Building a PC for VID Blaster, Need suggestions on hardware =)

[Harold Smith]

Hello all,

New to the forums and very happy to have found them. We are trying out the demo right now and i am pretty sure we will be purchasing it. We do multicam live broadcasting through mogulus.com of sporting events and tradeshows. I would love to replace our edirol and other equipment with a NewTech Tricaster pro but its just not in our budget.

what i would like to do instead is to build a PC to replicate the effect using Vidblaster. I guess i need to know what platform would be good to build on? an XP media pc or gaming tower?

I would like at least 4 video inputs (prefer 8 ) with svideo in (prefer component). i assume there is no way to plug in 8 svideo pci capture cards. are there 4 channel svideo in solutions? Just looking for a push in the right direction then will let google be my guide.

So if you were going to build a PC specifically for Vid Blaster and you had about 2-3k to spend. how would you do it?
motherboard
ram
HD
capture cards
ect ect ect

thanks so much.

if you want to check out what we do go to www.mogulus.com/mopedtv That is our most recent work. We broadcast all of the races at the Polini USA Cup in Atwater CA.

haroldiv@gmail.com

[Scott]

Harold,

You can view the recommended system requirements in the help file, or go to www.vidblasterus.com and view the Features & Specifications PDF on the main page. You can also view training videos there as well.

I would go with XP Pro until Windows 7 is officially out and tested. If you want 4 inputs, I would like at the Osprey video capture cards. They have a 4 input composite which does a very good job. At least 4GB of RAM, possibly more depending on your production needs. I would go with a high-end graphics card and a good size hard drive. As far as the motherboard I would go with at least a Core 2 Quad.

If I was building my own system I would also make sure there are plenty of PCI slots and I would install a handle on the top of the computer to make it easier to transport.

[Harold Smith]

ok so checked out the osprey and that looks pretty sweet. Is there any reason i could not go with 4-6 dazzle or Canopus units though? canopus is firewire and dazzle is usb so i understand if firewire would be better but couldnt i just run a powered USB hub? trying to do this on a budget and this is for the internet so a little data loss is ok but sync issues are not.

[Harold Smith]

ok so far i have gotten two Dazzles to work with the dvc100 driver. One red dazzle from like 2 years ago and a brand new white one. with the dazzle i also had a usb webcam (logitech), built in isight and a canopus avdc110 all running what seemed to be perfectly synched. havent hopped into the audio world yet but figure that shouldnt be too problematic. right now it looks like we can make hardware and vidblaster do basically everything the 10k tricaster can do except the virtual studio stuff. getting psyched here.

only problem i seem to run into is with mogulus. once i create a mix with vidblaster and use adobe flash media encoder to stream it to mogulus it turns into 4:3

it looks like 16:9 in vidblaster and FME but once it gets to mogulus it goes back to the dreaded square =(

[Harold Smith]

so after almost catching the pc on fire maybe the pci card is a better route. dang that osprey is expensive. if i were to use a 4channel bnc or rca card there should be no problems using each camera as a source inside vidblaster correct?

lookin at stuff like this..

http://images.tigerdirect.com/skuimages/large/Q300-2108.jpg
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1080978&CatId=1425

or

http://images.tigerdirect.com/skuimages/large/L350-1024-mainb.jpg
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1338671&CatId=1425

[Mike]

If it meets the requirements (comes with WDM driver or DirectShow support): yes. Make sure though that this isn't a MUX but 4 real separated channels. Also if this card has on-board compression it will put extra load on the CPU (as VidBlaster will need to decompress first). I briefly read the on-line specs and it did not answer any of these questions for me, so you may want to confirm with the supplier.

As for CPU usage, the USB2821 devices actually have a very low CPU usage, almost as low as a PCI card.

[abouvette]

Has anyone tried one of the Haupage ImpactVCB cards?
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/impact.htm

http://registration.hauppauge.com/webstore/hardware2.asp?product=impactvcb

The price is right if I can indeed connect 3-4 cameras/players and be able to see all of them at the same time in VidBlaster. I have 3 Easycap devices but have not been able to connect more than 1 at a time.

Can anyone comment on this? I'd like to avoid buying 3 different USB devices when 1 PCI card might do the job.
Thanks!

[Mike]

I doubt this is a 4 channel card, looks more like a 4 mux'ed input card. Also note it does not come with a driver for Vista and is out of production.

[abouvette]

I doubt this is a 4 channel card, looks more like a 4 mux'ed input card. Also note it does not come with a driver for Vista and is out of production.


Ok thanks Mike. I'm waiting to hear back from someone at Viewcast to find out if their entry level Osprey-100 will expose up to 4
devices in VidBlaster. This PCI card will be cheaper than getting 4 USB devices if it does indeed work. Have you confirmed that it works with 2 or more inputs?

[Mike]

If you go to www.viewcast.com you can find all specs and see the 100 is a MUX, i.e. one channel at a time. You'll want the 440 (http://viewcast.com/product_osprey440.asp) or 4 100's.