VideoStudio 4 & 2gb .avi limit

[Jerry Jones]

Question: Can you get around the 2gb
.avi file size limitation using Ulead
VideoStudio 4 and DV as the source video?

Couldn't you utilize the MPEG-2 feature
to do that?

Curious,

JJ

[DrMordrid]

As long as VS4 allows you to transcode I don't see why not. The 2g limit just applies to .avi's and not MPG's.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jerry Jones]

Thanks Doc. That's what I thought.

I'm wondering if anybody has tried it.

[miker]

It's still interesting tho', if you look at the structure of a DVD (mpeg2) that the authoring software still seems to break the .VOB (video object) files into 2gig chunks...

[DrMordrid]

Maybe for backwards compatability for DVD players installed in Win95/OSR2 systems?

Who knows for sure in the Wonderful Whacky World of Windows....

Dr. Mordrid

[jeff b]

VideoStudio 4.0 DV captures can go to a 4 gig limit, after which it stops and puts a little message saying "out of disk space" or something like that. The file, however, will be intact and usable within VS4, the only indication of the limit being in clip properties where it will say the file is 0 bytes long. The clip will be just under 20 minutes, and that's the limit on output, too, since there's no cutlist playback out the 1394 line.

The MPEG-2 codec used in VS4 comes up with a LIGOS logo at render time, and two or three tabs of dialog boxes for various properties. The overall data rate goes up to maximum of 14648 kbs(about 1.8 mbs) which is about a 2:1 compression for DV. I'm not impressed with the output (looks like 15fps, no matter what I set above that), but it might just be my Mystique220. Either way, though, isn't Windows, itself, limited to 4 gig file size?

Consequently, getting around the 2 gig AVI limit with VS4 is easy, but getting around the 4 gig limit seems impossible.

[johnpr98]

Hi

Allegedly according to ADS(Pyro) Windows 2000 will break the 4Gb limit.

Johnpr98

[Jerry Jones]

Jeff,

I understand 4gb is the capture file
size limit.

Okay. What if you take a series of
files smaller than 4gb and place them
in the timeline?

When you render to MPEG-2... does VS 4
let you create "one big MPEG-2 file"
that is greater than 4gb???

In theory, the 4gb file size limit should
not apply to MPEG-2 file type.

[paulw]

I suspect that in Win98 you will still be stuck with the 4Gig MPEG2 file size but in Win2K then it should be up to the max size that WinNT4 was and from memory that was quite large

[jeff b]

I'll give the MPEG-2 rendered file size limit a go this weekend, and see how it turns out.

It should be noted, though, that I don't think the MPEG-2 looks good enough within the VS4 program to be considered a viable alternative, whatever the file size limit. It just doesn't look that good, even at the maximum available data rate of 1.8mBs (about 2:1 compression down from the 3.6mbs of DV).

[jeff b]

When rendering to MPEG-2 in VS4, when the file reaches a size of 4 gigabytes, it stops rendering, and displays the message: 'failed to create video'

No file is saved.

This is a windows file size limit, since the largest 32 bit number is 4,294,966,800 (or thereabouts, since my dinky calculator won't go that high, either...).

Interestingly enough (and as I mentioned above), when capturing DV in VS4, the capture simply stops with the error message that it's run out of disk space. But the file is saved and is fully usable. The 'properties' for the clip will show that it has '0 bytes', indicating that it has gone one byte over the 32 bit file size limit, making all those binary 1's into 0's.

Consequently, the 4 gig limit in VS4 is definitely the outside limit... about 20 minutes of mini-DV. It can be compressed with another codec, such as MPEG-4 and more duration can be achieved that way, but it really doesn't look as good.