G400, XP and Adis

[droopy]

Dear All,

Been a long long long long long time since visiting here. All was working great with my old school G400 Marvel and G450 eTV until a few days ago.

Not to worry I thought, just look up good old Adis his forum or internet site, download the latest XP drivers and hey presto. Old school working again.

But Oooooooooh No. No Adis internet site or forum anymore. Was to be expected since he must've moved on also to newer stuff.

Anyhow. Is there anyone whom could give me a good kick in the right direction. The direction I just might find working XP drivers or Adis XP drivers????

Thanks a heap for any hints or tips.

Best regards,

Leon

[Adis]

Hi droopy,

Here:

http://rapidshare.de/files/19911794/MatroxAdis2K6.zip.html

[droopy]

Hello Adis, the master himself

Thanks a million. I really appreciate it but at the same time am a bit saddened that your internet site's not there anymore.

Probably just shows how old these Marvel products are and how stubbern and reluctant I am to change while this is still working wonders for me with analog video.

Thanks again,

Leon

[JFrancisco]

Droopy, I don't understand why you had problems with your G-400 on XP. I just upgraded my pc from W2K to XP Home SP2 and took the drivers from the Matrox site and everything has been working just fine... What kind of problem(s) you were having? Outside of that, maybe you can help me with my problem: Video card vs finished DVD video quality outside my PC? Every time I seek help from Ulead Tech Support, they ask me to list my video card... Why? What difference does the video card make to the final "burned" DVD video quality? I've had a MATROX G-400 like for ever in my PC. I'm very happy with what I see on my PC monitor; my problem is, when I try to view the same DVD on my TV, the video quality like goes away big time (Pixelation, I believe it's called)... Why??? My video capture, edit, and burn is Ulead Media Studio Pro/Movie Factory4 and I import my VHS video into my PC with a Canopus ADVC-100 through a Fire-Wire card.

[Nowhere]

He doesn't have Millenium G400, but Marvell G400.

[droopy]

@JFrancisco

Nowhere's right, I have the Marvel G400TV. AGP graphics + TV tuner in one.

As for your DVD quality. I don't know any of the products you use but if you mean with pixelation what I think it is you mean you'll most likely have to look for the culprit in the MPEG2 encoding part of your process.

I myself use Premiere + TMPGEnc for complex stuff and Vdub + Avisynth + TMPGEnc for simple stuff.

There's however so many things which can cause pixelation that I wouldn't know where to start first.

Common causes though:
-To low a video bitrate
-Bad encoder / encoder settings used
-Low quality video source
-Lots of noise in the videosource
-To much sharpening before encoding

Also remember, looking at video material on your PC is totally different then looking at it on a TV. I've had videos looking crappy on my PC (WinDVD) which did great on my TV. Latter is the one you make DVD's for so that's where you should put your focus.

Good luck

Leon

[JFrancisco]

OK Droopy, thanks for the info. I believe I use the max bit rate allowed by my program (Ulead's MSP-7), and I always encode all my video clips the same way: NTSC drop frame (29.97fps) Microsoft AVI files. 24bitw, 720x480 - lower field first, DVD encoded Video Type-1, DVD audio NTSC 48000khz, 16 bit stereo. I never convert to MPEG; I use the same AVI files when I burn my project to DVD and I set my MovieFactory4 selections to "not convert MPEG compliant video", with Variable Bandwidth targeted to 6000. My CANOPUS ADVC100 takes the Analog VHS signal directly from my VCR and converts it to Digital Video directly (frame-based video, lower frame out first). Through my IEEE1394 connection, my MSP-7 Video Capture software then puts the Digital video stream into an .AVI file format with the attributes I listed above. Two of the things you said, I'm not knowledgeable about: Bad encoder/encoder settings & Too much sharpening before encoding? I take the encoding settings the program tells me to use for NTSC video (above); what / where else would be available? Where/what/how does this "sharpenning" enter the process?

[JFrancisco]

And another thing! I started fooling around with trying to convert Analog to Digital video about 9 years ago. I spent a lot of time & money with a variety of Video Cards and Video processing software untill I found the Matrox Millenium cards - The first two didn't quite work because my PC was not up to par (Pentium 3 @ 300hz) - but ever since I got the G-400 (AND the CANOPUS ADVC-100, AND the MSP7 software) - finally and at last, things began to happen! Which brings me to the question: what role does my PC's video card play in the final quality of the burned DVD, outside the PC? What parameters should I be looking into/playing with, if my target viewing platform is a TV, and NOT my PC?

[Dr Mordrid]

Your video card plays no role in the rendered/burned quality save fore ONE case: if your video card is an ATI X1000 series. These have a special MPEG/H.264/DivX encoder (Avivo Media Encoder) that uses the ATI cards pixel shaders to speed rendering.

Since you're in the States use the standard DVD presets for NTSC, varying the bitrate to allow the project to fit on a DVD. You can do his calculation in a BitRate Calculator;

http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

I most often use VBR encoding, but complex content (lots of motion, ocean waves etc.) seem to do better with CBR.

[droopy]

@JFrancisco

Again I have to write that I do not know any of the products you work with and thus I can only give you general information on possible issues!!!!!!! I also assume that with pixelation you mean that you see squared blocks in your final DVD AFTER encoding, most common in areas with a lot of movement or details.

You must know that DVD's use MPEG2, right??!! As such a few things in your comments have me wondering.

You write you're using DVD encoded Video Type-1. This is only relevant for e.g. DV camcorders or products using the IEEE-1394 / firewire interface. It has no relevance in the MPEG2 video file created for making DVD's. UNLESS this step is already creating the squared blocks I think you call pixelation????!!!!

You write that you never convert to MPEG??!!. Then how do you create a DVD because for this you MUST convert to MPEG2, to be precise in most cases this would be a M2V video and MP2 audio file??

As for the bad encoder/encoder settings and to much sharpening before encoding. I have to fail you there because as written before, I do not know the products you use and as such have no idea if those even have the possibility to fiddle with them. For that you really need someone also using these products. What I do know is that in most cases the default NTSC DVD settings in your MPEG encoder should be sufficient for acceptable quality.

Just for the fun of it. Have you ever tried just capturing a test piece of video and then use a software encoder like e.g. TMPGEnc to convert to NTSC DVD after which you used resulting files to author a DVD??

I find your procedure very complex and from what I've learned in a very early stage a long long time ago. The more complex, the more chance on problems, in addition crap in is crap out. Meaning if the source video is already so so, the end result will never become great.

Best regards,

Leon

[JFrancisco]

Hi Leon, thank you for trying to help me. I find odd you think my procedure complex; I don't think I know enough about this work to be complex yet. Let's forget for a minute about the software/hardware I use, and talk about the steps I follow: 1_ I capture video. 2_ The captured video ends up becoming an .avi file, NTSC, type-1 uncompressed video , 29.97fps, 720x480, 24 bits. 3_ I edit the .avi file. 4_ I open my DVD burning program. 5_ I load the edited .avi file(s) into the screen where the program call for them. 6_ I set the parameters for burning the DVD (select "Not convert MPEG-compliant files, set the Bit-Rate to Variable/6000). 7_ I burn the DVD. I do not, as separate steps, "encode" or "decode" anything; I just follow the steps in the software instructions, and any "conversion" that might take place, I assume is done automatically by the software. Does a DVD Burn software typically include the steps to convert my .avi files into MPEG files within its internal processing, prior to burning them? Is there a school, or training I might attend, that would teach me the "inner details" of what I'm doing?

[Brian Ellis]

You're kidding yourself! Your avi is encoded to MPEG-2 in your authoring application. As you are not inputting a DVD-compliant file, it must encode it. I don't think you mention which software you are using, but if you are using the default settings of a Ulead app, 6000 kbit/s VBR. means the maximum is 6000 kbit/s. You would probably be better off using 6000 kbit/s CBR and make sure your field order is set to lower field first in both the editing and authoring phases. That should give you excellent quality.

You should also consider setting the audio in your authoring app to Dolby Digital Stereo (2.0) at 192 kbit/s. This will leave you a LOT more space for video with no audible loss of sound quality.

[JFrancisco]

Like I said, I don't t know what all (digital tricks) goes on behind the software. I import my VHS video into my PC with a Canopus ADVC-100 through a Fire-Wire card. My video capture and edit is with Ulead Media Studio Pro. I burn my DVDs with Movie Factory4 and I import my VHS video into my PC with a Canopus ADVC-100 through a Fire-Wire card. I believe the CANOPUS outputs the Lower frame first, and I think MF4 does use that Dolby Stereo set-up you mentioned, but I'll check tonight to make sure.