ETV MPEG editing

[Craig6]

Since the latest vid tools for XP are awaitng a patch for Ulead VS4 I am not able to edit the mpeg2 format. I'm having trouble using premiere also with MPEG2 files captured with the PCVCR.

Can anyone help ?

I either need to convert the mpeg2 file in to a workable avi format (full res 704 x 576) and edit it in premiereand also still be able to export it from premiere at the same res.

or

edit the mpeg2 in premiere and export it full res

I seem to get file size limitations and a host of crashes in premiere.

I've also tried Flaskmpg with some success for converting the mpeg2 and a host of different codecs which have not helped.

I've even tried capturing avi instead with virtual dub but I get vidcap errors

I think I'm missing something easy here

what I.m trying to do is capture footage with etv pcvcr mpeg2 704 X 576. edit the footage and create a movie either mpeg2 or avi to be converted to svcd or vcd with tmpenc.

any help appreciated. driver update for VS4 is long over due

Craig

[Dr Mordrid]

1. editing MPEG is fraught with problems, not the least of which is that Premiere barely supports it anyhow. MPEG is also very lossy when edited, which makes the end quality often less than expected.

2. 'tis better to capture in a real editing format like PICVideo's MJPeg. The AVI_IO or VirtualDUB capture tools work with the eTV for doing this and PICVideo only costs $18 USD. These edit NICELY and also encode into very nice MPEG's.

3. to capture PICVideo (once installed) you would open the capture tool, select the YUY2 capture Format then select PICVideo as the Compression. A quality setting of 18-19 in PICVideo should be enough.

4. when encoding MPEG in Premiere 'tis best done using either the Premiere Ligos plugin or by frameserving TMPGEnc using VideoServer.

PICVideo: http://www.jpg.com/video/mjpeg.htm

TMPGEnc: http://www.tmpgenc.net

VideoServer: http://www.videotools.net

AVI_IO: http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/index.html

VirtualDUB: http://www186.pair.com/vdub/index.html

Dr. Mordrid

[Craig6]

Thanks for a very quick response, After reinstalling the vidtools, I tried the first part of what you suggested.

I opened virtual dub and went to capture - I got an error message saying the capture device was not ready or unavailable. It then tried other drivers and I got a picture.

I captured a small bit of footage using picvideo as the compessor. I'm not sure was res I should be trying ?? help

The video captured but on play back the footage was all jaggy

any help appreciated

Craig

[Dr Mordrid]

If your system has an even moderately strong CPU (500+ mhz) you should be able to capture PICVideo all the way up to 704x480.

You should try a quality setting in PICVideo of 19 to get results comparable to a Marvels hardware capture, but you can also use qualities up to the max of 20 IF your hdd is capable of 10 mb/s or more.

While using 20 over 19 may not sound like a big difference it is as the scale is not linear. 19 is ~2.9-3.0 mb.s while 20 runs about 6-8 mb/s depending on the soruce...a significant increase in bitrate and quality. 20 encodes into very nice MPEG's using either the Ligos or TMPGEnc encoders, but especially TMPGEnc.

PICVideo footage captured at full frame and 19 or 20 should not be jaggie at all.

Dr. Mordrid

[Craig6]

Just tried quality at 20 and set custom res to 704 x 480 still very jaggy

my spec

Athlon 1400
256ddr
40gig maxtor 7200 hdd
g450etv
xp pro

I've also tried HUFFYUV and the LEAD codec still jaggy

Craig

[Dr Mordrid]

Send me a representative frame.

drmordrid@digitalvideo.8m.net

Dr. Mordrid

[Craig6]

never done that before

sorry for being dumb

how to do it / what format ?

sorry again

[Christrati]

Craig,

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the eTV has a field order problem in XP/2k. You'll need to swap fields in order to resolve your jagged edge issue. You can use VirtualDub and have it swap fields automatically, then you'll have a more successful capture.

Chris

[Craig6]

I've tried the swop field option and still no difference - very jaggy. Should I consider going back to 98se ?

Dr mordrid, Ive also tried to send you a frame but the server keeps kicking it back

Craig

[Greebe]

hehe

Hey Terry you're not giving out the monkey on the knee typo'd email addy again are you?

[Christrati]

Hmmm, I'm sure when I used XP/2k when I swaped fields, it performed a lot better. But, that was quite a while back!

When I record with the eTV, I still boot into Windows ME and capture using the PC-VCR. If I use anything else, I drop frames. I've given up on Matrox fixing the drivers for the card, I bought a RT2500 and the captures are wonderful using the S-Video connectors!

Chris

[Craig6]

1. When trying to capture half YUY2 with a 3rd party app - virtual dud I get the error message telling me that the capture driver is not installed correctly, the program searches for a different driver and finds one but when I check it's not the VFW driver it's another matrox one. The capture is badly jaggie even if I reverse fields.

Is this correct ?

This also happens in Premiere.

2. I'm thinking of buying a Digital Video Camera and using a firewire card to get the footage on PC. Can you explain how I capture this footage. I have the ETV will this still be used as the capture device ? and will it have the same limitations as mentioned in my previous post ? or is DV totally different ?

Thanks

C