win2k YUY2 support for RR-G

[chm]

This topic is specifically to discuss the alternatives for YUY2 support for RR-G series owners and not for MJPEG discussions which are being carried on elsewhere. I would like to see YUY2 support re-added to the final video tools for the RR-G series cards.

I specifically purchased my RR-G series card to allow me to use full dual-head (2 CRTs) and the quality capture capabilities. I have been waiting for a year now for the promised YUY2 official support only to discover that it will only be made available for the Marvel G400 cards and not the RR-G series. The fact that YUY2 will be available for the Marvel G400 cards does not solve my problem.

I plan to write to Matrox to request satisfaction on this issue. To me it looks like in the process of "cutting their losses" with the MJPEG support, Matrox has thrown out the baby (e.g. RR-G YUY2 capture) with the bath water. In the meantime I will investigate the various unsupported/beta VT versions and the win98 multiboot option to attempt to work-around this crippling limitation.

If other RR-G series customers have suggestions or comments, please continue this thread.

For those of you wishing to support this effort through official channels, the address of Matrox Graphics from their web site is:

Matrox Graphics Inc.
1055 St-Regis
Dorval (Quebec)
Canada H9P 2T4

Best regards,
Christopher Marshall

[chm]

In reply to moreau from thread "YUY2 with RR-G/G400 in Win2K Possible?":

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Read your post previously.
No *official* support. But, people had been doing YUY2 unofficially at one point. Can this be done with the RR-G?
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YUY2 capture can be done with a registry hack to early versions of the Video Tools under Win98 and WinNT (I think). If anyone has it working with Win2K, I would like to hear about it too.

[chm]

In reply to dancray from thread "YUY2 with RR-G/G400 in Win2K Possible?":

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Is RGB24 capture much worse or better than YUY2?
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Two problems that I know of with RGB capture:[list=1][*] It takes 50% more bandwidth over the same resolution YUY2 (aka YUV) capture. This impacts system performance and when PCI bus bandwidth is low or problematic (as with VIA chipset mainboards) can result is capture problems like dropped frames, bad audio...[*] It may result in less color fidelity. My understanding is that the RR-G converts the analog signal first into an internal YUV format before reconverting it to RGB (a lossy process). To make a VCD/S-VCD, one then has to MPEG compress the data which involves first a conversion back to YUV data (another lossy conversion) before the compression step.[/list=a]

[Ant]

I seem to remember reading somewhere, maybe on the Marvel for Linux project site, that the Marvel G200 and RRG use a different video encoder chip revision to the Marvel G400 so maybe this is where the problem lies. I'll see if I can dig something out.

[moreau]

Thank you all.

It is my hope that a RR-G YUY2 solution will help ease the pain of this fiasco.

[Meek]

I actually thought that RGB was done from YUY2 in software. Which would make it highly unpractical.

Also, for my RR-G, the RGB resolutions top up at 640*480, which is lower than standard PAL resolution, especially the horizontal resolution *has to* be 576 for full frame grabs... looks like all it does in PAL are half frames and interpolation...

Anywaym I just tried to capture with MSP6 in RGB, directly coding into MPEG-1, and I had no frame drops during a one minute test, so I guess it is not that bad. This was in 352*288, which is fairly native PAL. And I have a thuderbird-850 sitting on a KT7A-RAID...

And by the way, shouldn't YUV to RGB24 be lossless, at least in practical terms? (Meaning that nobody should be able to see the small rounding effects...)

M.

[chm]

I believe the video decoder hardware on the RR-G card has the ability to output in YUV or RGB formats of various sizes (RGB16, RGB24, YUY2,...). For my purposes (converting captured video to MPEG S-VCDs), using raw YUY2 format offers a perfect match to the MPEG compression (uses YUV as the video input format---RGB would need to be converted) and a 33% savings in disk bandwidth.

NOTE: while the hardware may be capable of the required digital outputs/conversions, I do not know if the Matrox drivers actually do the output via hardware or software as you suggest.

--Chris

[This message has been edited by chm (edited 04 June 2001).]

[mikiem]

Hi

RE: YUV output in hard or software, Hope this might provide a clue or idea for someone better versed & smarter then I...

The Matrox VT's seem to determine the 601 colorspace conversion (ie: the darkness problems with v.1.54), so I would imagine that they handle the complete conversion to RGB for monitor display.

Also, capturing YUV with no addt'l compression, haven't found any difference using the Microsoft vs Matrox codecs, which might indicate hardware YUV output, least with my g400tv. A cautionary note, my setup &/or card's broken so this should be taken with a grain of salt most likely.

Visiting Zoran's site, they list hardware YUV support for the 36067 for example -- do you happen to know what the # is for the one on the RR?

[This message has been edited by mikiem (edited 04 June 2001).]

[This message has been edited by mikiem (edited 04 June 2001).]