Marvel G550?

[rchapoteau]

Has Matrox made any mention of whether or not they will do a Marvel based on the G550? I still haven't picked up a 450 since I'm currently happy with my Radeon AIW, and Marvel G400.

[Zyn]

How do you like the ATI AIW?

Im currently testing it with comparison to the G450etv under Windows2000 for a review.

Your thoughts are most appreciated.
Email Me

[This_Idiot]

They haven't announced a G550Marvel yet, although I'd be extremely surprised if they didn't follow the same route as the G450 and produce a soft-codec capture card.

Chris
(T_I)

[Michel Carleer]

Problem is: will they end up the Marvel G200/G400 route?
Michka

[This_Idiot]

Well they can't blame a third party hard codec manufacturer this time

[Dr Mordrid]

The main risk is that MicroCrap will change video standards yet again.

Let's not forget that the G200 & G400 cards were designed around Video for Windows and that the changeover to DirectShow is what lead to most of the Win2K difficulties.

Dr. Mordrid



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

[moreau]

sigh

[This_Idiot]

Doc, you're flogging a dead horse.

To be fair to Matrox, you may be right. To be fair to the rest of us, they still haven't delivered hardware MJPEG drivers that work PROPERLY for W98 which has led to many people (yourself included) to use an unacknowledged hack to enable alternative software encoding facilities IF you have a fast enough machine to do so.

So currently, looking at the opinion polls amongst Matrox vidcap practitioners, who is king of the castle - is it Matrox, with their dedicated team of hardware MJPEG experts, or is it Flying Dutchman ?

I'm not even gonna cast a vote or give a hint which would be my favourite (if I was a gambling man).

Votes on a postcard please, and I don't care what anyone says, I'm not counting anything that has chad involved. Two boxes, tick one of them - is that clear enough ?

[Dr Mordrid]

I don't use MJPeg not because it doesn't work but because HuffYUV is lossless and PICVideo can do higher bitrates.

It has nothing to do with the hardware MJPeg not working. It works fine for me as I can capture well over 100,000 frames with NO drops (AVI_IO).

It's just that HuffYUV & high bitrate MJPeg encode into better MPEG-2's, which is the direction I've been going for final output for some time.

Dr. Mordrid

[moreau]

thought I'd explain my sigh.

The real problem with holding conversations in text is that it eliminates any 'nonverbal' communication, which I rely on heavily in everyday life.

It occurred to me that due to my ill fated rant of some time ago that my sigh may have seemed directed, which it wasn't.

Rather, I was sighing into the aether. It is, after all, frustrating to those of us ametuers when things "such as this". I'm a simple country boy, trying hard to raise two small children, finish an advanced degree, and edit a little video.

I simply cannot fight a battle against third party hardware codec manufacturers and a random OS generator in Seattle (Redmond).

Wish me luck.

Charles

[Michel Carleer]

Chris,
In fact, they should never have blamed the hardware codec manufacter to start with. After all, the Pinnacle DC30 uses the same chips and it works under W2K.
Michka

[This message has been edited by Michel Carleer (edited 27 June 2001).]

[SwAmPy]

'After all, the Pinnacle DC30 uses the same chips and it works under W2K.'

Big deal. The dc10+ has the same zoran chip but it doesn't do windows2000.

http://www.miro.com/support/faq/ViewFAQ_US.asp?id=993&lge_id=1

SwAmPy

[Dr Mordrid]

If you check the Pinnacle forums those Win2K drivers sound a lot like the Marvel G400's. They seem to have problems with overlay, audio and video playback. They also DO NOT support Premiere 6.0. Hmmm.....

It also seems they are VfW drivers and NOT DirectShow. At least the specs say it can only read/write files up to 4 gigs. Without >4 gig support under NTFS, why bother? Just run a dualboot and edit in Win9x/ME.

A big topic on the Pinnacle forum is the work being done at sourceforge.net on a DirectShow Zoran ZR36060/ZR36050 NT/2000 driver.

http://zorannt.sourceforge.net/

So far they are at pre-alpha (0.0.0.2) on a European DC-10+ driver only with plans for Buz support later.

Dr. Mordrid


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

[This_Idiot]

Hold on blokes !

This isn't supposed to be a "Spank Matrox" thread, OR a "Pinnacle dunnit it better" either. Mebbe one or two folk need to step back and take in the vista ya know ?

The question was would Matrox follow the same route with a G550 as the did with the G200/400? Specifically in terms of never providing the advertised support for windows 9X. Speak to thousands of Marvel owners (let alone RR-G), ask them their opinions. If in doubt, ask Matrox for the list of outstanding bugs within the latest (and last) set of MJPEG VTs for those cards.

You can throw Win2K into the pot if you want to, although it was never my intention to bring it up since I happen to believe that Matrox cannot be responsible for complying with an OS that wasn't specified until well after Matrox started developing the RR-G and variants - But the way they have managed the user expectations for W2K is well deserving of a major kick up the butt. They must have known 2+years ago that the goal was unachievable, either in terms of disparity between the WDM and the Zoran chipset, OR in the ability or availability of their driver development crew. And in ANY reputable development house those are the questions that should have been asked by the project management before anyone started looking at the code.

Coming out with a statement about Micropcrap f*cking everyone up 2 years after the event is no defence. If it couldn't be done then it should have been clearly stated AT THE TIME so that no-one else got suckered into buying on a non-fulfillable promise.

I'd be really interested to hear the point of view of anyone here in the UK that has bought into G400Marvel with a verifiable promise from Matrox that it will deal with Windows2000. There are a number of people posting on the web that claim that they have been told this from Matrox, but as far as I am concerned (because of differences in law), this would have happened to a UK user and preferably with verifiable email contact with Matrox UK employee who made such claims.

Oh dear. Seems like the rant switch got locked in the "on" position.

Sorry

Chris
(T_I)

[Michel Carleer]

I never meant to say that Pinnacle drivers are better or worse than Matrox ones. I was just stating that it is possible to make the Zoran chipset to work properly, even under W2K. So, Matrox excuse is in fact no excuse at all. The problem is that there are most probably other incompatibilities in the Marvel design that render it impossible to use it under W2K. That's my point. And if it is through the VfW interface and not the WDM model that Pinnacle make it work, well I don't care as long as it works. And believe me, it works here. Sure, Pinnacle still does not bother about >4 GB files and I regret it. That's why I am using a DV card with analog in capability right now, instead of either the Marvel or the DC30.
Michka


[This message has been edited by Michel Carleer (edited 28 June 2001).]