Capture, edit, playback...but on 2 different computers

[NES_Master]

OK, here's the deal. I found a really nice VGA, Capture, Sound, modem card for $27. I figured it would be nice to have around, so I bought it. Since it was PCI, I stuck it in an old P166. I can capture just fine, and playback just fine, but anytime I try and edit or convert, I must wait forever! I thought I would try and work with the clips on my main computer, but they play back very slow, and the sound codec isn't found. The card uses hardware to play the video, but it seems there sould be some software codec somewhere...

The card is a Max IC Live using a MPACT1 processor/codec. And if you need to know my system specs, here they are..

Athlon 1.4GHz
256M SD-RAM
40G HD
Radeon 8500
SB Live
Winnov Videum capture card
Windows 98SE

P166 w/ MMX
64M EDO-RAM
Dual 1.6G HDs
Video, sound, capture, and modem all covered by Max IC Live
Windows 98

[Greyhair]

I'm assuming you're networked?

I had a similar idea and found it just wouldn't work. The network was too slow. It's only after encoding that files are really small enough to transfer through the network for further processing. Otherwise, if you're capturing .avi, you'll likely spend almost as much time transfering files/data from a capture as you would encoding on the P166.

That's my spin, maybe someone else has an alternative suggestion as I didn't really fool with it too long.

[The village idiot]

Here is an idea. Put a firewire card in each machine. The buy a harddrive and put it in a firewire enclosure. Then plug drive into slow machine for captures, plug into fast machine to render. This doesn't really solve your codec problem, but will solve the transfer problem.

[NES_Master]

Converting takes a good while... I want to use MPEG1 for VCDs. On my P166, it takes around 1 minute for 1 second of video! I wanted to just leave it as it was, then convert on my main computer, as it's basically real time on my Athlon.

I don't have a transfer problem...An 11min video is only around 400megs, and over a 100baseT network, it dosn't take too long to transfer. Anyway, if I was just going to swap HDs, I'd just buy a few removable HD bays. Not only would it be faster(Firewire to IDE is usally only ATA-33) but cheaper.

[Greyhair]

I'm confused about what the problem is then.

[NES_Master]

Oh... I think i see where you got confused... For some reason, the video just plays slow on my computer without the hardware, along with no audio. I'm guessing it's because I don't have the correct codecs. As I can't find the specific files for the codec, I need help finding the MPACT audio and video codecs...

[dantonvb]

Oh... I think i see where you got confused... For some reason, the video just plays slow on my computer without the hardware, along with no audio. I'm guessing it's because I don't have the correct codecs. As I can't find the specific files for the codec, I need help finding the MPACT audio and video codecs...

Hi NES_Master,

I have exactlly the same problem. My capture computer is a 5x86 with the Mpact card installed. My edit computer is a k6-2 without the mpact card.

In the k6-2 I only can open the capture movie (AVI) in the Windows Media Player without any video and only the sound enabled. If I rename the file to have a MPG extension I can open it in QuickTime. When I try to make an video CD from it (AVI) with TMPGEnc I have a message that the format is not AVI. I think that the file produced by the capture card through Asymetrix Capture utility is a non standard AVI MPEG encode file.

Have you find any solution for this problem?