What's the deal with the 4 gig limit?

[dishstaller]

I'm using an ATI AIW card and I've noticed that if the capture goes much past 4 gigs I lose the end of the video. If I lower the bitrate so the file is less than 4 gigs...no problem. Is there a "fix" for this? Andy

[Bondiablo]

You didn't say what OS you are using but I'm guessing it's 98? The 4GB limit is a limit of the fat32 file system. If you're running 2000 or XP then you should be able to use the NTFS file system which allows much larger files.

[liquid217]

"I am the psychic Liquid, I predict that you are using windows 98......(or possibly ME)".. All joking aside, you are suffering from the file limit within a fat32 operating system. You either need to get another capturing program that automatically splits the capture during capturing, or upgrade to windows 2000 or xp.

[Sulik]

MMC 7.6 will automatically split the captured files in multiple segments (for MPEG captures).

[Krerk!!!]

So is this what I think??
If i use Windows 2000 or XP, i can capture without 4 gig limit
or it still have limit but more than 4 gig ??

[Anonymous65]

Under FAT 16 you have a 2 gig limit, FAT32 has a 4 gig limit. Windows 95, 98, Me runs under FAT16 or FAT32.

Windows NT4, 2000, and XP can also run under the NTFS file system, where you basically have no limit. However, if you run WinXP and FAT32, you still have a 4 gig limit.

So, you need to have Win NT, 2K, or XP and a large hard drive that is formated as NTFS. Your OS might be running on FAT32, but your work drive has to be NTFS formatted.

[jacknjt]

hey how come i have converted my disk to ntsf and it seem to run slower?? my c: drive is in fat32,

[mickboss]

dishstaller: use virtualdub with multisegmented capture

jacknjt: If you read Windows 2000/XP help you´ll see something like this "if you just convert to NTFS from FAT32 you won´t be able to use NTFS full advantages [...] if you format a HDD to NTFS then you can use NTFS in full" 8)

[Emanef]

If he had an additional drive which he used for capturing, presumably his PC would be faster if he left the Win XP drive as FAT32, and converted the capturing drive as NFTS....?

[dishstaller]

Sorry I didn't give enough info. I'm running Win 98SE and MC 7.1. If I update (or upgrade) to 7.6 will I lose any of my custom settings?

Sulik, you mentioned that 7.6 will automatically segment the capture file, do I have to do anything special or extra when I encode with tmpgenc?

This is my setup. 1.4g on a Intel 850 board, a 40 gig 7200rpm drive for OS and captures and a 80gig 7200rpm for the final destination after encoding....that way I can delete my capture files and defrag very quickly since only my OS is on the 40gig drive. I've been capturing in mpeg1 at 480X360, I was using a bitrate of 7 but have had to reduce to 6.43 for a full 79min capture. Now that ya'll know my setup and method, would I get better results if I capture in mpeg2? I'm making regular VCDs of my little girl's cartoons and have been getting very satisfactory results using tmpgenc but am open to suggestions. BTW, when I encode with tmpgenc I have been using the "high quality" setting but is this really needed? I've done a couple without it and it takes 1/2 the time and the results look the same.

[Emanef]

You won't lose your settings; you'll need to uninstall the MMC, then the drivers, etc. When you uninstall MMC it'll ask if you want to keep the settings for upgrading, so select yes. Then you'll need to install the card driver, capture driver then MMC 7.6.

[Anonymous65]

I don't think you will find that NTFS is faster than FAT32. The performance will be quite similar, if not even slower.