Ulead video server

[Brian Ellis]

I've received the following message from Edwin at www.videotools.net :

You can download the Ulead video server with trial from my site..
If you would be so kind to mention this in the forum.

[Debbie]

Hi Bri,

If you remove that ":", it will make life a bit easyer.

https://www.videotools.net

Debbie

[Brian Ellis]

'Tis done, Debbie, sorry!

Have downloaded and installed it OK but am having an as-yet unresolved problem at the stage where the Plugin kicks in. Maybe a corrupt file. Will keep you informed.

[Brian Ellis]

OK, all!

I've got it working: my problem was a misinterpretation of a somewhat ambiguous instruction in the readme.txt file.

My first trial was to convert a 5 minute stretch of my last project to a straight 6000 CBR to PAL DVD format, using TMPGEnc from the timeline. It produced an MPEG-2 file that looked fine on the computer. I then did the full 50 minute project twice, once using 6000 VBR and once 8000 CBR. The latter was superb and was easily accepted by MovieFactory (although I didn't actually burn a disc!).

I'm impressed for what Edwin still considers as an alpha version : I've known more buggy release versions of software, especially from the Microsoft stable

This is something well worth while for MSP users, IMHO.

[Brian Ellis]

Further news: I've had an exchange of messages with Edwin and he has promised that he will make a modif that will make the system more intuitive and user-friendly. However this will not appear in the first release version but he has put my suggestion at the top of his to do list for the second release.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yeah....for a piece of "alpha" software VideoServer sure does act like a mature product, doesn't it? I learned a long time ago that VideoTools alphaware is very often at least as good as most other companies released products

BTW Brian: who was it that had reservations about purchasing VideoServer as alphaware?

VideoServer may well be getting another new trick.

Down the list a bit is a post where I noted one could speed up MSPro=>VideoServer=>TMPGEnc sessions by turning on multi-threading (even without a CPU capable of it) and cranking the prefetch buffer up to 64 megs.

This was because TMPGEnc was stopping every 2-3 GOP's while it was reading the next gulp of data from the MSPro timeline. This is definitely a TMPGEnc issue since MainConcept and other encoders don't exhibit it.

After discussing this with Edwin he decided to try giving a future version of VideoServer a fat buffer in an attempt to speed up ALL encoders that may have this issue.

Cross your fingers that it works

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Sure, Doc, I have reservations about paying for an alpha or a beta. I even have reservations about paying for early release versions when they are signed by Microsoft.

There is no guarantee that a beta version will even work satisfactorily. This is nothing against Edwin & Co or any other organisation. As a beta tester for a number of softwares, I know just how many serious problems can occur. One such serious problem occurred recently in a CAD system. The authors were wanting to interface it to a third party module. It was tested in alpha on Linux, W XP, 2000, 98 and 95 platforms. I could not get it to work on 98SE and another beta tester had the same problems in ME. Apparently, there is a Windows graphical function which is different in these two versions and there was no easy workaround. It meant an almost complete rewrite of the interface, which would have delayed the launch by 2 or 3 months. The authors preferred to put it off until the next version, rather than having something that was written in a hurry. I could imagine that if anyone had to buy the beta, because of this interface feature, he may have been quite angry. The sine qua non of beta testing is that both positive and negative feedback is given to the authors and the privilege of thus obtaining a pre-release copy, without guarantee, is therefore paid for by your reporting. Release copies are usually given to co-operating beta testers, as a reward. In the case of the CAD system I mentioned, its value is about $5000, so this is not inconsiderable.

You may be interested to know that the idea I submitted to Edwin is to have a pull-down or pop-up selection of all the available "wrappable" encoders in the Plugin window, so that there is no need to go hunting for them. As such, it's no great shakes, but the down side is that it will require some form of search facility to find them all and record their paths and this side of it will require a little extra software development. The big advantage, of course, will be that it will integrate the server and the encoder together, making it more intuitive to those using a video server for the first time.

I see the advantage of increasing the 'gulp' size but am not sure whether this would be an advantage if the computer were to have only marginal resources. Instead of gulping, it may choke Maybe it could be programmed to adjust the gulp size according to the available resources?

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm sure Edwin will figure out how big a "gulp" to take. I think the problem is that TMPGEnc itself needs a buffer, but sometimes they're slower to respond so.....

As for the codecs interface....sounds good.

Dr. Mordrid