From owner-freebsd-hardware Thu Jul 23 18:59:47 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA14648 for freebsd-hardware-outgoing; Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:59:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from cc-server9.massey.ac.nz (cc-server9.massey.ac.nz [130.123.128.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id SAA14625 for ; Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:59:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from crh@outpost.co.nz) Received: from acme.gen.nz by cc-server9.massey.ac.nz id <12783-0@cc-server9.massey.ac.nz>; Fri, 24 Jul 1998 13:57:01 +1200 Received: from officedonkey by acme.gen.nz with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #2) id m0yzVcr-0028ziC; Fri, 24 Jul 1998 12:22:21 +1200 Message-Id: Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Craig Harding Organization: Outpost Digital Media Ltd To: Rob Schofield Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 11:57:47 +1200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Imagination... Reply-to: crh@outpost.co.nz CC: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG In-reply-to: <35B76B85.7BF3@xs4all.nl> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.52) Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Rob Schofield wrote: > What would you recommend for a setup to: > > - digitise all my home videos > - store digitally long term (cheaply, probably compressed) > - play back to a TV (of course) > - index all the stored movies? > > I would be basing this around a FreeBSD system, but relatively low > cost/low power if possible (say a recent 2nd hand Pentium 166?), and > would be prepared to invest in hot peripherals for the digitisation, > storage and playback. It shouldn't need a keyboard monitor or mouse, > but should be accessable via Ethernet for control purposes. It also > needs to be connectable to a HiFi/Sound/Vision centre, probably > through SCART. > > => In other words, the ultimate digital VCR..... > > So what would *you* do? Well, the real issue is the video compression format. Sure, you can do it with uncompressed video (it makes some things a lot easier), but you're going to need a very (very) fast server and enormous amounts of hard drive. Consider it this way, in the broadcast industry boxes that do this (such as the excellent Pluto video server based on freebsd which I recently got to see in person - nice deskstop display) are priced around $US20k and up (emphasis on the up). So let's get realistic. What you really want is MPEG1 or 2 video. I'm not all that hot on MPEG1, but at least it's affordable. There's now a range of MPEG2 playback devices, so all you need are device drivers for FreeBSD and you'd be in business. The problem is input. You need a hardware based MPEG2 compression card, and last time I looked (8 months ago) they were hideously expensive. Like, NZ$15k (about US$7.5k). They may have come down a bit, and you can probably get them a bit cheaper in the US than I can here, but that's still big bucks we're talking about. Long term I expect MPEG2 encoders to drop dramatically to the $1k-$2k mark, this is a typical pattern for I/O cards in the video market. If you can get an MPEG2 video stream, you can have very decent video quality for 1MB/s of bandwidth, at that's trivial for nearly any modern Pentium PC. BTW, if you can do this cheaply and reliably, then forget the VCR angle (from a consumer perspective), you have a video server that would be in demand globally. I've wanted to do the same thing, but lack (a) the funds and (b) the nous to develop appropriate device drivers. -- C. -- Craig Harding Head of Postproduction, Outpost Digital Media Ltd "I don't know about God, I just think we're handmade" - Polly To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message