A new computer

After the difficulties I had yesterday with recording, I spoke with Shawn for a while. I got some good information about editing stuff on the computer. He gave me some pointers and ideas. One of which was what kind of computer system I should have to do it well. He talked about his mini DV and how that works as well.

I decided to get some new computer components. Specifically a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and Case. I got two gig of RAM. I got an AMD Thirty-Five-Hundred-Plus which is a sixty-four bit, two-point-two GHz chip. The motherboard has a backup BIOS so I can mess one up and it will still run, or if a virus hits, it will still leave the backup running fine. Pretty darn cool. I put everything together.

I headed home had dinner then went to the shop and hooked up the new computer. I pulled the video card, and hard drives from the old computer. I was hoping Windows XP would say something about new hardware and move on. It didn’t. So I ended up reinstalling Windows XP. But then when it would boot up, I could log in, but the thing would give me a BSOD (blue screen of death) if opened My Computer. So I was thinking there could be a problem with the RAM. Sometimes it is just bad. So I tested each stick one by one and they both had the same behaviour. So I knew it was something else. The next thing was the DVD-ROM drive. And that was the problem. Once I removed that life was good.

I installed the two-hundred gig HD I got on Monday, as well as all the software I had installed, because I pretty much had to start over with re-installing Windows XP. When I was done I tried to record something. I still was not getting sound, but it seemed to record better.

I did not spend much time playing around with it, but I figured out why it will not do sound. It needs to have a wire plugged in from the card to the motherboard. But ATI does not include the wire with the card, so you have to buy one.

I wanted to try to make a DVD before I went to bed, so I threw several small AVI videos on the project and started it. It took a long time to make the DVD. Longer than I thought it would, but I did not know it would have to convert all the AVI files to MPEG-Two files before burning. I waited around until almost three o’clock in the morning for it to finish. When it did I put it in my TV. The Snake River video did not look half bad, however the audio and video were way off.