How can RR capture mpeg video in Ulead VideoStudio 4.0?

[Fengzi]

Hi,

I've got Ulead VideoStudio 4.0, but I don't know how to capture mpeg video with my RRS. The only captured video format is MJPEG. I tried to change the capture driver to "Ulead mpeg VFW....." in VS4, but it didn't capture at all.
Could anybody tell me how to ajust it and make RR capture mpeg video? What else should I do to get it work?
Thanks a lot!

Fengzi

[Fengzi]

Thanks!
But I remember somebody said here that RR can capture mpeg files directly. Is that true? Or just convert it from MJPEG at the last step?

[Mark F]

My understanding is it technicaly can be done if you have about a PIII-600 or better. But the difference between technicaly possible and practicaly usefull is wide. You will probable be happier doing the conversion.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[jeff b]

The most painless way to get mpeg using an RRS and VideoStudio is to capture in MJPEG, and then convert the finished project to whichever MPEG format you like using the 'options' button after pushing the 'make movie' button (upper left corner) at the 'finish' stage.

[Fengzi]

Thank you!

I just want to make sure whether it does work or not. If there is really a way to make RR capture mpeg directly, I would think to upgrade my CPU. To capture mpeg will save a lot of time compared with converting MJPEG to mpeg if no editing needed.
I just want to know how to make it work, and see how the mpeg quality is. Just want to have a try to make my old RRS more useful. (Hehehe......am I too greedy?)

[jeff b]

I have the Mystique220/RR-S, and the only two ways that know of that I can capture are with the Matrox MJPEG codec, since that's hardware assisted, and then there's 'raw', which bypasses the hardware codec and needs massive throughput to the hard disk, since there's no compression being done at all. Very few systems are up to THAT task!

It's possible that someone has written software to take a raw video input and process it into mpeg on the fly, but I can't imagine what system might be capable of doing this effectively, since that kind of compression is pretty intensive. Just by comparasin, encoding an existing raw video file containing a minute of video to mpeg might take anywhere from five to ten minutes. If you surf around for stuff about mpeg converters, you're bound to run into a lot of complaints about how long it takes some of these software encoders to convert to mpeg. It's always been an issue for people.

The only systems that I know of that encode mpeg on the fly are hardware based NLE cards that are doing MPEG-2 capture/playback, and those are pretty expensive.

What makes it so time consuming is that every frame of the video has to be compared to the frame before it, and the frame after it, and then the compression and encoding to mpeg is finally done for just that one frame. With MJPEG, only the one frame is looked at, and compressed, so it's faster. With the RR, this is done with hardware on the card, and it's fast enough to capture at a compression ratio of about 6 to 1. Mpeg-1, on the other hand, can be compressing much more, sometimes in the 100 to 1 range, so that makes it even more sluggish.

Get the idea?

[Walrus]

jeff b: Actually, that's how software MPEG capturing works. I beta-tested WinVCR when I used a Hauppauge WinCast/PCI as my capture board (which has no on-board compression to speak of) and I estimated it would capture VCD complaint MPEG-1 with a Celeron 366 or so or a K6-2 450. Therefore I imagine the system reqs for capturing MPEG-2 (IBP) in realtime aren't completely impossible...
The problem with the Rainbow Runner is (at least with the RRG/Marvel) that when you use RGB mode (which unless you hack the Win9x drivers is one's only option besides MJPEG) the driver actually converts from YUV to RGB in software adding even more overhead. (esp since the MPEG encoder will then convert BACK to a YUV derivative then do the other compression steps)..
Note, the latest Win9x drivers do have a registry hack that allows one to actually output the raw YUV data, which should SEVERELY aide capturing to MPEG-x.
Incidently, the quality of the output of WinVCR was pretty decent for VCD.. (and it was built on the Ligos Go-Motion codec)

[Birger]

Change the capture settings to RGB 24-bit

[RBryant]

So what exactly do I need to do then to capture directly to MPEG?

1) I need to set my capture to RGB24?
2) I need to hack my Win9x drivers to YUV?
3) Do I have to use VS4? Can I use AVI_IO?
4) Set the compression to MPEG1?

I would really like to capture straight to MPEG, so I'm being very basic here...

Thanks in advance!

[Walrus]

RBryant:
Go to the global commands menu, choose "Change Capture Plug-In" select Ulead MPEG capture, then you have a new menu item under video options from which you can specify the MPEG capture settings. Make sure to set the output video format under the "Video Format" item to RGB (16 or 24 bit seems to both work)
As a note, on my dual Celeron 366 overclocked to 550, I can capture 320x240 at a pretty high datarate MPEG-1 perfectly fine. (which is pretty amazing given all of the translations to and from YUV the system is doing) 640x480 MPEG-2 IPB looses about half of the frames. On the plus side, the MPEG capture codec seems to utilize SMP setups.

[jeff b]

Hey Walrus! That SO SLICK!!!! I had no slightest clue that I would be able to capture directly to mpeg like that! My PIII-500 and FastTrack66 sails right along like a sweet dream, capturing mpeg in full motion without a hitch! I never would've imagined that little ole VideoStudio would have that feature!

This is the first time I've ever come up with an mpeg file that looked that smooth and clear, either!

You've completely blown me away, man!

[Walrus]

jeff b: To be honest, I'm pretty jazzed by the discovery as well.. However, since my Marvel G200 under NT doesn't even support 352x240 res with RGB format, I can't even work with VCD mode so it's not much more than an interesting discovery for me.
Frankly at this point, I'm getting tempted to get a stupid stereo Hauppauge WinCast and use Soft MJPEG and this for capturing and ignore my Marvel.
BTW: Did you try using the YUY2 hack to see if that improves throughput? I'd imagine with your P3 you could get close to having workable IBP MPEG-2 at decent resolutions.

[DrMordrid]

To get those 640x480 RGB24 capture settings to appear you need to "lie" to the registry entries HDBenchmark sets up when it runs.

Run RegEdit and go to the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Matrox/Vidpres/HDBenchResults/

Once there select the capture drives letter in the left panel then doubleclick {Default} in the right panel. When the dialog appears replace whatever is there with 28672 (28 megs/sec).

This will make all the RGB data rates and rez's show up. If your processor is fast enough you'll now be able to do max rez MPEG and MPEG2 captures.

Don't worry if your drive isn't that fast. The data will be heavily compressed before it gets there so the actual data rate will be much lower.

Dr. Mordrid

[Walrus]

DrMordrid:
Actually, the problem isn't with the capture settings showing up, but rather that there's no 352x240 setting for RGB for the Marvel under NT. Even without the registry settings being hacked, all the other ones up to 640x480 are available.. The problem is (for me) the only somewhat useable resolutions are 320x240 (which I generally don't like) and 640x480 (which my dual 550 can't handle without dropping at least half of the frames)
Does the Win9X driver support other RGB resolutions?

[JayZ]

"but rather that there's no 352x240 setting for RGB for the Marvel under NT"
Walrus: so you say there's a way to set the RGB settings to 352x240 under win98? I couldnt find a way to do it. Is it throught registry hack or ?
I tried to capture straight to mpg with 320x240 and it was working pretty good with ver minimal dropped frames. I have yet to try mpg2 capturing as DrM suggested. I will probably try it this weekend when i have some time. I would like to be able to capture to 352x240 because that is the standard size for VCD format. Capturing to avi then converting over to mpg and joining is a long and tedious process when you're just doing some light capturing that doesnt need any editing.
What programs and what process do you guys use to capture and then converiting over to mpg or to vcd standard. I usually convert the avi over to mpg with the panasonic mpg encoder as that seems to give the best results. And then i usually use camel's mpeg joiner, vcdcutter, or webflix to join the mpgs together. Camel seems to give me the best result as in not being able to notice the pause in between where the mpgs are joined together. I capture and edit all movies in avi and then convert them over to mpg as VCD standard so that I can play them on a DVD player.