Video Cards: When I’m Calling Hue

Q. I want to use my computer to edit my Hi-8 videotapes. I want to add voice-over and music from CD sources, alter colors and brightness and record the results on my VCR. What issues do I need to consider?

--George B. Potter, via Prodigy

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A. Computer video editing is a burgeoning field and a natural for people who own computers, camcorders and videocassette recorders. Pentium PCs and PowerPC Macintoshes, both equipped with a PCI bus inside, now have enabled video capture card manufacturers to offer Hi-8-quality, full-screen, full-motion editing at prices comparable to those of quality consumer video cameras.

Video capture cards take a regular analog video signal, convert it to digital form and compress it for storage on a hard disk. They usually come with a video-editing software program called Adobe Premiere, which enables you to add titles and special effects; alter hue, contrast and brightness; add audio; and record the finished product on a VCR.

There are two broad categories of video capture cards for consumers. For $350 to $500, you can get a 16-bit card suitable for the “ISA” video slots found on 486 or older Pentium PCs. These cards typically rely on the computer’s sound card to handle audio chores, and while some can output to a VCR, others can record only on the hard disk.

In the $750-to-$1,000 range are 32-bit PCI cards, some with built-in audio, some without. They offer much better resolution and will output a high-resolution “S-video” signal to suitable VCRs, ensuring there is no loss of video quality as a result of the editing.

To get good performance, you need a 2- or 4-gigabyte hard drive dedicated exclusively to video editing. It should be an “AV” audio-video drive spinning at 7,200 rpm or more, with a “Fast Wide SCSI” interface. It takes about 8 gigabytes to store the compressed video clips needed to put together a high-quality half-hour video, so even a fairly short piece like that would have to be done in segments.

You also ought to have 32 megabytes of RAM to ensure that the Adobe Premiere will give snappy performance, though the editing quality is not diminished with 16 MB.

If you get really serious about all this, you can then join the pros with hardware that costs $3,500 to $10,000 and yields broadcast-quality results.