Any reason not to capture with MMC 7.6?

[Crispy]

Is there any notable reasons why not to capture with the ATI software? What are the disadvantages? Why do people capture an avi with VirtualDub and then crop and re-encode with TMPGenc? This takes alot more time and HD space. Right now I'm capturing a mpeg2 @ 480by480 @ 2mbps to make an svcd. Please someone let me know what if any are the flaws and quality concerns when capturing with this software. Just tryin to improve my knoweledge thats all.

[ratt794]

I have MMC 7.1 and it does a pretty good job with capture.

2 things to consider:

1) Bitrate is a little low - set it to about 2.6 Mbits as it allways comes out lower than what it is set to.

2) Shorten your GOP by setting P=4 , B=1 this will provide better motion encoding than the full P=4, B=2 will. Set motion Quality =100 if you have a fast PC.

De-Interlace should be ON as MMC does not do field based encoding.

This should yeild good quality SVCD's. If your DVD player supports higher bitrates try 3.0 Mbit for even better quality and 30 minute CDR's.

[Crispy]

Thanks for the reply! What about bitrate? Should it be set to constant or variable?

[ratt794]

If you are going to Edit the MPEG then use constant Bitrate otherwise Variable is ok to use and will typically reduce the file size by 10% or more depending on the video content.

I have done this for "Direct SVCD" captures of TV Shows and it works very well. I usually use 3000K bitrate for best quality although 2600K works well too. At 3000K 30 minutes will fit on a 80 min CDR.

[Crispy]

Thanks for the replys! Now I'm learnin somethin.

[mopar7]

What speed of cpu you got to capture at those rates? I have a 900 and start dropping too many frame per sec over 1500kpbs.

[ratt794]

I have used both a Duron 750 and Athalon 1100 without dropping frames up to 12000K bitrate. (12 Mbit / second)

1) What speed is your Hard Drive ??
2) Is DMA Enabled ?
3) Has the Drive been De-Fragmented in the last week?
4) Is your card PCI or AGP? if AGP is the MB at 4x?

FAT32 Drives become fragmented much faster than FAT16 did due to the smaller cluster size and Windows disk management methods.

I recomend a 7200 RPM UDMA 100 Hard Disk for capture as It really makes a difference. 5400 RPM is ok if you De-Fragment at least once a week oterwise frame drops may happen. Also it is best to use a SEPRATE drive for Video Files.

Most likely your hard disk is really slow, fragmented, or not DMA enabled
as you should not drop frmaes above 1500K - this is really slow.

Hope this helps.

[mopar7]

My primary is a 5400 rpm, but the drive I capture to is a 7200rpm, both are ata66's. DMA is checked, I defrag once a week, as well as thorough scandisk. Agp card and ya, bios is at 4x. And I can do up to 1.46meg bits per sec without too much frame loss, my question was to those doing 2 meg plus for mpeg2 dvd capture. At 1.5meg bits per sec my frame loss is noticeable.

[mopar7]

Oh, so far as 1500 kbpersec being slow, the vcd 2.0 compliant rate is 1150 kbps, if I select the vcd choice on MMC 7.1, it's 106kbps, sounds like you're capturing at 1.2 meg per sec, which I don't have trouble with. Any other thoughts?

[ratt794]

Actually I can capture at 12 Megabit per second not 1.2 - I am using MMC 7.1 with an AIW 128 Pro AGP card.

Something else in your system must be causing you trouble - maybe it is a shared IRQ with the Video card - this is known to cause trouble.

Go into the Device Manager and look at IRQ - make sure Video Card is NOT shared with any other devices. Change whatever deveices are using the same IRQ if there are any and it sounds to me like that is your problem.