G400 Marvel (Last Try)

[Robert@MZ3.Net]

I purchased the G400 Marvel directly from Matrox when it was first released. I got it to work initially, but a video capturing "incident" and the lack of Win2k support left the G400 sitting on my spare parts shelf.

Well now I have enough of those spare parts to build myself a dedicated video capture machine. Questions I wanted to ask the forum are...

(1) Which OS (I'm guessing Win98SE?)
(2) What video drivers/video tools (and yes I will be wanting a macrovision patch as well).
(3) If not G400 Marvel, then what will work for video capturing analog video.

Last time I had this thing running the video captures were good about 90% of the time. I always edit the captures in Ulead Media Studio Pro and sometimes a file (which had been split by video tools) could not be edited or played past a certain spot in the file.

The incident that sent to card to the shelf involved capturing some camcorder footage from a golf tournament. I had the tape, captured the footage, returned the tape to its owner.... then realized I couldn't edit a good chunk of what I had captured.

Spare Part System Specs (if needed)
Abit BX133-Raid motherboard
Celeron PPGA 700
384mb PC100 SDRAM
5gb ata33 5400rpm Maxtor Drive (C: System Drive)
two 25gb ata66 7200rom Maxtor Drives (connected via promise ultra100 tx2 ide card)

Thanks,
Robert@MZ3.Net

[This_Idiot]

Hi Robert,

G400 Marvel with W98SE is a good way to go. As with anything, there are no guarantees, but I've been running this PC (Tbird 800) with a G400 OK for a while.

I gotta admit that I've entered the brain fade zone, so I can't help with driver revisions (tonight), but I'd be looking for a set that Flying Dutchman has "enabled" for YUY capture, especially as you have a Promise HD setup. I "think" that most of the W98 compatible versions that FD has "touched" have also got MV protection hacks available.

As you already have the parts in yuour spares bin, I'd try some variants of drivers etc. to try and make the best use of what you've got before trying alternative hardware - save that as a last resort !

Cheers
Chris