Video capturing.

[Sandor Duis]

Can anybody help me out here,
I haven't got the faintest idea what I'm doing.
I bought a Marvel G400 TV card, in my PIII 500 128 MB 20 Gig system.
Connected it to my VCR to digitize sport tapes I bought on a tournament.
The games are about 40 minutes with a break at halftime. (Copy protection comes up)
I record the tapes with the standard software supplied by Matrox, that remote control thing.
I want a MPEG file so I can put it all on a (normal) CD, but the system saves it to a AVI file. So after recording a game (40 minutes) I have 2 or more files (copy protection because of pause in game) from about 2 GIG.
The tool to convert the AVI to MPEG (The LSX-MPEG2 Transcoder software) converts it to a MPEG2 file which after doubleclicking can't be played with the Microsoft media player.

And the file (one conversion from 2GIG) is allso 550 Meg big.
40 minutes video -> 550 MB seems a bit much.
Can someone help me out here ???

Thanx in advance
Sandor

[Eric VanHeest]

What did you use as your recording settings (frame size, etc, from the PC-VCR properties) ? When you say that the MPEG2 file "can't be played," do you mean that Media Player freezes, or that it gives a "File Format is Invalid" message ? I've had lots of problems with Media Player appearing to load a file but freezing if I've been putzing with the Matrox PC-VCR software at the same time. I assume that the AVI files that the PC-VCR captures are playable before you try to convert to MPEG-2?

As far as file sizes for the MPEG-2 file, that's completely customizable with the LSX software. Look for "bitrate" and set it to 136.5*(S/L), where S is the file size you desire in megabytes, and L is the length of your source file in minutes. (It might be 133.3, not 136.5; I forget exactly what "kilobits" means - someone will certainly correct me if I am wrong - heh.)

That's video only, of course; you will need to subtract your audio bitrate (128, 192, 224, or whatever you choose from LSX's options) from the final number if you want a good match of expected filesize to actual. For example, if you use 64 kbit audio, and you want a 40 minute video to take up 200 MB, you would use a total bitrate of 136.5 * (200/40) or 682 kbit/sec. Subtract 64 for audio, and make your video bitrate 618 kbit/sec. This isn't a very good quality bitrate for a decent framesize, but you have to experiment a bit to find out what you like the best. I tend to arrange my bitrates so that files are either 25%, 50%, or 100% of the size of a CDR, for convenience in burning later (you have to use specific bitrates to create VCDs, if that's the goal, but I don't use those so I don't know much about them).

[This message has been edited by Eric VanHeest (edited 06 September 2000).]

[Brian Ellis]

Sandor,

40 mins of video taking 550 Mby seems OK to me for medium quality. Of course, it depends on the subject and games, with much camera movement, tend to be a little greedy. Try MPEG 1 for a smaller file size and which Media Player is often happier with.

------------------
Brian (the terrible)

[Michel Carleer]

Am I wrong if I say that MPEG 2 cannot be played by Windows Media Player unless you install a DVD player (or any other program) which registers an MPEG 2 DirectShow codec?
Michka


[This message has been edited by Michel Carleer (edited 06 September 2000).]

[Eric VanHeest]

The full version of the LSX utility installs just such a codec (or at least, it says it does). I don't know specifically about the LE version, but I assume it must do something similar, or it would be almost useless for the random user.