I put together a new computer a few weeks ago. New to me, I finally gave up XP Pro and moved to Windows 7 Home Premium on an Intel board and Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor. It's not the newest tech, but compared to what I had, it screams. I like to shoot a lot of video in the 10 minute range, and that's about 2Gb or so of .mov file that needs to be processed. On the old XP machine, I had to wait till I was done for the day, then start my video editing program and let it mix the video down and hope it was done by the next morning. I have also upgraded to the CS5 Master Collection.
I had no idea that a fast processor and a new OS could make so much difference. For video, I still use Magix Movie Edit Pro 16. It costs a whopping $60, with the book, and it's the best kept video editing secret around. But on this new machine, it really cracks along and I can see the image quality difference, even when played on YouTube. What use to take all night, now gets done in 20 to 30 minutes and looks and sounds better than ever.
Here is a recent video, shot through my microscope, of a Daphnia
that I found in my microbe aquarium. The colors are a little bit off, there are some green and purple fringing, which is from the achromat lenses I use, and no way around it. But other than that, the detail in the video is far better than anything I was able to achieve before.
And a couple of stills of the same bug.
A 4 image pano at 100x, originaly 7643px tall before resizing for the forum. I used the Canon Stitch software for this and I think it did an excellent job.
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The head end, with his compound eye, antenna and other organs.
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