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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dwight Griffin who wrote (48264)	2/19/1998 8:03:00 PM
From: Philip J. Davis	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 58324

I received my Buz multimedia producer today. Included was the Buz unit itself (approximately fist sized, purple colored (what else?) and flat on the bottom with audio (L+R) and video RCA jacks. Input along one side, output along the other. Also included was a Jaz Jet PCI Ultra SCSI card, a set of Stereo Audio/Video RCA cables, and two software CD's enclosed in a double CD jewel box. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of installation. Here's my experience: The first step was to install software from one of the CD's. It installed the following: MGI Video Wave SE Plus For Buz PictureWorks HotShots with Net Card Recordit Buz drivers and utilities Once the software was installed, a small video clip ran from the CD, showing how to remove the cover of the PC (Micron demo model), and install the Jaz Jet PCI Ultra SCSI adapter card in an available PCI slot. Once the clip was through, I powered down, disconnected all the cables from the computer, took off the cover, and installed the SCSI card in a PCI slot, replacing a Jaz Jet PCI SCSI card that I had used for my internal Jaz, Zip+ and a scanner. I put the cover back on, reattached the cables, conneced the Buz unit to the newly installed SCSI card, and powered up the computer. On a side note, it's interesting that this particular SCSI card has THREE ports. One internal 50 pin (for my Jaz drive), one external 50 pin port (for Zip+ and scanner) and another external port for the Buz. The Plug and Play feature of Windows95 worked great here. There was nothing for me to configure or debug. Windows sensed the SCSI card and the Buz unit, automatically installing the drivers. Once the new hardware was configured in Windows, I powered down once again so that the new settings would take effect. After restarting the computer, I checked my device profile to see if there were any IRQ conflicts....none! The other CD that was included has a software tutorial that shows you movie examples and shows you how to use the MGI Video Wave software. As usual, I skipped the tutorial, anxious to try out the new gadget. Using the Audio/Video RCA cables, I connected my camcorder to the Buz unit. I then ran MGI Video Wave. Upon startup, the program sensed that I had both Jaz and Zip drives, and offered me the option of using either of them for video production. I selected my trusty Jaz drive. The program then displayed a 352x240 pixel sized preview window. Upon powering up the camcorder and pressing play, the video from the camcorder was displayed on the preview window. Everything worked! Without reading anything, and using some guesswork and intuition, I was able to record high quality video clips from my camcorder, on to the Jaz drive. One thing that I was worried about was the audio quality. I was impressed to see that several options are available for sound and video quality, depending on how large or small you want the final movie file to be. Sound quality options ranged from 8 bit mono at 11 kHz to 16 bit stereo at 44 kHz, while there were three video options: Premium, Good, and Basic. Sound quality was excellent when set to 44kHz 16 bit stereo. The 11 kHz 8 bit mono didn't sound great, but was acceptable. I recorded several scenes from the camcorder, finally producing a video clip on my Jaz drive about 7 minutes long. Here are it's characteristics: Video: 352 x 240 pixels, 24 bitsPerPixel Audio: 44100 Hz, Stereo, 16 Bits Number of Frames: 6213 Frame Rate 15.15 fps Data Rate: 652 KB/sec Compression: Iomega BUZ MJPEG Capture/Codec Driver[16] Clip length: 06:50.144 ms File Size: 267484 KBytes File format: *.avi Frankly, I was startled to see and hear how well the Buz produced video clips. I was also amazed to see how much a high quality video clip with audio takes up in space. 267MB for a 7 minuite clip! Gotta have a Jaz for this!....or maybe Jaz2? Philip