VIDEO CAPTURE BOARDS
          
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          If you ever wanted to get out your video camera and do some
          editing on your pc to turn out professional quality video
          tapes, it's all possible today and you never have to go to
          an outside source except to make dubs for the local TV
          station.  The new cable systems now allow for anyone to drop
          a tape off to be played on their public access channel.  If
          your Cable system, doesn't have one, perhaps you can talk
          them into creating one for your community.  For more help in
          doing this, there's probably a state association of Public
          Access Producers.  Contact your state capital to find out.
          We have fun producing local TV shows from time to time and
          this is how we happened to get involved with video capture
          as well as for our publishing business.
          
          With the new video capture boards, you can run a cable from
          your VCR or Camcorder and see a window in your monitor with
          your video running in it.  For sound, you need a sound card.
          Then you can capture a single frame by simply clicking on
          the 'Capture' button or capture a clip of a few seconds or
          more.  You don't usually capture more than a few seconds
          because Video files take up about 30MBS of disk space for
          every few seconds of tape.  So, we still have a ways to go
          in getting this technology to become more practical.
          However, there are several new ways of compressing this
          video and sound file down to a fraction of its original
          size.  These are called JPEG and MPEG compression standards
          and they are much like the PKZIP utility you may be familiar
          with now or the great new compression program that comes
          with DOS 6.0.
          
          What we do is we capture pictures from various videos we
          have acquired and then cut and paste the still pictures to
          various publications that we market.  The one you're reading
          now is an example and we have a few graphics here for you to
          look at most likely captured from our VCR.  Now, if you want
          to do video capture for any reason, you need to be careful
          and call us or someone like us for advice because there are
          lots of different standards and different boards for these
          standards.  If you are going to use the PC for professional
          editing for a Real TV show you're producing, you need to
          spend about $3,000 and get a group of products from Video
          Logic.  They seem to have the best high-end video capture
          and editing hardware and software out at the moment.  In our
          next issue, we are going to go into depth on all the video
          capture equipment just hitting the market today.  There are
          newer boards and newer programs just coming out now that
          makes what we have to say here a bit dated.  So become a
          subscriber and you'll get the latest on video capture boards
          in our next issue.
          
          
          For now, let us repeat that for professional end video
          editing, you want Videologic boards.  They have a range and
          are quite good.  In fact, the best video capture system and
          video editing systems right now are from Video Logic.  The
          Video Logic product is called the 'Captivator' and it is a
          wonderful, inexpensive board, about $299 from us, that works
          the best.  You get great resolution, no interference, and
          easy to use software and simple installation.  And you can
          re-size the window to almost any size.  Most capture boards
          require that you see your video on the screen in a tiny
          little Window.  But the Captivator lets you resize as you
          watch.  The INTEL board does the same, but adds a
          compression-on-the-fly program that compresses while you
          capture, and at press time, was the only video capture board
          that does this.  All others require a separate step once the
          video is on the hard drive.  This means that you will need
          twice as much perhaps three times as much space on the hard
          drive to compress and you do with the Intel, Smart Recorder.
          
          Now, if you are an average consumer and you just want to
          capture video for editing those home videos to send
          something to 'America's Funniest Home Videos' or to send to
          your Aunt Tillie, the best boards are again from Video Logic
          and from INTEL.  These two boards capture video nice and
          easily from within Windows, so they are extremely easy to
          learn and use. Then, they also come with the best
          compression software so that you can store more of your
          video onto your hard drive.
          
          Now, copying that video back down to your video tape
          recorder is a bit trickier and for that you need one of two
          products, The Video Editor from Gold Hill, or a new program
          called 'Premier' from Adobe.  These two products allow you
          to take video from one source, and copy it back down to
          another video tape target.  They do it easily and
          inexpensively.  However, they are not for the professional
          editor who needs Time Code Correction, a way to get frame-by-
          frame synchronization of the tapes.  But for the average
          home user, these are the two best products we've found to
          date.  In later issues we are going to give greater details
          on how these work.
          
          
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          (408) 423-8580