Power Computing Corporation, announced several new software and hardware options available with selected Power Computing systems and configurations.

Each option provides features that significantly improve video, graphics and overall performance of any Power Computing Mac OS system.

For the first time, Power Computing is offering AV solutions for all systems that out-performs Apple Computer's AV solutions at aggressive prices. Other new options include Ultra SCSI / RAID solutions, the Twin Turbo 128M8, a 128-bit 8 MB graphics accelerator, and 8x CD-ROM Drives.

"In keeping with our mission of providing personalized Mac OS systems, we are introducing more options that enable new uses for Power Computing systems," said Bill Goins, director of product marketing at Power Computing. "Customers can customize their system to fit their specific needs."

New AV Solutions

Mac OS-based systems have become a standard among video professionals who perform video-editing and enhancing, but has been too expensive for small office and home use. Power Computing now offers an AV solution that is an affordable video editing system designed to meet the demanding needs of desktop videographers, and people who want to edit their home video tapes with S-Video (VHS) quality.

The company's AV solution features the award-winning Miro graphics card, Adobe Premier LE, for video editing, and Adobe Photoshop LE, for editing individual frames or sequences of frames. Miro's graphics card, the miroMOTION DC20, delivers professional quality S-Video editing which produces exceptional resolution of 640 x 480 pixels per inch and 30 frame captures per second compared to Apple Computer's Power Macintosh 8500 that only offers 320 x 240 resolution and 25 frame captures per second. The S-Video quality digitization features motion JPEG hardware compression in real time, allowing video editors to retain image quality over editing generations, and TrueColor display.

The video out capabilities include full screen, full motion S-Video quality ouput to tape (VHS, S-VHS, Video8 or Hi8 formats), and output to PAL and NTSC devices. With Adobe's Premier LE, users can edit their captured video with more than 30 movie and still image filters, 35 dramatic transitions, and the ability to superimpose titles. With Adobe's Photoshop LE, users can process individual frames and/or sequences of frames, by choosing from a broad range of painting and effects tools as well as rich color libraries.

For the first time, users can affordably edit input and store back to tape with a quality that has been only available on a professional level. The miroMOTION DC20 card is available with any PowerTower Pro, PowerTower or PowerCenter system purchase and included with the following special AV configurations for PowerTower Pro.

Power Computing now offers Ultra SCSI / RAID solutions that increase performance, reliability and storage capacity. The company's RAID solution is comprised of SoftRAID software from Conley; Adaptec's Power Domain 2940 UW Ultra SCSI card; and two IBM Ultrastar XP 2 or 4 Gigabyte wide disk drives.

SoftRAID can be configured on a Power Computing system as a RAID Level 0 or 1 solution. RAID Level 0, called striping, stores large files over several hard drives but treated as if it were stored on one drive. Striping optimizes drive storage space and increases the speed when the file is retrieved, thus benefiting high-end graphics and video-editing users who work with large files. Average disk access time decreases 50 percent with striping.

RAID Level 1, called mirroring, is ideal for users who deal with critical data and can't afford to have any down time due to the loss of that data. This capability automatically mirrors data for security so if the server's disk drive fails, the data can still be accessed from another drive without interruption. Customers will be able to specify which RAID Level they would like their system configured with.

PowerDomain 2940 UW, the award-winning SCSI accelerator from Adaptec, improves the speed of SCSI data transfers up to 40 MB/second and allows up to 15 additional SCSI peripheral devices. The card supports fast, wide and ultra SCSI devices and is SCSI Manager 4.3 compliant. Not only does PowerDomain improve the performance of the system but it offers expandability for more peripherals.

Fast disk drives are critical for digital video and multimedia applications that require real-time performance. IBM's Ultrastar XP wide disk drives feature a 7200 RPM spin rate, low average seek time of 6.9 ms, and a patented PRML channel which ultimately translates into one of the fastest data rates in the industry at 9.59-12.58 MB per second.

All RAID solutions can be purchased with any desktop, mini-tower or tower system. The following are the upgrade prices from the company's 2 GB AV capable hard drive and 1 GB hard drive. -0-

Upgrade from 2 GB AV Upgrade from 1 GB capable Hard Drive Hard Drive SoftRAID, PowerDomain 2940 UW, 2-2 GB IBM Ultrastar Wide Hard Drives $1,295 $1,695

SoftRAID, PowerDomain 2940 UW, 2-4 GB IBM Ultrastar Wide Hard Drives $1,895 $2,295

IMS Twin Turbo Graphics Accelerator

New 8x CD-ROM Drives

 

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