Explanation of Rainbow runner types

[Bosanek]

Hello,
as this is my first post here, just to first say that this is really a great site, the one I've been looking for a long time in search of some Matrox community. Finally found it!

As I am fond of Matrox hardware (because I appreciate quality), and I have a great custom-fitted oldtimer PC (dual Pentium Pro with superb hardware...), I want to equip it with all-round Matrox hardware to make it the most versatile. I have already acquired Mystique 2MB and Millennium II 4MB PCI. I have put Mil 2 into the PC.

I have just recently discovered that Matrox produced the Rainbow Runner video capturing/editing products, which are not standalone but rather special additions to their excellent MGA display cards. But information about these Rainbow Runner cards is so scarce! There is also no Wikipedia article about them.

I would very much appreciate if somebody could kindly write what types of these cards exist and what do they do. I have searched this forum thoroughly and this is what I have discovered (but I'm very unsure of this):

There were supposedly three variants of RR-s:

- Rainbow Runner Studio - has S-VHS & RCA video inputs (and outputs?), with a hardware MJPEG compressor & decompressor. Notice that I wrote MJPEG, not MPEG. This is not a PCI or ISA card at all, but an add-on board which plugs directly onto an Matrox MGA board like a sandwitch. It does not have a TV tuner?
I've also read somewhere that there was a specific edition of this card for each Matrox MGA card. For example, there is RRS for Mystique, another RRS for Millennium, yet another for Millennium II etc., and they CANNOT be used on any other MGA card except for the one for which they were made?

- Rainbow Runner TV - has coaxial input and external audio pass-troough to the sound card. This is in fact a TV tuner? It is true ISA card. But this card is not standalone, even "worse", it can not work with an MGA card only, but requires an MGA+RRS as prerequisite. So RRTV turns up to be an add-on to the RRS?

- Rainbow Runner G series - for newer Matrox cards like G200 and G400. I haven't researched much about this.


Please correct ANY mistakes or ommissions which I have made. All details are important to me.

[Brian Ellis]

Are you aware that these may be used reliably only with Windows 98SE, at the latest. As most modern video software doesn't work with 98SE, are you likely to have a conflict?

[Bosanek]

Yes, I have also read that Rainbow Runners don't work in Windows 2000 and XP. But I am using Windows NT 4.0 Workstation (to exploit 2xSMP) as the primary OS for most purposes, and Windows 95 OSR2 as the secondary OS for occasional gaming etc.
Do Rainbow Runners work on Windows NT 4.0?

Well, to get an insight into my case, this is what I intended:
To make this PC as most versatile old PC as possible. That means to add various hardware from various application branches. In that fashion, I have already installed Creative AWE 32 with 8MB RAM (for MIDI soundfonts), an ISA FM tuner card, Matrox Millennium II 4MB for great 2D speed and picture quality (and an excellent 17" trinitron CRT to accompany it), 3Dfx Voodoo 2 12MB for gaming, HP DeskJet 970cxi professional ink-jet LPT printer, SCSI storage system featuring two IBM hard drives, TEAC CD-ROM, Yamaha 8x CD-RW, Iomega Zip, Iomega Jazz, Microtek A4 scanner, HP DDS-3 tape drive,.........
The "base" is Micron Vetix LXi server (dual Pentium Pro 200MHz 256k cache with 4x32MB RAM, featuring 6 (or 7 ) PCI and 3 ISA slots).


This whole system is missing advanced multimedia capability. I want to add a SCSI DVD-ROM drive and a hardware MPEG-2 decoder card for playing DVD-videos. I also want to add some video-editing card with hardware compression/decompression to be able to edit footage. And last but not least, a TV tuner with the ability to record TV (but trough hardware capturing & compression).

Now, it SEEMS that these Rainbow Runner things should perfectly "cover" the role of video-editor and tv tuner, especially because I already use Millennium II. Now I just don't have clear information about what these RR cards really are and how do they function.

I hope that somebody can give me good advice based on what I have written and what my goals are.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm racking my brains because we are talking here of 10+ year old technology and I've forgotten more than I'll ever know about it! IIRC, RR will not run on either W95 or NT4 (subject to error). The latest drivers were for W98SE only.

All they do is capture a video signal and convert it to a MJPEG format. You need extra software and codecs to be able to do anything with it. I don't think any of the modern software will run with either OS you cite. Things have advanced enormously in the video world over the last 10 years and you are severely limiting your possibilities by trying to use what is prehistoric hardware and software.

About 10 years ago, I tried a G200 Marvel (essentially a G200 graphics card and a RR-G rolled into a single card) on a Pentium Pro 200 computer and failed miserably. It was not until I obtained a PIII 750 MHz and 512 Mb RAM that I was able to use it and start doing some useful video editing, using Ulead MediaStudio Pro (I think 2.0 or 5.2). I'm not sure, but I think the PIII ran W98, but not SE, at first. This is why I feel you are doomed to disappointment.

My advice is to forget about legacy hardware and OS for video work. Sorry!

[Debbie]

Bosanek, The hardware you're mentioning has been "extinct" for quite some time and has been originated for Win98 and Win98SE.
You could get the display part of the card to work on WinXP and perhaps the capture
part to work with limitations but don't expect much.
I have both the RRS and the Marvel which have been exelent in their time , but I'm
afraid not any more. Well it all depends what you want to do, after all.

[Elie]

I have a few questions...

1-Are you going to capture and edit video with the RR? And what spftware do you have to edit.

2-What type of camcorder do you have?

3-Do you need a TV in?

4-What type of computer do you have today? and the OS.

The reasons why I ask is because there are better alternatives to the obsolete RRS that will provide you better quality captures etc.

Regards,
Elie

[DGhost]

I always giggle at threads like this... I kinda figured that any moderately new computer can do a moderately better job just with software encoding/decoding, and that newer hardware is a hell of a lot easier to deal with...

of course, maybe i'm wrong on that...

[Bosanek]

It seems that all of you have got the wrong impression. I do not use this old 200MHz PC for any productive ("real") work. This PC is just my hobbying object like someone has a dog or pigeons. I spend my spare time fiddling around with it, for the sake of the old days. I don't do any job on it.

That means that all video-related work on it will just be something "off-road" (for fun) and not real work (I have a miniDV camera and my primary Athlon PC with a Firewire card for doing "real" video work).

I appreciate all of your reponses, but they were not productive because you thought that I intend to do some serious mission-critical work with this old rig

I usually run it in NT 4.0 and only ocassionally in 95 OSR2. If RRS really can not work in NT 4.0 (is this verified?) that would reaally be a pity! In that case I must search for some another card which is TV tuner + hardware MJPEG (or even DV!) compressor/decompressor.
I already have one like that, a FAST's Movie Machine Pro + its MJPEG daughter card by Zoran, but this thing very old, from Win3x era. I barely managed to find a Win95 driver for it. I have later discovered (trough the hard way) that the card can only work in a pure ISA system, not one with a PCI bus (PnP BIOSes and stuff). This card is soo old that in its manual it says "If you have a very fast PC like 486 SX 25MHz with 8MB RAM, you can enable ...".

[DGhost]

Ahh... every time I get nostalgic and feel like dragging out some ass old hardware to play/tinker with, I usually just remember all the times I spent both at work and home ****ing around with it just to get it to work right...

it usually stops me from trying to dig it out

[Elie]

Don't bother running it in NT 4.0!

You should get yourself a copy of Premiere Pro 2.0 or 3.0 and a firewire card and edit your video that way.

End of story.

[NT4]

bosanek,

still into NT4, old hardware and how to tweak n sqeeze it to the max?

I am using NT4 too but I do this not only for fun but still use it as my bread and butter system (K6-3-550, gigabyte 5ax)

I am using a sigma hollywood plus card (in fact it is a creative ct7260, chip ct7235vbq) for watching dvds and a week ago replaced my nvidia gf-460-mx video card with a good old matrox marvel g400tv for watching tv and capturing (tv, my old vhs and hi8 cassettes). tv works flawlessly, capturing from my sony hanycam hi8 camera works too, unfortunately capturing crashes if I use mjpeg-option - thats the reason why I came here to find a solution.

[Bosanek]

Well I use my mostly for hobbying.

I have a RealMagic Hollywood Plus MPEG2 hardware decoder PCI card. I tried it on NT4 and it worked just fine. I watched MPEG2 and DVD material with about 5% CPU usage. But I do not keep it in the PC because it uses a pass-trough VGA chaining (very similar to 3Dfx Voodoo cards). That severely degrades the picture quality. I do not know if the cable or the card's electronics themselves is the cause. The cable uses a non-standard connector to the Holly card so it is not replaceable.


As for your MJPEG problem - sorry, I can not help you because I have not yed owned or used any Matrox's "multimedia" hardware.

[Brian Ellis]

If you really want to use this antique, I suggest you dual-boot your computer with Win98SE. You can then use the in-built MJPEG, which is excellent. AFAIK, it will not work with anything later than 98SE and certainly with nothing smacking of NT (at least from NT3 though to Vista). Of course, you will need a FAT32 partition.

[Dr Mordrid]

I agree with Brian; dualboot into 98x.

Also understand that because of Windows 9x, codec and driver limitations you'll be limited to 2 gigs per captured file unless you use a third party capture tool capable of serial captures; capturing a series of name indexed videos - file0000.avi, file0001.avi etc. Matrox's later drivers tried to implement this but it didn't work very well. I used to use AVI_IO;

http://www.avi-io.com/

Costs a few bux but it works very nicely. OTOH if you have one of Uleads editors, VideoStudio or MediaStudio, they have include serial capture capability for many years.

[landrover]

Hi Bosanek,

I think you know just as well as anybody else that you intend to use equipment that is old, obsolete, antique, out-dated etc. etc. So I wanted to let you know that I admire your effort and enthusiasm, and I hope you get it running like a treat. If it does, you got yourself a real museum-piece.
I'm sorry to add that I don't have any RRS experience myself. I used to use a Marvel G400 TV, and I captured TV and VHS using the above mentioned AVI_IO under W98 FE and SE. That specific pc, by the way, is still running 24/7 as my Windows Home Server, albeit somewhat upgraded.
But back to vidcap stuff. A lot has changed since those days, and not always for the better. A/V sync is still an issue with consumer solutions, as are decent cable frequency tuning capabilities, as are glitches and / or artefacts in the picture. So, just for old times sake, get this thing going! I salute you.