This new videotools - a bad joke, right?

[Flying dutchman]

This new driver is a hoax, right? I just installed the newest Marvel G200 driver and video tools (after de-installing the old drivers using Matrox' deinstallation tool).

After rebooting my system went completely bananas; explorer windows opened all by themselves once per second, cluttering the desktop in less than no time. I had to pull the mouse plug to make it stop (yes I have a Logitech!).
After removing the Logitech mouse driver I wanted to record some video so I started "pc-vcr remote"- the system came to a complete standstill. No reaction whatsoever to either mouse or keyboard, I had to press the reset switch.

I Rebooted and tried again with the same result. This was not amusing anymore. I started "Quick Connect" to check the video settings and the system crashed again. This was repeated five times in succession. Only after the fifth attempt was I finally able to switch from NTSC to PAL because this FXXXing installation routine had set it back to NTSC/AUTO. The "Auto" doesn't seem to work, anyway.
Now isn't that just STUPID? The installation routine even ASKS in which country I am, but doesn't use this info for setting up the default video format...

Some more VERY bad news: The black border at the top of grabbed video has gotten much BIGGER!It has increased from 12 to 16 pixels.

I had really hoped that the new drivers would finally fix this issue (saving me the trouble of cropping/ resizing/ using different codecs to prepare the raw material for VCD purposes), but this driver is a step in the wrong direction.

Hey, you guys at Matrox! When will you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get rid of these black borders?

[Walrus]

As a note about the black borders...
It seems they only seem to show up with MJPEG captures.. If you capture using RGB and use a soft-codec (even a soft MJPEG codec) it should get rid of the problem altogether. I know when I capture straight to MPEG in VS4 there are no borders of any kind in the resulting MPEG. If your system is fast enough you should be able to use soft MJPEG codecs, and a resulting bonus is going beyond the 3MB/sec limit.

[wkulecz]

Walrus,

If we were happy or able to capture uncompressed RGB or YUV2 we'd be using cheap BT878 based capture cards at 1/3 or less than the cost of the Marvel. The black border is a serious problem that Matrox seems unwilling to even honestly admit to, let alone try to fix.


Flying dutchman,

I feel your pain, but your post has spared me the trouble of trying it, so your suffering has not been in vain!
Thanks.

--wally.

[Aryko]

Seems to me that the easiest way to fix the black borders problem would be to put video position control into the next release of the vidcap driver, or video tools, or something.

Just something somewhere that allows us to specify that for the next capture, please adjust the position by X pixels this way and Y pixels that way...

- Aryko

[Elurew]

so does everyone have this problem with the black bars?? i previously thought only a few people...

[wkulecz]

I think we are confused by two seperate problems with with "black bars" or "black borders" in the description.

I believe the one that only affects a few people is on output back to tape where the video is not centered on the screen.

The one that affects me and apparently all Marvels (its on the G400s I've looked atas well as my G200) is only on transcodes from MJPEG to anything else. The MJPEG captures play back perfectly but when the MJPEG is made into MPEG or AVI (independent of output codec or "editing" software used) you end up with black bars on the top and left edges.

If you don't capture in MJPEG or transcode you'll never see this problem.

--wally.

[Walrus]

To clarify the problem a little further, I think the problem occurs when hardware decompression is NOT used. If the overlay is in use (either by a capture program being open, or another file opened in overlay mode) then the driver uses software to decompress the MJPEG stream. It seems that THIS is when the problems creep in. For instance, you can see the black borders on the MJPEG if you play the file with PC-VCR open and set to TV or line-in mode through Media Player. Next.. I will try to find out if the black borders are physically in the MJPEG files...
(if they are, resizing is definatly needed)

[Walrus]

Just as a follow-up... I tried decompressing using PicVideo's free MJPEG codec, and the black borders are there as well. (as well as some odd pink discoloration at the top of the file) This means that the overlay mode must do some odd stretching in hardware, and at least until the capturing codec is fixed, the black borders appear to be with us

[Flying dutchman]

That's my conclusion too-the black borders are physically there in the mjpeg file. I tried capturing using Picvideo but I don't come anywhere near real-time full-resolution (5 fps at full res, 20 fps at 352x288) on my Celeron 466.

I read about a registry tweak that enables YUV2 instead of RGB, would that improve speed?

When I want to make a good quality VCD mpeg, I always have to take these cumbersome steps:

-Capture video at highest resolution into 2 gb chunks
-Deinterlace and crop (using virtualDub),
subsequently rescale to 352x288
-save to a mjpg using Picvideo compressor at highest quality (files are too big to save uncompressed)
-then start the conversion to MPG (using one of the transcoders such as Panasonic)

[wkulecz]

I got my Marvel so I could make VHS tapes, but in playing around with VCD (video CD) I've reached the conclusion that the Marvel is pretty useless for this, even ignoring the back borders for the moment.

I believe its impossible to capture RGB directly from standard composite cameras (NTSC or PAL). The hardware does some form of YUV capture which is the native signal format and then in either hardware or software does the YUV to RGB conversion. I think saving some form of YUV directly is the "best" here, but the data rate to disk is definitely strictly RAID for 640x480 at 30 fps is ~17MB/sec. Uncompressed 24-bit RGB at this size will be ~25MB/sec! 352x240 size can get you down to IDE drive data rates (about 1/4th the pixels captured).

MJPEG captured at the highest quality setting produces lousy VCDs with the five encoders I've demoed: Xing, Ligos2.5, AVI2MPEG, Darim, and Panasonic.

I will try some YUV captures on a system with a cheap Haupaugge card and see if the MPEGs produced are as good as some of the samples I've seen that really are very good from Ligos and Panasonic encoders. From other's work, I've learned and confirmed that Darim and Xing aren't good enough, and "uncompressed" YUV is probably the way to go.

I was hoping to be able to make short MPEG clips from selected preview regions, but the MPEG encoder built into MSPRO5.2 is by far worse that any of the above. Selections rendered to the same format as captured (704x480 29.97 fps) make lousy VCD format MPEG with either AVI2MPEG or Panasonic encoders. I had to render to 352x240 29.97 fps to get Ligos to encode it in VCD format, the result was no worse but still of "why bother" quality.

Given I need to recapture the original camcorder footage to make a decent VCD clip, I'm not committed to putting much effort into doing it on the Marvel.

--wally.

[Elurew]

C'mon....you guys are freaking me out here!! i just ordered mine and comes this stuff about outputting!!

So what's the prob?
some people output with picture not centered.

some people get black borders and side lines on output? is this some people or everyone??

black bars come through on transfering to another format with software compression or editing? What if i use the matrox mjpeg codec to export after editing???

are you sure about the transferring to other formats makes black bars cause of that? I have a friend who makes mpegs using ulead and they have black bars while i make mpegs with xing with no problem....i think i'm gonna cry!!!

Do the editted matrox mjpeg files play good in pc-vcr? media player? this is all very discouraging.... anyway, does this seem to be a driver issue...i've read enough about the black and white output, but the lack of centering makes me fear....

[wkulecz]

Elurew,

I can't speak for "everyone", but I see three problems. Basically if you capture MJPEG and transcode to any other format you'll get the black bars on top and left edges. That seems universal and is Problem 1 for me.


If you render back to MJPEG, in my experience it plays back fine, both on computer screen and composite output on the BOB (where you record to tape) in MSPRO5.2 preview, Media Player, PC-VCR or anything else I've tried. Only MJPEG plays back thru the BOB so this is what you have to render to if recording a tape is your goal.

Problem 2 I've not experienced.
There is a "TVout" function in Powerdesk that attempts to display your computer screen on the composite output all the time. In theory you can set this on and have your player do "full screen" and record to tape other than MJPEGs. I've not played with this but there appears to be a host of "centering" problems here. It forces your main screen to run 60Hz which flickers too much for me so I've never tried using this perhaps sometimes broken "feature".

Problem 3 seems to be green tinges and/or black and white tape output. The Marvel is too picky about signals from the tuner and capture from it on my system is sometimes B&W but color when not capturing. Futzing with the antenna (I only have cheap "rabbit ears") usually cures it for me, but this is something I only do for capture function tests as I get bad TV reception, not worth recording, and since there is little worth watching anyways, I don't bother about it). This appears to be related to the false macrovision protection problem but its not happened with any of the VCRs or camcorders I've used.

If you have the green tinge on tape out or other color problems (mine wouldn't display reds) you should return the card for a refund or go through the RMA hassle as that's your only fix as far as I can tell.

--wally.

[Pertti]

wkulecz,

Which card you are referring to ?

Looking at your post, I can tell that it is not a one with numbers 400 on it.

[fluggo99]

Black bars, black bars! I'm gettin' tired of talking about them!

Elurew, I wouldn't worry too much. Black bars are only a problem to those who don't know what they're doing. For the rest of us, we can simply ignore them or crop them off if they cause trouble. They don't show on TV, your card will automatically crop them off whenever it can-- why consider it a problem?

Here's my uneducated guess concerning black borders:

I personally think they're there to support closed captioning and the like. I think they may also represent the full horizontal sweep of the picture; what you see on the left would normally be part of the TV signal. It's just blank because few companies bother to design fast equipment that takes advantage of that area, mainly because no one ever sees it.

I've ranted about this before; go see <a href="http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002835.html">Black lines around captured avi's!</a> for the rest of the story.

[Walrus]

As a note, the black bar at the top of the MJPEG is not for closed captioning support as far as I can tell. (I captured video sources with closed captioning and then outputted the resulting MJPEG to my TV set, and there was no encoded closed captioning)
As for the vertical bar.. I have to admit that when I output MPEGs I created via the MJPEG (without cropping and resizing) through my DVD decoder I can't see any of the borders that I can see on my computer monitor. (then again I only have a 13" TV)
Now to find a better fix... (and/or to get YUY2 support working under NT with the new driver)