Marvel or RR MJPEG --> MPEG1

[Katherine]

Hi all,

I am shopping for a video capture board to edit family videos. I am impressed by what people are saying here about the Marvel G400. While the primary purpose of the board will eventually be to output back to tape, I would first like to archive my stack of tapes out to CD-R (like Ernie). I understand that about an hour of MPEG1 fits on a CD. I want to use the CD's in the future to "thumb" though my video looking for the shots that I will then capture from tape, so the quality does not have to be perfect.

My question is, assuming that an hour of video gets split into 6 MJPEG files, can I use the software provided with the Marvel or RR to make a single hour-long MPEG1 file to put on CD-R?

I downloaded the MSP5 manual from Ulead and it does indicate that you can save in MPEG1 format. Can it save everything on the timeline (i.e. multiple files) into a single MPEG1 file? How about Avid Cinema?

TIA,
Katherine

[This_Idiot]

Hi Katherine

I've just received a G400 Marvel for review, so I haven't got too far into the specifics yet. However, as a long-time G200 Marvel user (and RR-S before that), it is an ideal tool to cut family video.

I'm glad that you've started looking at MS already, since Avid won't hold your attention for long. Having said that, the MPG convertor included with Ulead is recognised as being one of the worst that you could own. There are a couple of "professional" transcoders available, but they aren't cheap. Or you could pick up AVI2MPG (freeware) which is no-frills but seems to do an adequate job to me. There have been plenty of posts on the forum about various ways of joining MPG files to get the ideal length before burning to CD, so this isn't a black art.

Of course the G400 Marvel also comes with the Ligos MPG2 transcoder, but I haven't had time to try this yet. And how you would join MPG2s hasn't been addressed on the forum yet.

Cheers

Chris

[Rick6612]

Hi Katherine,

Just to add to what This_Idiot said, with Ulead MSP, you could put an hour's worth of MJPEG video clips on the time line and then create a single MPEG1 video file from many separate MJPEG video clips.

The problem, however, is that it will probably take a few days of rendering 24 hours a day to create an hour's worth of MPEG1 video using Ulead MSP. It is VERY slow.

Based on what you said your intentions are, I would think that you probably don't really need to have one big MPEG1 file. You would probably be just as happy to have several smaller MPEG1 files.

Rick

[DrMordrid]

Lets not forget that Ligos makes a very good encoder, LSX, that does both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 clips.

The cheapest way for you to go is to keep Avid Cinema on the drive (EWWW!) and install the Ligos LSX encoder for Avid Cinema which only runs $30.

Alternatively you could spring $99 at CompUSA for Uleads VideoStudio 3.0 and get it's bundled Ligos GoMotion MPEG-2 encoder.

MPEG-2 is much more flexible than MPEG-1 what with variable bit rates and all, so I'd go for VS3 with GoMotion. That plus you can s**tcan Avid Enema ;-)

Either is much cheaper than the $300 for a full version of LSX 3.0 or $150 for LSX 2.0.

Dr. Mordrid

[Katherine]

Chris, Rick, and Dr. Mordrid,

Thank you so much for your replies. This really helps clarify the situation for me. Considering the low quality of the MSP5 MPEG encoder, and the limited usefulness of Avid Cinema, it looks like VideoStudio is the best option. I get timeline MPEG encoding with a good encoder.

Are there any benchmarks for how long it takes to transcode from MJPEG to MPEG1 or MPEG2 with the GoMotion encoder? On the Ligos website it looks very fast. They say a 500mhz PIII can do 30fps at 720x480. Is this credible?

Thanks again,
Katherine

[Aryko]

Hmmm... forgive my possible ignorance here, but I'm trying to catch up.

If I understand correctly, one of the questions is, how to join six MPEG files to make one large MPEG file. Do I recall correctly that it's possible to use the copy /b option in an MS-DOS box? IE.,

C:\copy /b test1.mpeg + test2.mpeg test3.mpeg

I seem to recall having done something like this before, but I don't recall whether it was for .avi files or .mpeg files...

- Aryko

[Grigory]

Katherine,

LSX encoder may work at 2-3 of realtime: one minute of video takes 2-3 minutes to compress on PII 450. G0 motion codec claimed to be realtime.

Grigory

[DaddyBay]

Katherine,

Ulead says the new VideoStudio 4.0 "allows users with Windows compatible RGB or YUV data capture cards to capture MPEG-1&2 video in real-time without the need for additional hardware."

I have no experience with VideoStudio myself. What do you think Dr. Mordrid? Is this viable? I assume that if your CPU is fast enough it would work.

[Katherine]

Hi Grigory,

Thank you for the information. 2 to 3 times realtime is plenty fast for me. As long as an hour of transcoding can finish overnight, that is good enough.


DaddyBay,

Realtime capture to MPEG would be ideal.


I would think that MSP6 will be able to do anything that VS4 can do? Does anyone know what version of MSP will ship with the RR once the RR becomes available? I saw in another thread that Haig said the RR will be out in a few weeks. MSP6 should be out too. If MSP6VE has GoMotion and ships with the RR, then that could save the $99 for VideoStudio.

Thanks everyone,
Katherine

[This_Idiot]

Katherine,

I would very much doubt that Matrox will provide MS6 with RR-G. Firstly I would imagine that they have a contract with Ulead to fulfill, secondly they have already sold thousands of these units (although they are currently in short supply). They'd really upset all those folks that bought it with the old software and I don't see them doing that.