Does eg. Marvel G400 support 60Hz PAL signals?

[Soren_Ladegaard]

Hi Everyone


I live in Scandinavia where we use the PAL system.

I want to capture video from an American NTSC tape.

My VCR supports NTSC playback on a PAL TV.

It works fine when connected to my TV.

But my Pinnacle Studio PCTV USB this signal as
the VCR converts the NTSC signal to a 60H, whereas
PAL is normally 50Hz.

Does the Matrox products (eg. Marvel G400) support
60Hz PAL signals as opposed to a normal 50Hz PAL signal?


Any help is much appreciated.

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Best regards,

Søren Ladegaard - Denmark
Webmaster at <A HREF="http://www.commodorebillboard.com
Active" TARGET=_blank>www.commodorebillboard.com
Active</A> member of the Commodore community

[Nick Piercey]

Hi Soren,

No problem at all.

I've captured NTSC from both my VCR and DVD.

Set the Marvel (or RRS, in my case) to NTSC and capture away.


Regards,

Nick.

(UK based, by the way)

[loziopino]

Hi Nick,
you captured from VCR using matrox video composite or Svideo input?
I tried with a marvel g200 (ntsc and video composite input) but it didn't recognize the video format (pal 60)

[Flying dutchman]

NTSC and PAL60 aren't the same.

In MJPG mode you won't be able to capture PAL60. Believe me, I've tried! I had an NTSC tape that plays just fine on my JVC PAL recorder. It is a tape compiled from old super-8 family shots (no audio) from the 1960's. Pretty valuable material, considering most of the actors (including my grandparents) are now deceased.

I was able to capture this tape on a Marvel G200 in YUY2 mode using AVI_IO as capturing program, at 30 full frames/second. I then used VirtualDub to center the image in a 704x576 frame, changed the frame rate to "25" and saved it as Matrox MJPG.

The resulting AVI file could be played back painlessly, and even re-recorded on a VCR in PAL format. The aspect ratio is a bit "flatter" than normal, and motion is a bit slower, but for the rest it looks OK!

If you would do this trick on a tape that contains audio, you'd have to extract the sound before doing any framerate manipulations. Then slow down the audio to match the video duration...

[Nick Piercey]

Hi everyone,

Sorry I was a bit vague.

Just to confirm (and I’ve just done a quick 30 second test).

You can capture PAL 60 with a RRS and I’m pretty sure you can with a Marvel G400 (I had one for a few weeks before the green lines/flashes got the better of me).

I’ve done two test recordings this morning from an NTSC tape played back (PAL 60) on a JVC 9500 SVHS machine. Full frame, MJPEG compression, and frame rate 29.97, input set to NTSC, captured via S–video inputs. One with AVI_IO, and one with the PC-VCR from Matrox (although the PC-VCR frame rate appears to be 30fps). I’ve always been a bit confused with NTSC frame rates.

I’ve even created a VCD (using NTSC defaults in bbmpeg, and burned with Nero), which plays back fine on my Pioneer 626 DVD.

Clearly though I can’t record the captured files back to a PAL VCR.


Hope this clarifies things.

Kind regards,


Nick.

[petermg]

HEY DUTCHMAN!!.. I need to ask you if you can or if it is possible to hack the NT (specifically WINDOWS 2000) Video Tools for the Marvel to capture to YUY2!!!!.. .. it would really make things alot easier for me if that was possible.. please let me know.!!.. thanks!!...

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[Dr Mordrid]

No kidding....I'd like to see that myself

Dr. Mordrid