g400+rrg = b&w mpeg.

[WaiSki]

Hi everybody. I'm a new murcer..

I have this problem. When capturing mjpeg with my g400max+rrg combo it turns black and white after awhile when encoded to mpeg. This is usually caused by a dropped frame (I think). I've tried almost all the latest drivers for both cards and nothing seems to help. I'm capturing from tv-in (air).

hw: g400max+rrg (PAL), P3 500@500, 192mb, 2x IBM Deskstar HDD, ISA SCSI, ISA SB32, PCI NIC, Legend-QDI motherboard (don't know the model)

[DonBeto]

I have somewhat similar problem with my RR-G,G400,Athlon600,FIC S11,W98-2ed. Inoticed sometimes when capturing in Matrox PC-VCR remote or ULead Video Capture (in preview mode) that a brief color bust would appear on a frame. Thereafter it was B/W for the rest of the capture. When I look in Ulead Video Editor at the clip, I could sometimes see the color distorted frame. Often the corrupted clip would lock-up the program & sometimes a hard boot was required. The color burst seems random. In short captures when it did not occur, everything worked fine--could edit the file, etc. After much headache (and trying many things), I am thinking it is a capture circuit H/W problem. I have sent my RR to Matrox for an exchange. I am also wondering if I have some power supply limitation (I have 350W). Hope this works. Will post results.
...DonBeto

[Driver]

I have the same problem. From what I can tell, it only happens with software decoding for the original captured avi plays fine if using the rr-g hardware for decode but suffers from the symptoms you describe if not. From what I have been told, you need to remove the bad frames from the original avi. Once complete, this problem should no longer exist. However, I stress that I have yet to do this. I would think that possibly switching to another software decoder may fix the problem but I have yet to try this as well. just a thought for now. Anyway, your problem is not uncommon. Best of luck.
-Driver

[WaiSki]

Thanks guys. I'll try that frame removal thing.. I found out that when capturing with VirtualDub the bug doesn't appear nearly as often as in pcvcr. I've even captured whole musicvideos in color!-)

BTW. Are there ppl out there who's g400+rrg combo works 100%?

[WaiSki]

Hmm. Could it really be an ata33/66 related problem? I have IBM deskstar HDDs. And to get them work with my motherboard I had to flash them from 66 to 33. In normal use they work excellent..

Yes I know. It would have been wiser to update the motherboard's bios but I just can't find this model's bios anywhere :P

BTW. Should the rrg be listed somewhere in dev manager (win98se)? The only place I can see the addon listed is in PDesk's properties -> Information -> Extra hardware.

[DonBeto]

Try changing your screen resolution to 800x600.
I had a similar problem: During MJPEG capture, it sometimes would go B&W Sometimes, if you watched closely, you could see a brief color distortion (maybe one frame). 800x600 resolution somehow solved the problem for me.

[WaiSki]

I've tried that. And different bitdepths too. Doesn't seem to work.. Thanks anyway.

[Driver]

After doing a little experimenting, I found that if you use the Morgan codec for software decode, the "evil" frame that forces the Matrox decompressor to go black and white has no such effect. However, you can still see the glitch as it looks like a a loss of a frame or two. My guess is that the codec ignores it. I also found that the PICvideo codec freezes the video stream when it gets to this frame while audio continues. Anyway, I hope this info is helpful to some.