DV equivalent of the old G400?

[Sportive]

Hello,

I am hoping someone may be able to give me some advice about newer Matrox products that are available.

I have owned many Matrox cards in the past including the original Rainbow runner, G200 & G400-TV. The G400 was all-in-all a pretty perfect set up but having purchased a DV camcorder I really needed a system that dealt with DV...plus I wanted to archive all my old videos onto DV tape, something I could not do with my G400.

I put together a new P4 2.8ghz system and purchased Pinnacle Studio 8 which does the job to a certain extent but it lacks many of the features of MSPro that I used with my Matrox cards and worst of all has no way of allowing the user to view editing output on the TV.

So, to the point! Is there a DV equivalent of the old G400 card which is suppported by software such as MSPro and can output to TV in the same way the previous Matrox cards could?

I have looked on the Matrox website but there does not seem to be anything quite the same. I loved my G400

I would appreciate any advice as to be honest, Studio is driving me mad!

Many thanks

Andrew

PC: HP Pavillion 782.uk (Win2K+SP3), P4 2.8Ghz, 512MB DDR, ATI 7500 Radeon, 40Gb OS+80Gb Video, HP 200i DVD+R/RW Software: Studio 8 Deluxe V8.3.17, Cam: JVC DV2000, JVC DVP5

[Dr Mordrid]

For editing with MSPro and having both analog and DV I/O many are very happy with the Canopus ADVC-100;

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/advc-100/pm_advc-100.asp

About $300 and it's an external box, so no system loading other than that through the IEEE-1394 interface.

Dr. Mordrid

[Adis]

Dr Mordrid

Did you tried this beauty converter with G400-TV?
Or did anybody on this forum tried it?

I want to know can I
conect RCA output from G400-TV to RCA input of ADVC-100
and use DV output from ADVC-100 to connect it to DV camera.

Will it work? Matrox MJPEG video is 704x576 (not 720x576). DV format is 720x576.
Is it a problem to transfer this files to DV tape?

And do I need firewire card in system if have ADVC-100?

Thanx

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, you need an IEEE-1394 card, which costs all of about $20-30 these days.

As far as the connections on the AVDC-100 goes, here are its I/O specs;

DV: 6pin & 4pin

Analog Video I/O: NTSC (525/60), PAL (625/50) S-video, composite

Audio I/O: stereo

and a flow diagram is here;

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/advc-100/pt_advc-100.asp#technical_specification

Most editors I know are outputting to MPEG-2 for use in SVCD/DVD or using videotape for distribution and not exporting back to DV tape.

A re-edit can better be accomplished at a later date by just saving the project file, batch capture list, images and titler project files (CGInfinity or Cool3D) to a CD and putting it with the original DV tape.

Also: the DVD standard not only supports 720x576 but 704x576, 352x576 and 352x288 in PAL; the latter two of which encode slightly faster from the 704 resolution.

Dr. Mordrid

[Adis]

Thanx for reply

So can I output analog MMJPEG video via Marvel box and AVDC-100 to DV tape directly?

Or I need to recompress it to DV format?

[Dr Mordrid]

It uses the DV codec, not MJPeg. The world has moved on save for a few applications. Since you have a DV cam....

Dr. Mordrid

[Adis]

Dr. Mordrid

Sorry for bother you, I think I'm not understand you.
My english is bad, so I'll try to explain you what I need with this picture:

Is this possible?

AVDC-100 is AD Converter, am I right?

[Dr Mordrid]

Daisy-chaining the Marvel with the AVDC like that is needless complexity and will produce losses in quality because of the double format conversion.

Try either of these, or both, for max flexibility instead;



Just using the IEEE-1394 for capture/export allows you to use the analog output of the camera to drive a VHS deck with the Marvel driving a preview monitor.

If you have an SVHS deck then the S-Video output of the camera can be used for taping to get best quality and the analog output can be used for the TV monitor.

This all presumes your camera has both analog input and output.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

If your camera does not have analogue I/O but has DV I/O, another possibility would be to convert/render your analogue footage AVI to DV format in the computer and then output it directly, via IEEE-1394, to the camera. Depending on the camera A/D converter, this might give better quality, but will take more time, especially as the format from Marvel is 704 x n, against 720 x n for DV. I could imagine that conversion in the camera may give a black border in the overscan area, but this would not be visible on a TV but would be on a computer.

[Adis]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
If your camera does not have analogue I/O but has DV I/O, another possibility would be to convert/render your analogue footage AVI to DV format in the computer and then output it directly, via IEEE-1394, to the camera. Depending on the camera A/D converter, this might give better quality, but will take more time, especially as the format from Marvel is 704 x n, against 720 x n for DV. I could imagine that conversion in the camera may give a black border in the overscan area, but this would not be visible on a TV but would be on a computer.

That's why I'm asking all the time.

I know for option >recompress and than export to tape<.
I asked is it possible to export analog video from UMSP timeline to DV tape without rendering.
I asked did AVDC-100 can do this?

[Dr Mordrid]

This size conversion is why it's better to just go with DV all the way through. It minimizes what we in the US call "monkey motion"; meaning don't do format conversions if you don't have to.

Dr. Mordrid