VIRTUAL VTR users in the U.S.?

[Ken P]

does anyone here use virtual VTR in the U.S.? i am interested in turning an unused G4 into a capture/playback station and i am trying to gather some info about a few things... from their site www.virtualvtr.com, i see you can buy the sw directly from them for $799. the features seem to be exactly what i am looking for. now comes all the extra stuff that i am not so sure about. from what i can tell, i buy the software, but then need a PCI video card for best performance and to capture/playback video. i also want to use my PC HD1 PT rig with SYNC to machine control the virtual vtr as i already do with a tape machine, but rather than PT slaving to the tape machine, i want to utilize the virtual vtr as a slave to PT to follow my scrub/shuttle and edit movements, so i see i need another MTC box for the v-vtr.

does anyone have a setup like this and can give some recomendations? or is Mojo or something similar a better, more cost effective solution in the end?

sorry i keep multiple threading this subject, just trying to keep it all straight

[minister]

hi ken,

i don't use mojo, but i know that users are happy with theirs. i believe it is more expensive than a VVTR setup, though.

so, you seem to be on the right track. you buy the software, you buy a good PCI video card (Aurora FUSE-X -- pretty cheap); you buy a sync i/o (if you don't have one and you buy a little midi interface. i have a wee little mt4 from e-magic on my G4/933. use the MTC port on the back of the sync i/o and send it to the mt4 port, set up your preferences in VVTR, pop a movie into the bin and you are good to go. the FUSE-X is genlockable, fast and plays most codecs. remember to put PT "online" to generate code and be video frame edge accurate. for Midi Machine Control, i use and amt|8 on my PT cpu side -- which i also use for standard midi. i hook up the MMC pref's in PT and, your preipherals, send MMC form the aqmt|8 to the mt4, set that up in VVTR, and now you have famntastic scrubbing! you can even scrub while holding and moving an automation point!! the scrubbing on a canopus sucks, btw.

let us know if you have other questions.

[dr sound]

Ken,
I use VVTR on a seperate Mac G4 1.25 Dual with a Decklink card. It works great! It doesn't bog down my Pro Tools since Pro Tools is on another G5 Dual and it follows everywhere I click or nudge Pro Tools. Get it!

[gallery]

I believe in another post you said your G4 is an old fairly slow single processor machine.

My advice there is to bear in mind that this is probably less than the minimum system requirements for the Fuse-X.

You might want to consider running OS9 on the G4, and using an old Fuse card, IgniterLT card or DC30 card. These will all work well on a slower machine with OS9 and hardware MJPEG video.

if you want to run OSX (which for very basic MJPEG-only VirtualVTR operation wont make that much difference to you), then you would probably need a faster computer to meet the minimum system requirements for most of the modern video capture cards.

Although in general I prefer not to recommend the use of OS9, in the case of slower CPUs, it can be the wisest option.

does anyone here use virtual VTR in the U.S.? i am interested in turning an unused G4 into a capture/playback station and i am trying to gather some info about a few things... from their site www.virtualvtr.com, i see you can buy the sw directly from them for $799. the features seem to be exactly what i am looking for. now comes all the extra stuff that i am not so sure about. from what i can tell, i buy the software, but then need a PCI video card for best performance and to capture/playback video. i also want to use my PC HD1 PT rig with SYNC to machine control the virtual vtr as i already do with a tape machine, but rather than PT slaving to the tape machine, i want to utilize the virtual vtr as a slave to PT to follow my scrub/shuttle and edit movements, so i see i need another MTC box for the v-vtr.

does anyone have a setup like this and can give some recomendations? or is Mojo or something similar a better, more cost effective solution in the end?

sorry i keep multiple threading this subject, just trying to keep it all straight

[Ken P]

now this is a good point, one i should consider... in my mind the G4 although slower was going to be used strictly as a capture station and nothing else so i thought it might be able to pull it off. but it is only a single 450 which is practically an 8600 at this point. ok, not really, but my thinking was it might be ok with a fuse-x? anyone use an older computer like this with a fuse-x? the specs from most of you users so far have been closer to a gig processor. with how hard it is to get money spent on the tools we need around here, there is no way i will be able to get anything better suited, especially since we are all PC with Avids and everything else across the board. i am already geared to spend my own moeny on the right elements just to be able to get work done, but in the end, at least i will own it! i use macs at home so it can't be that bad of an investment, if it works...

[minister]

ken,

do you currently have an igniter LT?

if so, you can either run the G4 in OS9 or, in OSX and use aurora drivers 6.1 (NOT the latest). this is because the newer drivers for the igniter were altered for tiger and they don't work so well. (FUSE-X is a little different than igniter) aurora driver 6.1 are snappy. this falls under the category, of not recommended, but works and works better.

i will also suggest buying a second or third internal IDE drive (these are inexpensive) and doing a raid array over 2 drives (NOT with the system disk). this is faster than one internal or a FW.... then you can eek up the resolutiin on the QT.