A word of advice please

[Debbie]

Hi,

I am considering replaceing my Marvel G400-TV with the ATI Rage Fury Pro.
In intend to end up with MPEG clips. At the moment I am capturing in Matrox MJPEG and re-encoding in MPEG using TMPGEnc. The end result is very good but as you all know very time consuming. Using the YUY2 patch is out of the question for me since it is giving me sound problems. Will I gain by changing to ATI or not, as regards quality and speed ?

Regards,

Debbie

[wkulecz]

I don't see ho the ATI Rage Furry Pro does anything useful for you since its not a capture card. If it has a TV out and you expect this to be of recordable quality -- I'd bet against it being as good as the G400 Marvel DVDmax feature.

IMHO analog capture is more trouble than its worth at this point in time. Get a simple firewire (1394) card like the ADS Pyro (<$50) and a Analog to DV / DV to Analog converter box like the Sony DVMC-DA2 (~$300) or spend a couple of hundred more and get a D8 camcorder that can to the on-the-fly conversions.

I've set up many of these systems and they basically just work once you download the necessary updates from Microsoft and and the editing software vendor.

IF all you want to do is play back various MJPEG or MPEG "full screen" so you can record them, why not just use the DVDmax feature of your G400 Marvel?

What I'm saying is given the problems you have had, if you want to buy something new I'd suggest its time you move to DV.

--wally.

[mikiem]

Hi Debbie

I don't have any real world reports re: other hardware, but looking into the situation there are a few that seem promising.

Bearing in mind I have no idea the actual quality of video in or out, the card I'd most consider is the ATI Radion 64 mb ddr -- ~$200 US or less, fair amount of card for the money as it sits, but if video in and out are decent, could be a great buy.

The second type of card I'm keeping on eye on are those using the new geforce mx chipsets. The chipset provides for a software version of dualhead and video in & out, but my understanding is the software is still not there yet. Pricewise I've seen these go for less then $100 US to ~$175 US.

Third, the Osprey cards are a standard with webcasting & similar. I don't like the fact you seem to have to buy them thru a limited number of suppliers, but the fact MS was involved in the software development could mean a really long useful life I suppose. Also, the fact that the audio I/O is on the card should eliminate a lot of problems.

While I'm not going to touch the issue of DV vs analog , I would like to make the comment that if your concerns are the time it takes to encode your mpeg files, why not look into alternatives, regarding both encoders and formats?

There are mpeg2 encoders that work in real time, and I still haven't seen anything readily available (not to mention free ) that would compare to winmedia re: combined performance and results, though I have qualms about their latest vbr stuff (seems to be difficult to preserve quality comparred to 1.4 meg constant bit rate etc... -- but then it is intended for streaming rather then archiving).

Best Luck
mike

[Debbie]

Hi guys,

Thank you all. Problem solved!!

I've upgraded my CPU from 500 MHz to 1000 MHz and
this has solved the problem with the YUY2 patch.

Now I can capture in real time using software encoders and get fair quality for the odd job.

When it comes to more classy work I use Matrox MJPEG and re-encode with TMPGEnc with 1.6 mins. to
1 min. of avi and a bit rate of 1400. and the result is great.

Regards to all,

Debbie