Motherboard
Studio MP10 requires a PC-compatible computer with an EPP or ECP parallel port. Nearly all Pentium or equivalent PCs will support these parallel ports. If your machine does not support a EPP or ECP parallel port, you can purchase a ECP paralllel port card for less than $20.
Processor
Studio MP10 requires at a Pentium (or compatible) 133 MHz or faster processor. A faster processor will not improve video quality, only movie rendering speed. For best overall performance we recommend using an Intel Pentium IIÔ processor.
Memory
32MB is required under Windows 95 & 98. Additional memory will improve video editing and rendering speed. We recommend 64MB of RAM for optimal performance.
Hard Drive
The most important factors in a nonlinear video system are the speed and capacity of the hard drive. Video files are extremely large and the hard drives used to store them must have large capacity with high-sustained transfer rates.
For NTSC video at a frame size of 720 x 480, at 30 frames per second, each second of uncompressed video equals approximately 18.6 MB of data. In order to bring the video into the PC and fit it on the hard disk the amount of data per second (data rate) must be reduced. This can be done be reducing the frame size and/or by compressing the data. The more the video is compressed the lower the data rate will be.
Studio MP10 uses MPEG1 compression. With MPEG1 compression, the higher the compression ratio, the lower the image quality of the video
Studio MP10 offers the following NTSC video quality options.
| Quality | Frame size | Compre- -ssion ratio |
Data Rate |
| Max | 352x240 | 55:1 | 3000 Kbit/sec |
| Best | 352x240 | 69:1 | 2400 Kbit/sec |
| Better | 352x240 | 144:1 | 1150 Kbit/sec |
| Good | 176x112 | 647:1 | 256 Kbit/sec |
Hard Drive Performance
Capturing at Studio MP10 maximum quality (3000 Kbit/sec) should be possible with an ATAPI or SCSI hard drive. When upgrading a PC, you will get higher performance with a SCSI hard disk and controller. Also consider the spin-speed of the hard disk. Common speeds are 5200 and 7200 RPM. The greater the spin speed the higher the performance.
An embedded servo design is also recommended . Suggested drives include:
Hard Drive Controller
A high quality hard drive controller card is critical for maximum performance. Recommended SCSI controllers are:
Adaptec AHA/2940UW for SCSI-3
Adaptec AHA/2940W for Wide SCSI-2
Adaptec AHA/3940W for Wide SCSI-2
Buslogic BT-946C for PCI Bus
Buslogic BT-956C for PCI Wide Bus
ATAPI / EIDE (Under IDE Bus master Mode or Ultra IDE)
Studio MP10 can also be used with an AV-rated EIDE hard drive (also called an ATAPI or ATA-3 hard drive). Most Suggested drives include:
Quantum Fireball ST/SE Seagate Medalist
Hard Drive Capacity
To estimate the amount of disk space required for your video, use the following formula:
Video Length x Data Rate = Disk Space req
(seconds) (megabytes) . (megabytes)
Sound Card
The Studio MP10 uses its own audio A/D and D/A for capture and output to tape. However, the Studio software will use the PC’s sound card to output audio during editing. Studio will operate with any DirectX 5.0 compatible sound card.
Graphic Adapters
Any DirectX 5.0 compatible graphics card will work with Studio MP10. For best results we recommend the following cards:
AGP: PCI:
Diamond Stealth 3D 4000 Diamond Viper 330/550
Diamond Viper 330/550 Diamond Stealth 3D 2000
ATI Rage Pro based boards ATI Rage Pro based boards
PC Systems with reported problems
None at this time.
Processors with reported problems
None at this time.