Desktop Video Powerbox
Written: May 19 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fast, loaded, ready out of the box for excellent video/audio/image editing
Cons: fan is a little noisy
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| snark's Full Review: Sony VAIO PCV-R547DS PC Desktop |
The Sony VAIO PCV-R547DS Digital Studio Computer is a great machine. Sony has designed an intelligent system for any and all uses, but especially so for multimedia work. If you want to do video/image editing on a Win98 PC, this computer or one of its siblings is your best bet. Hard-core professional video editors might be better of with either a dual-processor Windows NT/2000 or Apple G4, but if you want to get started and you have a Digital Video (DV) camera with a high-speed IEEE 1394 Interface (called "i.LINK" by Sony and "Firewire" by Apple), then this machine is set and ready to go.
I bought my box through Sony VAIO Direct online, where you can add some custom hardware additions and not have to deal with them yourself. This particular model comes with a speedy 600 MHz Pentium III processor, 128 mb RAM which I bumped up to 256 MB, a 27 gb hard drive that I bumped up to a 40 gb version to hold more digital video (you can even choose an 80 gb drive if you want), an nVidia TNT2 Pro 2X AGP Graphics card with 16 mb VRAM, a dual DVD/CD-ROM drive and a dual CD-R/CD-RW drive for burning CDs. Also included are all the usual suspects: modem, wheel mouse, and speakers. I had Sony add an Ethernet card as well, the only thing missing that should be standard, and received the customized computer in only a week with standard shipping.
Sony is the only PC maker that I know of adding the Firewire/i.LINK cards to nearly all their computers, both desktop and laptop - even Apple has only just started including Firewire ports on its laptops. But Sony didn't stop there, as they have included a great suite of custom video/image editing software.
The Sony software includes DVgate Motion for capturing video clips and rough editing, DVgate Assemble for editing movies, DVgate Still for capturing still images from digital video or still cameras, and an app called PictureGear, featuring a variety of image stitching and panorama compositing tools and a little database to catalogue image and movie files. I have only played with this a little, and it's not the most intuitive piece of software, but you can create interesting composites from sequences of still images.
The DVgate software all works very simply and elegantly, capturing video at 640x480 resolution in real time at 30 fps with no frames dropped! If you ever tried digitizing analog video on a computer 2-3 years ago and saw a small, clunky mess, you'll be especially amazed at what is going on here. Sony also throws in Adobe Premiere LE for more advanced editing, which has all the basics from the full version, just fewer advanced features, special effects, transitions, filters, etc; the upgrade to the full version is only $199. Also included is Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge XP 4.5 for digital audio editing. For image editing there's Adobe PhotoDeluxe, but since I use Photoshop, I've never tried PhotoDeluxe, though I am sure it is fine for the casual user.
There is more software bundled with the Sony Digital Studio computers, which rounds out an already excellent offering that is well beyond what you can get from any other manufacturer. Some have complained that by including MS Word 2000 instead of MS Works, you can't upgrade to the full MS Office, which is the only other software you'll probably need. Well, here's a tip: find a copy of Works from an old machine, or pick one up on ebay for $10. You don't even have to install it, just put the Works.exe application file in a "Msworks" folder in the C:\Program Files directory. Now, spend $300 for the Office 2000 upgrade disk (instead of the full $600 or however much it costs) - just make sure it will upgrade from whatever version of Works you have "installed." (I upgraded to Office 97 because I already owned that upgrade disk, so I'm not sure about any O2K gotchas.) The upgrade disk will detect the Works app on your computer and upgrade you to the full Office suite.
All-in-all, a fantastic computer. I'm especially impressed with how easy it is to connect my Sony DCR-TRV8 digital video camcorder (see my epinion on that one at Home > Electronics > Video > Camcorders > Sony DCR-TRV8) with the i.LINK/Firewire cable and just start capturing and editing video. When you have edited a little digital movie, you just lay it off to the camcorder, back on to digital video tape; and if you want, you can capture all or part of that edited movie later and re-cut it - there is no generation loss with digital video and audio. So with the huge hard drive, the ability to record edited movies or even raw clips back onto DV tape, and the CR-R/RW burner, this set-up is not only easy to use, but easy to archive and hold on to all your media files.
I got all this for "only" $2299.00. But if you think about the cost of a 40 gb hard drive alone just a year ago, this is a pretty sweet deal. You can tell I'm an excellent rationalizer.
I am not a brand-loyal person, and never owned anything by Sony until recently. But I am very impressed with their camcorders and these new computers. They alone, plus Apple to some extent, seem to be working hard to make all this new technology work well together, easily and efficiently, for those of us who don't do this kind of audio/video editing for a living on half-million dollar workstations in video post-houses. If this doesn't interest you, then you can get a less expensive computer - I've had good experiences with the HP Pavillions. But if you are itching to put that DV camcorder/camera/microphone to good use, you can't go wrong with this machine.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
snark
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Member: Jay Jurisich
Location: Berkeley, CA
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 12 members
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