Videomaker Expo Digitizing & Capture Card Panel and Buyer's Guide

At the last Videomaker Expo East, we gathered a panel of experts from leading capture card manufactures. Here's what transpired.
Chuck Peters
(Videomaker)
The quality of digitizing capture cards has really improved in the last few years, but there still remains a fear in the consumer world, [about] having to buy a card and install it. I d like each of you to address the subject of installation. What can be done to make it easier for us to configure our computers for nonlinear editing?

Rob Hawranko
(Pinnacle Systems)
I think we ve seen "out of box" experiences really improve. It's easier because PCs have really grown up. I think the PC manufacturers, because they have more resources for us, have made [the installation process] somewhat easier. I think it has gotten a lot better. There really aren t the horror stories of the past that people associate with installing a card in a PC.

Jim Holland
(FAST Multimedia)
It's really important to FAST that, whenever you purchase one of our products, you have a good experience out of the box. And, I think that a lot of people have run into problems, not only with FAST products, but with a lot of products. And the reason for that is simply you re dealing with complicated machines. And as a result of that, there are going to be, well, complications. One of the things that FAST does is we extensively update our Web site with hardware compatibility. We work very closely with any hardware manufacturer out there to make sure that we re compatible. And we encourage users to use the software that comes bundled with their hardware. That is, software that we re most closely testing to make sure that our customers have a good "out of box" experience.
We've certainly seen the number of complications go down significantly. And we ll continue to work to try to get them down to nothing. But again, I encourage you, visit our Web site and go with the bundled software. Those are the two sure-fire ways to make sure you ll have a good experience right from the g…