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Hardware

Using the Playstation2 as an Editing Medium? 24

Posted by Cliff from the since-it's-in-the-entertainment-center-already dept.
zeropanic asks: "I'm not a person who likes to shell out 100's of dollars on new PC (or Mac!) equipment each year just because it's been "replaced" with something better.. Broke down and got a PS2 for Christmas this year, eyeing the iLink port in front. I know the designed task for the PS2 iLink was to hook up two or more Playstation units together, but could it be adapted to something else? Has anyone ever thought to write some software turn the PS2 into a DV suite? With all camcorders going to digital, someone (like me) who has a PS2 and a Sony handycam could connect up and do some minor editing.. Titles, splicing, etc.. while hooking up a USB HDD for temp storage.. (Poke poke to Sony!)" While this would be an interesting use for the PS2 hardware, why not use a laptop instead?
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Using the Playstation2 as an Editing Medium? More

Using the Playstation2 as an Editing Medium?

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  • but there are already packages for computers that will do this. If your looking at a USB harddrive and the editing software and the ps2, you could probably get a decent computer for just as much money.

  • Usb harddrive (Score:2, Informative)

    by Stone Rhino ( 532581 )
    USB can't sustain datarates necessary for NLE (non-linear editing). you'd probably want a firewire hard drive, but that thing only has A iLink port, not multiple ones. (i doubt daisychaining will work in this situation)

  • Limitations (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The 14 year old ( 208473 ) <[moc.rotcartellivstnuh] [ta] [sirhc]> on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @05:20PM (#2771299) Homepage
    The PS2 has a 300mhz processor, and only 32mb of ram. In the pc world is a 1ghz with 512mb of ram. You must also remember that USB has 12mbps of bandwidth which would make it pretty much impossible to store video on a usb hard drive. Not to mention the HD is only 20gb.

    • Re:Limitations (Score:1, Informative)

      by seann ( 307009 )
      about those limitations
      the "casablanca" machine we have at school for digital editing is nothing but a 486 with 4megs of ram.
      special software + special hardware = special circumstances
    • The PS2 has a 300mhz processor, and only 32mb of ram. In the pc world is a 1ghz with 512mb of ram.

      Yeah, well a guy I know has a 2001 Corvette that only goes up to 8000RPM..

      My 1992 50cc Honda dirtbike goes all the way up to 20,000RPM..

      I know I'd beat him any day in a street race, because my engine RPM's are so much higher!

  • why not a laptop? (Score:2, Informative)

    by seinman ( 463076 )
    why not use a laptop instead?

    why buy new equipment, when you've already got the camcorder and ps2? to save money, that's why. if the ps2 can't do it (which i pretty much doubt it can, as many other posts explain why), then go ahead and drop the cash on a laptop. but if it CAN, then there's no need to spend the money.

  • Why not a laptop? (Score:2, Informative)

    by tunah ( 530328 )
    While this would be an interesting use for the PS2 hardware, why not use a laptop instead?

    Because that wouldn't make a good ask slashdot!

    zeropanic asks: "I'm not a person who likes to shell out 100's of dollars on new PC (or Mac!) equipment each year just because it's been "replaced" with something better.. Broke down and got a laptop for Christmas this year, eyeing the firewire port in front. I know the designed task for the Firewire port was to hook up a DV camera or something, but could it be adapted to something else? Like a DV camera? Oops... um... beowulf cluster? Uh... never mind.

  • Add it up and shop around... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xFoz ( 231025 ) on Tuesday January 01, 2002 @08:01PM (#2771873)
    A used iMac with a FireWire port is more suited to the job of editing video. I've seen them going for as little at $400. You might have to add some RAM but it's not like that's going to cost much.

    Out of the box it's ready to edit. It runs iMovie which is really easy to use and produces great results. Plus you have an upgrade path to more powerful editors. You could graduate to tools such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. Special effects tools like Adobe After Effects, Pinnacle Commotion and Descrete Combustion will also run on that little Mac. Sound editing is accomplished with Peak, ProTools or even Spark XL. Oh and don't forget the 3d tools you might need. You've got your choice of LightWave, Universe, and Hash just to name a few.

    One thing that all the above have going for them is that those tools are all many rev's old. In my experience they seldom crash. So you can get real work done and it doesn't feel like beta testing.
  • USB Hard drives don't seem the best way to go if you want to do video editing. I tried plugging my Firewire drive into the iLink port on my PS2, but got nothing for the trouble.

    Anyone else had any success with such a configuration?
    • Did you think the PS2 would just know what to do with the Firewire drive? That a silly excpectation. Since the PS2 supports Firewire, it will support a firewire harddrive, but the software has to know what to do with the drive.

      Furthermore, as with all video game consoles, how to boot the system is proprietary information. Its secrecy ensures that anyone making games for the system has to pay for a licenes to do so.

      So, to use a Firewire drive, you'll need the PS2 Linux kit DVD to boot the system, and a custom kernel stored on a memory card with IEEE 1394 support. I imagine an inital RAM disk could be used to load the IEEE 1394 modules to access the Firewire drive without needing the Linux kit hardware (besides the boot DVD).

  • You're either cheap as hell, or insane. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @11:37AM (#2773840) Homepage Journal
    A hard-disk-less machine with a 300-something MHz CPU being used as a DV editing workstation simply because it has a Firewire port? People buy RAID cards for their NLE machines because single drives aren't even fast enough sometimes for digital video editing, and somehow a USB drive will be sufficient?

    What the hell?? No offense, but this has got to be the worst Ask Slashdot ever.

    - A.P.

  • Sure! (Score:2)

    by mosch ( 204 )
    This will work wonderfully other than the lack of adaquate RAM, a fast hard drive interface, a powerful CPU, an operating system and DV applications.
  • The 300MHz Emotion Engine CPU is optimized for multimedia and possesses a great deal of floating point performance. Take MMX, make it do floating point work, make it operate on twice as much data per instruction in fewer clock cycles, make it generally more robust, and give it 10 FMACs and 4 FDIVs instead of one each, and you have most of an Emotion Engine.

    Give the PS2 a Linux kit (includes HD and 100Mb ethernet), add a DV codec optimized for the Emotion Engine, and DV editing should work just fine.

    I was thinking about using multiple PS2s to encode MPEG-2 video in a distributed fashion. Use a PC server to coordinate and store the data, and use each vector unit in the Emotion Engine to independently process an MPEG GOP (Group of Pictures, the set of frames starting at an independent frame and ending just before the next independent frame). I think one PS2 may be able to keep up with my 1.33GHz Athlon, but the idea here is to use at least 4 PS2s effectively.
  • Here you can find 1Ghz athlons for about $339.00. this is just one place, you might be able to find them cheaper.

    http://www.internetishop.com/desktop_system.asp? sy scat=under500

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