Newbie Help.

[Zyn]

Ok, I just got the G450etv. Lotsa problems, lotsa questions.

1) I rip something off of my VCR, and the audio comes out all crispy and crackling, it really sucks, because I'v played with the settings from the line-input, to master volume and still can't make it not crackle.

2) After I rip something, I send it to one of my friends, and they all say they can't view it. I send them the indeo codec and that doesn't work. You need a software dvd player for it to work, well thats BS! I want it to at least convert to the standard mpeg codecs that come with mediaplayer so that everyone can see them.

3) I rip something and then it comes out huge! like 50megs for like 30 seconds. I try to compress it with Flask Mpeg, crunch it into Divx, but then I loose audio. I do a direct stream copy because nothing else works. And then I use another program called Dubit, to add the sound later, but then its not synced. I can't seem to just compress the regular mpeg. Or convert codecs. Is there a recomended codec you guys use? Morgan seems to be quite popular, but then again I don't want to tell everyone to go download each codec if I can just convert them.

4) I installed the morgan codec, but its always in my system tray, how do I get rid of that?

5) What the hell is Matrox Tools? And Motionjpeg? I have a g450 etv with Windows2000 checking out www.murc.ws they say im ****ed, but Im not sure what Im missing out.

6) Can you guys recomend me a program easier to use than flask? That just crunches my mpegs down smaller... and maybe changes the codec to something more supported?

7) Doesn't adobe premier do all of these things? I don't know how to use it exactly, but it does do converting doesn't it? Is this the program I really need?

Please help, Uwe's webpage seems to be a great help but it doesn't answer everything for me....

Thanks, Kevin

[windigo]

flask is about the easiest program to use for convert the mpeg to divx
when you rip from vhs to mpeg the file size is huge
in flask converting audio to mpg3 sometimes loses the audio but personally I have never had that happen to me
i use divx fast motion codec then configure it at 100 crispness and halfway on the kbytes/sec
for audio i use 128kbps which is okay
plus on the main page of matroxusers.com there is an update to divx for g400
you can try that


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[Dr Mordrid]

Kevin,

1. Crackling audio? You running a SBLive or some other Creative PCI audio card? AudioPCI? Many PCI audio cards, especially when used with a VIA chipped mainboard, cause crackling because they hog the bus.

I got rid of this problem, at first, by using an ISA audio card. Later on better PCI audio cards came along and I settled on the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz because of its low system resource usage.

What mainboard/cpu/audio card are you using with your eTV?

2. For your friend to play a file you've created he has to have the corresponding codec installed on his system. Since he doesn't likely have an eTV in his box....

Your other alternative is to capture your files using VideoStudio instead of PC-VCR. VideoStudio can capture both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. MPEG-1 can be played by MediaPlayer without any extra hard/soft ware installed.

3. Again, what codec? (codec = COmpressor/DECompressor). 50 megs is about right for some compressors.

4. That's just Morgans control panel startup icon. It's not slowing you down at all. If you want to get rid of it in Win9x use the Multimedia control in the Control Panel to remove the Morgan codec from your system.

5. Matrox Tools = the PC-VCR program & drivers.

MotionJPEG = the compression used by the Marvel and Rainbow Runner-G and Morgan.

The e-TV uses MPEG-2, RGB and (from other capture programs) YUY2. PC-VCR cannot do YUY2. You would need an external capture program like AVI_IO to capture YUY2 files, which can be encoded during the capture into other formats like DivX.

YUY2 and its capabilities are for the advanced class

The eTV should work just fine with Windows2000 in all its capture modes as long as you have a fast enough system for full frame captures: 933mhz.

6. Flask can do a lot, depending on what codecs & Flask plugins you have installed. It can even use the Ligos MPEG plugin for Premiere if you change its file extension from *.cm to *.flask. If DivX is installed you can also encode to that using Flask.

Basically it can transcode anything to anything given the right resources. But then again so can Premiere, VideoStudio or MSPro.

7. Adobe Premiere can convert about anything to anything given the proper codecs or plugins being installed.

To convert from one MPEG to another (ex: MPEG-2 to MPEG-1) you would need either an MPEG plugin (Ligos, Cinemacraft etc.) or software (ex: AVISynth) to "transfer" Premieres timeline one frame at a time to an external MPEG encoder. This is called "Frameserving".

To encode to DivX you would need the DivX codec installed.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 June 2001).]

[Zyn]

Yeah, I own an SBlive PCI card.
Paired on this kt133 VIA motherboard, looks like im f*cked.

I can compress pretty good now, but when I compress with flash or premier I cant get the audio synced. On the non-compressed version it is synced, only when I try to compress it does it get all screwy.

Im trying to quicly learn these new programs so Im sure I'll have plenty more questions too.

[Dr Mordrid]

With that combination I'd be looking for a Santa Cruz or some other low resource use audio card. I now have 8 of them installed across my lab.

The only systems here without Santa Cruz's are the two Amiga/Video Toasters and the audio workstation, and it has an Echo Gina24.

Dr. Mordrid

[Zyn]

Ok, Another quick one.

I like my sblive.
I really do, I don't want to get rid of it just because of this video editing problem.

I want to have my cake and eat it too.

If I switch motherboards... possibly to an i815 setup will this problem continue to occur?

I have 2 comps, so if I just switch over my g450etv to that machine, also paired with an sblive, the difference is that its on an i815e + p3 setup instead of the tbird via combo im running now.

[Dr Mordrid]

The VIA/SBLive contentions will disappear, but that's only about 25% of the problem with them in editing systems. The rest is the SBLives massive overuse of system resources. It also keeps hitting the system timer interrupt constantly. Why is something Creative has never explained.

Add poor drivers to the list, a perennial SBLive issue, and they can cause real problems. This is even more of a problem when the SBLive is in editing systems that have other high latency devices (capture card, RAID etc.).

Yes, I've had SBLives (5 actually) and have used them in both VIA and Intel systems. They currently are doing parts bin duty because of the problems they caused.

BTW: the Santa Cruz's sound hell and gone better than the SBLives ever did....

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 26 June 2001).]

[Zyn]

I was under the impression they were top-notch sound cards. Guess I was wrong, or I just haven't gotten around to trying out the full potential.

I have an on-board sound card, the AC`97, I know it sucks, but It will probably get rid of the sound crackling problem right?

What about the On-board Creative PCI128 that comes on some motherboards, thats pretty damn good too.

I don't really feel like dropping out my expensive sblive, because it plays my music so damn well.

Are there any other soundcards that don't give this problem? Or something else you can recomend? Or another Sblive fix?

[Dr Mordrid]

The PCI-xxx boards are mostly, if not all, based on the Ensoniq AudioPCI chipsets. Creative bought out Ensoniq's audio card business a few years ago. While sounding good they too suffer from bus-hogging. This is fairly typical of the early PCI audio chipsets. Included in that list are the Maestro chipsets.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 27 June 2001).]

[Zyn]

Well, How about, an AWE-64 ISA sound card?

I know they are hard to find..
And you need a motherboard with an ISA slot.

Arent you asking kind of a lot?
There is no other way to fix this?

[Dr Mordrid]

The AWE64 works fine. That was the card I used after kicking the SBLives out of the lab.

I'm not asking a lot at all. The fact is that early PCI audio market was full of cards with poor hardware designs and flat out lousy drivers. Creative is still making them. All you need do is spend a couple of nights browsing alt.comp.periphs.soundcard.sblive reading post after post with the same issues to come to that conclusion.

That you still see these designs in the market says more about Creatives willingness to foster lousy product on the masses while marketing the hell out of them than anything else. The AudioPCI cards are theirs too so....

Now you're starting to see the few remaining audio card makers who haven't been bought or put out of business by Creative come out with some innovative and high quality products.

Bully for them. Maybe it'll get Creative to creating some good product.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 27 June 2001).]

[KRSESQ]

As you probably know, Doc, I've been trying to get a Fasttrak 66 to work on my VIA Apollo MVP3 mobo. I tried a Creative Awe 64 ISA and nothing I did could make it work. New drivers and several HW/SW installations did nothing. Windows sounds would play, stop abruptly, and then come back briefly a few seconds later. WAVs would play a second or two, there would be a long gap, then another segment, then a gap, etc. Tried it with nothing in the system except sound and video cards, no luck. Tried every ISA slot. "Device Busy" errors in Media Player abounded. Tried the Awe64 in an Intel chipset system and it works and sounds great.

Tried a simple Sound Blaster 16 ISA and audio levels were so low as to be unusable, no matter what I tried.

Verdict: problems between Creative soundcards and VIA chipsets appear more pervasive than just PCI bus hogging.

So I'm back to using the old Media Vision ISA sound card, without the Fasttrak. Looking for a P3B-F now, but no rush. I'm probably one of the few here who get good results using Matrox MJPEG capture in Win 98.

Kevin

[Dr Mordrid]

The problem is more pervasive than just hogging. The VIA chipsets contribute a LOT, plus many of the MVP3 chipsets have to have their write cache pipeline disabled to even work properly. This alone causes a 3-5% performance hit.

Now you know why I s**tcanned MVP3/VIA from this place long ago.

Dr. Mordrid

[Zyn]

Dr Mordrid said that via was only 25% at fualt. Im guessing if I switched over to an i815 chipset my problems for the most part will go away?

So maybe more like 85% ?

[Dr Mordrid]

Most part? No. 25% worth, maybe. The largest part of the problem is the SBLive ITSELF. Very much a resource hog.

Dr. Mordrid