the Mega Matrox Machine

[Riddek]

Eric,
OK, it's all coming together now. I'll put my OS HD on one U66 channel and the capture HD on the other. Everything else goes on the U33 channels. Cool.

You had mentioned "YUY with HuffYUV" earlier... what is that? I've heard it been mentioned in other threads as well but never understood what it means.

[Eric VanHeest]

HuffYUV is a lossless video codec, optimized for processing YUY data directly from a card that produces it. If you've got the processing horsepower to support it, it's an incredibly effective way to reduce the size of your captured uncompressed video files by a little bit more than 2x (sometimes as much as 3x depending on the source quality). Since it's lossless, there is absolutely no quality disadvantage to using it, just processing power. It requires about a 500 MHz processor minimum to be effective (at 640x480). If capturing at less than 640x480 (or so), the requirements are reduced somewhat.

HuffYUV doesn't help with MJPEG captures; you would either use one or the other (I'd vote for HuffYUV, if you can do it).

[Riddek]

Hang on a second while I wipe the drool off my keyboard.... Wow, this HuffYUV sounds great! Where can I get it? I assume it works with the G400 Marvel, right?

[Eric VanHeest]

I'm not sure if HuffYUV works with the Marvel G400; I can't get the Marvel to do anything except MJPEG capture (under NT4; I don't have any other choice of OS since there are two Fasttrak cards in the machine). RGB capture doesn't work properly, and as far as I know there is no way to enable YUY capture from the G400 under NT4. I use HuffYUV with the cheap WinTV cards (and get better results than I do with the $300 Marvel, I might add).

[Riddek]

Damn! The reason I bought the Marvel was to get the best(mjpeg) "budget" capture quality. If I would have known about HuffYUV, I would have gone that route. I think I'll start a new post to see if anyone has somehow managed to get it working...