Trouble With Marvel G400 MJPEG Files In Adobe Premiere 5.1c

[Christopher Cameron]

Hi !
I have trouble with my Marvel G400 video card. The thing is this: When I capture some material with my card (using Ulead Media Studio 6.0 Pro, VirtualDub 1.3d or the default PC VCR) and then open this MJPEG file in Adobe Premiere 5.1c to work with it, I get nothing but a green/black flashing screen when I jump forward frame by frame. But when I just push Play the clip plays right, without these “green/black flash frames”. I’m pretty sure the failure lies in the Marvel’s capturing device. This is VERY annoying, because I’m in need of being able to edit video material in Premiere.
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Some technical details:

Capture Format:

Video Format: MJPEG
Dimensions: 704x576
Quality: High
Compression Ration: 6.6:1
Data Rate: 2.930 Mb/sec at 25 Frames/sec

Audio Format: PCM 44 100 16 Bit Stereo 172 Kb/sec

Video Source:
Video Channel: Composite Video
Standard: PAL

Chunk Granularity: 2048 Bytes

My System:

Pentium II 400 Mhz
128 Mb RAM 100 Mhz
Windows 98 Second Edition
IBM Hard drive 20 Gb 7200 Rpm (I use this drive when I’m working with video material) and a Quantum Viking 4,3 Gb
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I use the latest drivers for my card (PowerDesk 5.55.022, Display Driver 4.12.01.1550) and I also have the latest BIOS, 1.6.

Maybe it’s wrong to use a MJPEG file in Premiere, but I have the same trouble when I pause the same file in Windows Media Player 6.4 (so I there must be something wrong with the MJPEG file NOT Premiere). Can I somehow encode this MJPEG file to another format that are more “compatible” with Premiere ? I know I CAN, but I don’t want to loose much quality, and this process takes very l o o o o ng time to = ( I have tried to decrease the picture quality in the MJPEG file, but the problem is still there.

Help on this please.

Christopher.


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[Dr Mordrid]

What field order are you using in Premiere? If this isn't right all kinds of things happen. You might also want to refresh your DirectX, MediaPlayer and video tool installations.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 June 2000).]

[Sciascia]

You and everyone else. As far as I know no one has found a way to solve the frame advance problem. It has something to do with alph channels and the way Premiere uses video overlay or something like that (I'm tired, so it is hard to remember exactly what). All I know is that I fought with it for several months and asked everywhere and got the same response I'm giving you. You can try to find the Morgan codec (MJPEG) and use that to capture and edit with instead of the dmb1 codec, but I didn't care for the quality too much. If you have MSP 6.0, I would try to use that as I have finally gotten all of the bugs out of mine and actually prefer it to Premiere. It took a long time for me to switch, but Adobe doesn't really support Matrox cards (G400 anyway) and it is too annoying. You could always switch between the 2 programs for whatever it is you need to do in Premiere (I like to use the Panasonic encoder). Sorry I wasn't much help at all. Good Luck.

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm glad you said that Sciascia. If I had gone into my usual Premiere rant one more time I might have ended up breaking the keyboard ;-))

Really, most of this kind of stuff falls into the general catagory of "Premiere-isms". It's an unstable, generally incompatable piece of crap.

Jezzz....mebbe I should have said that the first time. I feel a lot better now ;-))

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 June 2000).]

[fluggo99]

Then again, it could be analogous to the problems with frame advance in MSP. Try opening another MJPEG video in Media Player (before loading Premiere, so it takes over your card), and then see if the problem goes away.

[dchip]

I decided to not put my money into it either. As I continued to read "user" comments on it, it became clear that it is difficult to implement, even in a rock-solid system. I did not want to spend all my time rebooting and praying, so, I am still looking. At this point, I'm even considering Canopus' entry-level EZDV. The full-fledged editors might be a bit much for me at this stage. Anyway, Doc, just wanted to jump in and tell you I agree with your assessment of AP. Normally, I have to see for myself before criticizing, but this time I have to go with what I'm hearing. All those people can't be wrong.