) so I can boost it's performance at capture. I am also getting it a Radius Thunder IV in mid-June so I can take the strain off the VRAM to allow the video subsystem to perfom better. I dunno exactly how well that will work - I may have to have it dual monitor and have the video on one screeen (internal) and the desktop on the other (Thunder IV).

My 7300 is still in it's build up stage also. I have a 40GB IDE hard disk hanging behind an ACARD SCSIDE bridge. Damn nice device, they work fine in an 840AV but would be a lot better if you got the UW version and hooked it up to an UW SCSI card. I only got 6.5MB/s off of it in my 840av using the 50-pin version.

As well as that my 7300 only has 64MB RAM (soon to be 512MB), 4MB VRAM, USB and FireWire and a 3Dfx Voodoo 1 (it was free - don't laugh). I am probably going to fit it with a Voodoo 3 2000 sometime depending on what the money stakes are like after my exams. I am not going to go OTT though, I intend to buy a decent G4 powered machine new next Spring so a G3/G4 upgrade is not happeneing.

I'll bow to cinemafia on the advice for video editing and everything like that as he's been there, I haven't (yet).

Oh and I find my .25 dp dual channel 17" monitor helps a great deal when working with multiple Macs.

--
Mark Benson

Visit FlatPackMacs Online
http://fpm.gotdns.com

We have feets

Wooohoo! I have a green star

I'm a long time PC person, though I really stopped playing with them around the time I had to move into Win 95. The university where I work has been dumping alot of old macs and I've gotten several freebies that I've been playing with.

Currently using this as my primary computer:
7300/G4 800
512MB Ram
40x CDRW
Sonnet Tempo Trio card (ATA/USB/Firewire)
Radeon 7000
Apple SCSI 2GB - OS 9.1
120 BG ATA133 - OS 10.2

I can get ahold of a Quadra 840AV (actually used to have 2 that I got for $12 and gave away!) and a SpigotPro AV card. I'd like to upgrade this further and use it for video capture. Then send the files (probably over ethernet) to the G4 for editing.

Just wondering if there was anything else I should look into getting besides what's already covered in this post....any new things that were pricey back when that have begun surfacing at reasonable costs?

Haven't been able to find a Jackhammer or ATTO card on ebay. Any other recommendations?

I've got another question related to this. Since I love buying old, odd electronics equipment I picked up a RCA Lyceum TV a few years ago at a university surplus auction for $15. One of those huge boxes that used to hang in multiples in large lecture halls before they moved to single large projections at the front of the room. This thing has worked great as my primary TV, though it weighs a ton! The entire back is covered with RCA, BNC, and some other connections I can't identify. Anyone know where I might find a manual for this thing? I don't want to pay for one since it will probably be more than i paid for the TV. A few online searches didn't turn up anything.

Since I don't have a TV, VCR, DVD player or anything like that dedicated for use with the computers I'm considering putting the 840Av in the living room next to all that stuff. Assuming I can find a connection to do it...what about using the TV as a monitor for the 840 via the video out? Would this fix the problem with splitting the VRAM between desktop and video? I'm basicly looking to use this box just for recording video so text wouldn't have to be all that clear. Or is there anyway I could just set the AV tower in the living room and control it over the network from my G4?

Ok, now I've got more video questions.... Is there really a reason to put a video card in this machine? If so what should I look for? I've heard the Thunder IV card is supposedly the best, but is there any advantage to it if I'm not doing Photoshop work, can it accelerate other tasks?

I'm planning to record from TV, VHS, DVD and output to VHS and possibly VCD. DVD would be nice, but I assume the loss in quality from DVD-840av-G4-DVD would make it pointless. What I want to do is use this to edit together alot of little clips I've collected on VHS over the years (mostly music performances) and possibly record TV to VHS then edit out commercials and output things I want to keep to VCD.

SO!!! What else do I need or want for my toy???

Tom

I'm a long time PC person, though I really stopped playing with them around the time I had to move into Win 95. The university where I work has been dumping alot of old macs and I've gotten several freebies that I've been playing with.

Currently using this as my primary computer:
7300/G4 800
512MB Ram
40x CDRW
Sonnet Tempo Trio card (ATA/USB/Firewire)
Radeon 7000
Apple SCSI 2GB - OS 9.1
120 BG ATA133 - OS 10.2

I can get ahold of a Quadra 840AV (actually used to have 2 that I got for $12 and gave away!) and a SpigotPro AV card. I'd like to upgrade this further and use it for video capture. Then send the files (probably over ethernet) to the G4 for editing.

Just wondering if there was anything else I should look into getting besides what's already covered in this post....any new things that were pricey back when that have begun surfacing at reasonable costs?

Haven't been able to find a Jackhammer or ATTO card on ebay. Any other recommendations?

I've got another question related to this. Since I love buying old, odd electronics equipment I picked up a RCA Lyceum TV a few years ago at a university surplus auction for $15. One of those huge boxes that used to hang in multiples in large lecture halls before they moved to single large projections at the front of the room. This thing has worked great as my primary TV, though it weighs a ton! The entire back is covered with RCA, BNC, and some other connections I can't identify. Anyone know where I might find a manual for this thing? I don't want to pay for one since it will probably be more than i paid for the TV. A few online searches didn't turn up anything.

Since I don't have a TV, VCR, DVD player or anything like that dedicated for use with the computers I'm considering putting the 840Av in the living room next to all that stuff. Assuming I can find a connection to do it...what about using the TV as a monitor for the 840 via the video out? Would this fix the problem with splitting the VRAM between desktop and video? I'm basicly looking to use this box just for recording video so text wouldn't have to be all that clear. Or is there anyway I could just set the AV tower in the living room and control it over the network from my G4?

Ok, now I've got more video questions.... Is there really a reason to put a video card in this machine? If so what should I look for? I've heard the Thunder IV card is supposedly the best, but is there any advantage to it if I'm not doing Photoshop work, can it accelerate other tasks?

I'm planning to record from TV, VHS, DVD and output to VHS and possibly VCD. DVD would be nice, but I assume the loss in quality from DVD-840av-G4-DVD would make it pointless. What I want to do is use this to edit together alot of little clips I've collected on VHS over the years (mostly music performances) and possibly record TV to VHS then edit out commercials and output things I want to keep to VCD.

SO!!! What else do I need or want for my toy???

Tom

quote:

---

you might be able to hook up your quadra to that TV as a monitor with a DB-15 to BNC adaptor, this is how many Radius Monitors seem to function (I see many radius 81/110 clone systems near here I WANT one now)

---

jt ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF

Connect your Quadra to your tv by all means, What would be the bes is for the Quadra to have a Scart block hacked to the back of it as scart can output composite, S-Video & RGB for monitors,

try http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/av/scart.html

This gives you the specifications of the scart connection, I also found once a very handy page that provided info on all types of monitors & the above link may have a link to this page.

shaktiman

quote:

---

Can I ask what BNC is like, is it a 5 pin din connector like a midi connector? & what is the quality like from BNC?

---

________________
foetoid, that's (fee-toy-duh)
http://www.foetoid.doesntexist.com

quote:

---

Wondering if there was anything to add to this thread several months later...

I'm a long time PC person, though I really stopped playing with them around the time I had to move into Win 95. The university where I work has been dumping alot of old macs and I've gotten several freebies that I've been playing with.

Currently using this as my primary computer:
7300/G4 800
512MB Ram
40x CDRW
Sonnet Tempo Trio card (ATA/USB/Firewire)
Radeon 7000
Apple SCSI 2GB - OS 9.1
120 BG ATA133 - OS 10.2

Since I don't have a TV, VCR, DVD player or anything like that dedicated for use with the computers I'm considering putting the 840Av in the living room next to all that stuff. Assuming I can find a connection to do it...what about using the TV as a monitor for the 840 via the video out? Would this fix the problem with splitting the VRAM between desktop and video? I'm basicly looking to use this box just for recording video so text wouldn't have to be all that clear. Or is there anyway I could just set the AV tower in the living room and control it over the network from my G4?

I'm planning to record from TV, VHS, DVD and output to VHS and possibly VCD. DVD would be nice, but I assume the loss in quality from DVD-840av-G4-DVD would make it pointless. What I want to do is use this to edit together alot of little clips I've collected on VHS over the years (mostly music performances) and possibly record TV to VHS then edit out commercials and output things I want to keep to VCD.

---

________________
foetoid, that's (fee-toy-duh)
http://www.foetoid.doesntexist.com

quote:

---

was hoping I might be able to get some advice on setting up a movie editing shop. I recently pulled out of storage my long time
friend a Quadra 840AV in order to try to fix a PM 7300 that I rescued from the dumpster. While I had the Quadra up and running I
thought I'd try connecting my 8mm movie camera to it...it was the coolest thing to watch the crystal clear images play on my Mac!

---

Well I got an 840Av (with another on its way lol) and the Radius SpigotPro is coming too. I've learned the SpigotPro has 24-bit output to the monitor so that takes care of issues with desktop video.

Still looking for a SCSI2 (or 3???) nubus card. Any names in hard drives to recommend? I've seen alot of Seagate Cheetahs on ebay in the 10GB range for cheap. Are there any SCSI connectors to avoid? I don't want to buy cheap drives and then pay 2x as much for a cable.

Also looking for a transformer for that odd little mac ethernet connection to RJ-45. Used to have one but I can't find it. I do have a nubus card with the right connection on it, but I hate to fill a slot.

I'm going to check at the university surplus store tomorrow. That's where I got the quadra. They seem to have no one interested in old macs. I know they must have a ton of them but they only seem to put new ones out every few months when they give up on selling the ones already on the shelves and toss them. They seem to pull most of the cards in them too....so they must have a box (or trash bin) full of pci and nubus mac cards somewhere.

Tom

2 gig or 4 gig seagate barracuda no no

18 gig or 30 gig seagate yes

This is not found from thorough exhaustive nor comprehensive research, I am relativly new to scsi hard drives(1 year) just a vauge impression I have so far.

Quite a few of the aaui to rj45 adapters come on ebay, but as such with mac things I find that for a couple of months you see nothing & then you see tons of them, as with "them" being whatever your looking for & my best advice is patience.

shaktiman

2 9.1GB Cheetah UWSCSI drives - 80 Pin
1 ATTO Silicon Express IV SCSI card

Does anyone know what kind of connections are on the ATTO card? I can't find anything on it online. I'm assuming i'm going ot need adapters for those drives.

Tom
9600/G4800
Quadra 840AV

quote:

---

1 ATTO Silicon Express IV SCSI card

Does anyone know what kind of connections are on the ATTO card? I can't find anything on it online. I'm assuming i'm going ot need adapters for those drives.

---

jt ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF

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