Better than most
Written: May 09 '00 (Updated May 26 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy setup, stable, cost effective, great support
Cons: Need the camcorder plugged while editing
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| deenah's Full Review: Canopus DV Raptor |
After trying four different 1394 DV cards and returning them all unsatisfied, I decided to give the Raptor a try and am very pleased with it. I bought it for $499 bundled with Media Studio Pro 6. You can also get it with a full version of Premiere 5.1 for the same price. That's a really good deal for the software alone. I also bought the Raptor Bay ($50) which brings all the connectivity to the front of the computer.
Installation was real easy. I plugged in the cables that connected the Raptor Bay and the PCI card itself (You'll skip this step if you're not using the Raptor Bay) and then installed both the card and the Bay into their slots. That's all for the hardware. Next, the software, which has three parts : 1. Once you start Windows(98 SE in my case), it automatically detects the card and you put in your driver disk and install the drivers. 2. Install Editing software (MS Pro and/or Premiere) and finally 3. Install the Application disks (These came in 4 floppies, not sure why they didn't put this on a CD). I rebooted, started Premiere and made a one-time configuration of Premiere to use the card, and soon after I was making movies (I already know how to use Premiere of course). All this took about 2.5 hours. If you have never used Premiere, the documentation also gives you a quick tutorial of creating your first movie and this will probably add another hour to your setup time. I spent hours trying to get the other cards to work and I couldn't even get them to work.
I am really impressed with the card and it is very stable. The support is excellent. (If you're thinking about buying a different card, I suggest you visit their customer support site and see what they have to offer in terms of file updates and FAQs and such. Pay attention to the latest date they updated their drivers.)
The only con I found was that you need your Camcorder plugged in at all times when you're editing your video in Premiere. So, if you're planning to borrow a camera from a friend and do all the editing afterwards, this card is not for you.
This is probably the best card for NL editing. If you can spend another $400, then go with the DV-500 from Pinnacle.
Update 05/26/00
The latest driver updates makes it possible to edit without the camera hooked up. It also makes it an analog capture card. A big Plus !!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
deenah
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
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