Broadway by Data Translation Multimedia Video Editing SolutionThe following article was written by Gary Bettan for the April 97 issue of Camcorder & Computer Video Magazine. |
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Broadway is the first video capture card for under $1000 designed for MPEG video editing. Before Broadway you had to either spend over $5000, or wait many, many hours for a software conversion program. Now you can capture, edit, and create full motion, great looking MPEG video in no time at all.
What is MPEG?
Today, videographers need to edit video for various multimedia projects, such as the Internet, CDROMs or interactive presentations. Unlike regular video editing, the final video will not be on videotape. The finished video will need to be digital and it will have to be able to play on a wide range of computers. MPEG-1 is the format most used for multimedia. MPEG videos can be viewed on almost every multimedia PC. There are two different methods of playing back MPEG videos. Software MPEG players are the most popular. These are dependent on the computers CPU and memory, so the clips will look better and play back smoother on a fully loaded Pentium vs. an older 486. Hardware MPEG playback delivers the highest quality. These cards are either stand alone boards or daughter cards that attach to your VGA graphics accelerator. Hardware MPEG players deliver full screen, full speed video that looks as good as VHS on your computer screen.
How does Broadway work?
Broadway captures at 30 frames per second, 352x240 image size. This results in VHS quality output to your computer monitor. It has both SVHS and composite video inputs. You use your sound card to capture the audio and the software syncs it all together. The card is PCI Plug & Play and installation was a breeze. Editing video with Broadway is just like editing video with any other video capture card. First you digitize the video to your hard drive, then you edit it, then you use the Broadway rendering software to create your finished MPEG video. The rendering for a basic video with straight cuts and fades to black took around 5x the actual video length. (i.e. a 2 minute video takes 10 minutes). The same clip can take several hours using one of the software conversion utilities by Xing, Ulead or Pixel Shrink. Broadway also comes with Ulead Video Editor if you want to do more sophisticated transitions or add titles and other effects. The best part about Broadway is that you have full control over the compression settings, so you can maximize your video quality for your medium. As anyone who has download a large image over the Internet knows, sometimes a little less quality for a lot faster download is a good trade off.
Conclusion
I liked the Broadway. If you need to get several minutes of MPEG video, it is by far the most economical and time efficient method. I used Broadway with a CD ROM burner. I wrote several video clips of various lengths onto CD ROM. When I played it back, the video was full speed, full screen and looked very good. Even long clips over 10 minutes played back perfectly. I do wish that the Broadway came with video output and hardware MPEG player. Even without them, it is still a fantastic value for multimedia digital video production.
Note: Since this article version 2.5 has been released. I can't take all the credit, but every one of the items on my wish list has been added. Ver 2.5 gives you real time MPEG-1 capture, Microsoft ActiveMovie drivers for beautiful MPEG playback and best of all, video output jacks!! The interface has been made even easier to use and the editing has gotten more powerful. DataTranslations has also added video streaming technology to the bundle. 2 personal VDO servers and VDO producer are now included. You can even select to create VDO video clips directly from your timeline!! This makes Broadway the #1 choice for multimedia producers and webmasters. .
The new 2.5 version of Broadway is now on sale for only $799.95!!!
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