recording with a Rainbow Runner Studio

[logic7]

I've finally gotten around to using this RR Studio of mine. I have it living inside of a Dell Opti 200 w/P3-866, 128MB Ram, 10 GB drive (I'll find a bigger one later), and Win98SE installed. I have a question or two about recording with it:


I'm recording at 352x240 for VCD format with audio set to TV-quality (whatever that means). At this setting, I see that I have 1hr39min of record time in the PC VCR properties page. I recorded a 25 minute clip of video and found that it takes up 1.6GB of space on my drive. Knowing that Windows has a 2GB filesize limit, how could I possibly have 1hr and 39 minutes of space left, if approx 30 minutes or so will hit the 2GB limit? Will this app intelligently start a new file once I've hit the 2GB limit?

Also, is there a chance that this will work under Win2000 if I use the WinNT4 driver?

[Dr Mordrid]

Use a capture program that can create sequential files, each 2G in size, with enumerated filenames; file000.avi, file001.avi etc. AVI_IO is a commercial/trialware one that works great with Matrox products;

http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/

but the Stoik Capturer is free for personal use;

http://www.stoik.com/products/morphman/Stoik_capturer.htm

In an NTFS capable OS such things aren't necessary, but getting drivers for the RRS is iffy. Matrox only has drivers for Win9x. There was a site that was coding NT/2k drivers for old Matrox products, but I no longer have the link.

[Brian Ellis]

The drivers for W2k/XP have proved to be more than iffy. They were written, I think, by a Russian and a few have used them successfully but many have not been able to. IMHO, you would be better with W98SE if you wish to continue along these lines. I think the time available is a measure of the disk space free and does not take into account the FAT32 limit. In a former life I used Marvel (± functionally identical to RRS) with MSP5 for capture/editing and used the sequential capture as Dr M describes.

Another free capture utility, capable of lossless sequencing of files, is VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org/index. This is very versatile.

[Dr Mordrid]

VirtualDub is far, far more than a capture tool, it can do all manner of video stream manipulations. Priceless, both literally and figuratively.

[dZeus]

The drivers for W2k/XP have proved to be more than iffy. They were written, I think, by a Russian and a few have used them successfully but many have not been able to. IMHO, you would be better with W98SE if you wish to continue along these lines. I think the time available is a measure of the disk space free and does not take into account the FAT32 limit. In a former life I used Marvel (± functionally identical to RRS) with MSP5 for capture/editing and used the sequential capture as Dr M describes.

Another free capture utility, capable of lossless sequencing of files, is VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org/index. This is very versatile.

I think you're confusing the RRG with the RRS... right? I doubt there were ever any drivers for 2k/XP for the RRS.

[Debbie]

Yes there has been patched drivers for RRS, just as Brian said by a russian or check guy.
I have used those drivers on WinXP but never had the desired result so I just dumped
them.

Your best bet is to stick to Win98SE and as Doc said, use AVI_IO. If you use the demo
version, it will allow you to have 3 consecutive sequences perfectly matching end to end.
You will have to encode each clip in mpeg-1 and join the lot later.
This can be done in TMPGEnc, which in my opinion is still the best tool for the job.
Join all the clips in this same application without the need to rerender.

Debbie

[Elie]

MAN!! you still using that thing?

I've retired mine a few years ago prior to the G400 Marvel.

Get yourself something like an RT.X10 which are pretty cheap now and currently works with Premiere 2.0 and XP, and realtime.

Cheers,
Elie

[paulw]

I still have one of these in my main PC. Hasn't captured anything for years since I went DV but the grafics card still works well. (no games and the like)
Wouldn't work on my Asus PC with Win98se. Blue screened when loaded the capture file into MSPRO 6..

If you do use it watch out for the "Evil Frame"

[Dr Mordrid]

IMO the RRS captures analog better than its sucessors, mainly because of much higher quality PROCAMP (processing amplifier) chips & lower driver overhead. Matrox cheaped out with the G-cards PROCAMP's. IIRC it also doesn't have Macrovision

[cods]

Long time no post. Hey all.

IIRC it also doesn't have Macrovision

Correct.
I vividly remember buying a G series and being unhappy about the macrovision changes from the 'Studio', along with the endless driver issues for 2K.

[cuddles]

RRS/W98SE/Huffy/TEMPEnc god like icons