Magnificent seven?
At the low end are two identically-priced packages that differ only in the type of OHCI FireWire card supplied – CardBus with two six-pin ports in the case of the Notebook Edition (SN1521); and PCI with three six-pin ports for the PC Edition (SN1520).Three other bundles - including the range-leading Crystal Studio Edition (SN1535) - look to come with the same PCI card. The other two PCI bundles are $1,299 apiece. The Crystal Cut Edition (SN1530) includes CineForm's $500 applet Aspect HD for faster and more versatile working with HDV than Premiere 1.5 alone allows. The second $1,299 package, Cinema Edition (SN1525), comes instead with Snazzi's own HD-capable network media player, Net DVD Cinema HD.
The extra $300 for the Crystal Studio Edition range-leader buys both goodies - Aspect HD and the network media player – and is said to deliver full-resolution playback preview of HD output (as, presumably does the less expensive product bundled with CineForm's software - though both would need plenty of PC power).
The remaining two members of the HDV.Video Collection, each $1,199, are the DV Avio Pro Edition (SN1620) and the DV Bridge II Edition (SN1720).
The first comes with Snazzi's Avio Pro hardware – an analogue and digital breakout box (with in/out for composite video, S-video and DV) paired with, and connecting to, a supplied PCI card.
Snazzi describes the DV.AVIO Pro hardware as a real-time encoder/decoder for MPEG-1/2/4 DivX, XVid, DV and WMV, and points out that the hardware can do real-time capture from DV to MPEG, not just from analogue to MPEG. The product comes with three plug-ins for Premiere Pro 1.5 - DV capture; MPEG (1 and 2) capture; and real-time timeline out.
The second, as you may have guessed, is bundled with the latest version of Snazzi's analogue<>digital external converter box - DV Bridge II. This distinguishes itself from most such converter boxes by having a front-panel control button for adjusting volume, colour, brightness and contrast of analogue signals.
When sold alone from Snazzi's UK store, DV Bridge II (SM1700) costs £124 inc VAT (it's £199 from the US store) and comes with two programs - Adobe's lite version of Premiere, Premiere Elements, and InterVideo's basic authoring package WinDVD Creator 2 Platinum.
These programs aren't supplied with the HDV.Video Collection's DV Bridge II Edition bundle. Instead there's InterVideo's DVD player program WinDVD 5, and the DVD Edition version of Muvee's basic authoring/editing applet Autoproducer – and these are also in-pack with the rest of the HDV.Video Collection.
The big question, of course, is can these bundles can be installed on any old Windows PC? Well, they can, but likely won't perform even half-decently unless the PC is fast, modern and suited to video editing. Snazzi's recommendations follow, along with our own...
