Success: Marvel G200 capture on WinXP

[lekx]

Hi all,

Please tolerate the length of this post. I'd like to be as much clear as possible, but my English is not this sharp .

I capture with Marvel G200 since February 2001. I am using Win98SE because all that weird things with Win2K drivers. My setup is pretty ordinary:

Marvel G200
Win98SE
Driver 5.41
Video tools 1.54
YUY2 / MV patched

Over the last weekend I was playing around with Windows XP, trying to get capture working. And I did! Here is the sequence I followed:

1. Made the straight upgrade from Win98 to WinXP Pro. All apps and settings were preserved.

2. Replaced the default MS display-only driver with 5.39 (recommended on MURC's download page for Win2k and videotools 2.04). Simply ignored the non-verified driver message.

3. Installed final videotools 2.04.015. There were no record button in PC-VCR, although it worked with composite line just fine.

4. FD's YUY2 patch worked perfectly for AVI_IO and VirtualDub. BTW, both apps preserved old registry settings during upgrade.

Now the problems began. Both apps hanged up after 20-30 captured frames. I tried to think a little and recalled the note in FD's YUY2 readme: "...disable DMA in PDesk...". There is no DMA option, but there is "bus mastering". Well,

5. Disabled bus mastering in PDesk. (You can do this either with Matrox tweak util or deep inside Display properties). Yahoo! It works!!! Both MJPEG and YUY2... (Thanks, Flying Dutchman!)

But alas , not in mode I was desiring. Now the strange thing happened: when I setup the frame size as 1/2 = 352x576, the overlay shows proper half-resolution picture. But when the capture starts it captures... the left half of the whole 704x576 frame.

Oops, this one I couldn't solve. The trouble seems to sit somewhere deep inside the drivers / hardware. The full-frame capture works well though, but requires too much drive space: 60 GB are not enough for even 2hrs.

There were some quirks with other apps too. The last drop for me was that bbMPEG crashed every time I tried to open any file load/save dialog. Since I am using bbMPEG for multiplexing/cutting of SVCDs, this app is something I can't survive without.

So, after 1 day with WinXP, I made my last move:

6. Uninstall of WinXP. Wow! My old good Win98SE was back after 10 minutes (including reinstallation of driver/v-tools). This is the best feature of this OS, huh

***

Conclusion: if it is OK for you to capture/process full-resolution video, WinXP may be the good OS to install. Its memory management helps in video encoding a lot. Plus some really nice interface enhancements are very handy (sometimes not ).

I hope, respected gurus will read this post, and may suggest something to solve that weird half-res bug.

Thanks for reading,

lekx

[Flying dutchman]

I'd propose you stick with WinXP, and use AviSynth to do the scaling from full-resolution to half-resolution. This way you can directly open your full-res Matrox files with BBMpeg and still get half-resolution output. As a positive side-effect, the scaling eliminates a lot of noise...

I generally make VCD's from full-size captures only.

BTW, my Windows 2000 setup behaves exactly like your WinXP: Crashes after 30 frames unless I disable busmastering - then it's rock solid!

[lekx]

Thanks for reply, FD.

I mostly cook SVCDs from VHS tapes or TV captures from VCR. The common conversion sequence is this:

VHS -> AVI_IO (YUY2 352x576) -> AVIsynth (trim+letterbox+resize 480) -> CCE 2.5 (separate streams) -> bbMPEG (mux+cut) -> Nero 5.0.44

Since its VHS, I doubt I can gain more quality with full-res capture. It is requiring too much space, and slows down the resizing/processing of video significantly.

I find the resulting SVCDs to have nearly the same quality as was the originating tape or TV progrmme. So why to ask more? IMHO, using anti-noise filters gives its own artifacts.

Maybe when I will have some extra bucks to buy one more HD (adding to my present 20 + 60 GB), then I will consider to switch to WinXP again.

Now the questions. Does Windows 2000 setup capture normal half-res? Or it has the same bug/feature as my XP?

Can you suggest something as convenient as bbMPEG for muxing/cutting SVCD stream? It produces fine working SVCD stream while cutting it to the exact protions to fit CDs. I've tried Tsunami's MPEG tools. It was awful -- no progress indication, cutting by hand.

Thanks.

lekx

[Flying dutchman]

Hi Lekxs,

I prefer full-res Picvideo MJPG over half-res YUY2 or HuffYuv. The files are smaller, too, so space shouldn't be an issue!
Moreover, scaling down tends to improve image quality because it reduces noise (at least in bilinear mode - bicubic resizing is a different matter). I find noise reduction is a must-have, because the mpeg encoder will have more bandwidth for the actual image rather than compress noise...


My personal setup:

Capture full-size Picvideo at quality level 19, set it to non-interlaced(!), then process with Avisynth using some filters. I "borrow" some filters from virtualDub and use them in AviSynth, too.

( 1- apply "Levels" filter after carefully checking recording level in VirtualDub so the output falls in 16..235 luma range.
2- resize billinear 480x576,
3- Apply VirtualDub "DNR" filter with strength 6..9)

Then compress using either bbMpeg or tMpegencoder using NO built-in filters. And yes, the sequence of the filters matters!

For standard VCD I also capture full-frame Picvideo, and then scale down the image using the ReduceBy2() function in Avisynth. This kills most of the noise and also de-interlaces nicely, no more filters needed.


Converting clips from DVD to VCD gives even more satisfying results - my VCD's are subjectively as good as VHS. I tweak them a bit by enlarging the 2.35:1 format to 16:9 to compensate for the low VCD resolution.

[lekx]

Flying dutchman,

You're referncing to VCD in your posts, but later talk about resizing to 480x576 which is SVCD. If you make SVCD, then why non-interlaced format?

My experiments with Matros's MJPEG made me sure, that double MPEG encoding sequence (MJPEG -> MPEG-2) almost always gives those infamous mosquito artifacts. When I tried to extend qulaity settings beyond 80 (through registry), the probability of drops was too high.

Another reason why I chose YUY2 was that CCE's encoding algorithm seems to do well with blured input. IMHO, the weird effect of little bluring of YUY2 captures is good for CCE.

Now I'll give a try to PICvideo's MJPEG.

Thanks for advise.

PS PICvideo MJPEG has a promotional price of $18 right now. That's affordable even for me

[Flying dutchman]

Hi Lekx,

Let me explain the "non-interlaced" stuff first. The Matrox Marvel captures full-screen interlaced video. The images consist of two "fields"; one field is the odd lines, one field is the even lines.
The Matrox capturing hardware captures the bottom field first, then the top field, and joins these two into one image (a.k.a. "Frame"). This frame is then passed to the compression codec. 25 frames/second in the case of PAL.

The Marvel's hardware MJPG codec (a Zoran chipset) gets its data (the whole frame) from the capturing hardware, then compresses each field individually. They probably did that to get a better compression ratio, there's no technical necessity to do it.

If you capture in YUY2 mode, and use a software codec, however, it is entirely up to you if you want to compress the whole frame as one image, or if you want to compress the odd/even lines individually in two fields. The main thing is, you put a frame in, you get a frame out. The compression codec has no way of knowing if the content frame is interlaced or not.

I have found out that the Picvideo codec gives MUCH sharper images if you compress them as a whole rather than as two fields. Apart from this, there are no consequences whatsoever for your video editing. You can still think of a frame as consisting of two fields. And the content of the image is still interlaced.

There's one minor incompatibility though: If you let Picvideo capture "interlaced", you can fool the Matrox MJPG hardware into believing that the video clip was in fact captured by its own MJPG hardware compressor by changing the FourCC header of the AVI file from "MJPG" into "dmb1". The Marvel G200 will then happily play those videos on its TV-out. If you tell Picvideo to capture "non-interlaced", you lose that possibility. But what the heck.

So you see, the only difference is the better quality you get.

[lekx]

FD,

Let me resume:

If I capture in PICvideo's "non-interlaced" mode, this affects the algorithm of compression. But the stream in fact still be interlaced, and when I will feed this AVI to MPEG-2 encoder, I still be able to produce interlaced SVCDs (which I think is required to view on standalone DVD-player / TV).

Right?

Then, if I set FourCC header of AVI to dmb1, then my Marvel G200 will play the output on TV? Wow, that's a good news, if PICvideo's quality/size combination is better than Matrox's. Though its rare when this would be needed. Btw, isn't this option included in your Win2K YUY2 patching utility?

Thanks a lot for support.

[Flying dutchman]

Lekx,

in order to playback picvideo through the Marvel G200's TV-out you MUST capture interlaced, because that's what Matrox' own hardware codec does. And you must tweak the FourCC field.
The same applies to the Morgan codec, by the way.

For all other purposes Picvideo gives much better image quality if you set it to non-interlaced.

[Fred H]

There's one minor incompatibility though: If you let Picvideo capture "interlaced", you can fool the Matrox MJPG hardware into believing that the video clip was in fact captured by its own MJPG hardware compressor by changing the FourCC header of the AVI file from "MJPG" into "dmb1". The Marvel G200 will then happily play those videos on its TV-out. If you tell Picvideo to capture "non-interlaced", you lose that possibility. But what the heck.

-How can you change the PICVideo interlaced/non-interlaced. If I understand it than in PICVideo MJPEG Settings->2 Fields If more Than… is the right key for it. Right?

-How can you change the FourCC header in PICVideo from/to MJPG/dmb1 (before capturing)? In Morgan MJPEG is easy, in PICVideo I don’t know. After capturing is also OK.

Sorry if I asked some d_mb questions.
Fred H

[lekx]

I quit

Alas, my patience has ended, I quit WinXP.

After a couple of weeks fighting I give up. During this time I tried to do my best to make this piece-of-art working. I have quiet good skills and experience in tweaking all Windowses, both 98 and 2K. Dont suspect my hands

Here are the results:

Pros:

• I've made a working setup (thanks to FD's advices above), capturing with AVI_IO to PICvideo full-size.
• PC-VCR works with composite line-in. No Rec, of course.
• AVIsynth works.
• bbMPEG can be tweaked (just try to pseudo-load file with the upper-right button, then cancel -- now all dialogs work; tip found on doom9.org).
• the system is solid (unless I work with anything involved in video-editing , tends to have really unlimited uptime.
• thanks to tweakxp.com, I managed to have ~62 MB RAM used, no extra services running. Good performance for NT-based machine, huh
• when the program hangs, it will not bring down the whole system (in 9 cases from 10).
• neat-looking buttons and FX

Cons:

• I've spent $40 for AVI_IO + PICvideo, while VirtualDub+Huffyuv are (almost) free.
• the numbers of crashes/freezes/BSODs are insane. Working with polished Win98SE never gave me those for weeks, with WinXP I was rebooting tens of times during single video-editing session, trying to make ordinary programs work. VirtualDub, bbMPEG, Elecard MPEG player, Graphedit, even PC-VCR, -- all tend to hang.
• the encoding with CCE is in fact _slower_ than with Win98. I was able to test exactly the same files with both systems, WinXP is ~10-15% slower. Now I don't believe in any mystical memory management. It's all about horse-power of CPU
• the OS is alway doing something by itself in background. Even when there is no action -- just watching TV -- it does _something_, murmuling with HDs. (Yes, I have turned off that Indexng service )
• AVI MJPEG "hardware-modulated" TV-output does not work. Period.

Conclusion:

I do switch off my PC every night, so endurance and uptime do not matter. I can control what my wife is doing on the PC. I like to handle many 2GB AVI files on FAT32. I don't (plan to) have a dual-CPU machine. I like my present collection of programs, they do all I need.

Thus, WinXP gives me ONLY neat-looking FX . Is this worth of everyday troubles? NO

Let the XP rest in peace.

[Fred H]

Short:
Go Win 98 or Win 2000.
My son in law doesn’t like what I am saing. He runs Win XP. (Not with Matrox, not video editing)
I never had luck with it, with the d** XP.
When Marvel 400-TV will work with XP, when it'll work with my wireless-LAN card, when it will wor with my.... than….maybe.
But now I am happy, VERY happy with my dual boot: Win98SE and Win2000 Pro.

Fred H

[Satlas]

With the instructions in this thread and others, I successfully managed to cap YUY2 in WinXP with my Marvel G200 (driver 5.39 + vt204.final.wise.installer + virtualdub + Flying Dutchman's YUY2/MJPEG enabler patch + rr2ctrl patch for european non-tv tuner marvels + busmastering disabled).

Within the last few days a new Powerdesk driver version 6.72.018 showed up on MS WindowsUpdate, so I downloaded it an installed from there. Somehow the default language was set to french, but changing it to English worked, although Windows now lists my display adapter as Matrox Marvel G200 AGP - Francais. I decided to try Videotools vt_210a.exe from Matrox FTP as well and I wasn't surprised when it didn't display the line-in signal. However, when I used the rr2ctrl patch for vt204.final, vt210 started quite happily and displayed the composite video in as usual.

Finally I tried capping YUY2 with VirtualDub and the FD YUY2 patch, and voila, it worked, this time the system didn't even lock up with busmastering enabled. I didn't get proper sync with the audio, but I haven't really experimented enough with the settings yet.

Now the only problem I have in WinXP is changing resolutions with the display schemes or hotkeys assigned to them and enabling tvout in the same operation, but this never worked with the old 5.39 drivers either (worked in Win98). Enabling tvout with schemes/hotkeys works fine, but the resolution refuses to change, unlesss I do it in 2 operations (first tvout, then new res or the other way around).

If anyone knows how to fix the last issue please let me know. Apart from that I'm now quite happy with the XP/G200 Marvel combo (provided I'm able to sort out the audio sync).