ati AIW, *.mp2, and VirtualDub

[Dragonfly2337]

Three questions.
1) How do you use an ati AIW card to capture anthing better than MPEG-1 and still be usable for VCD, and if I can ever get it to work SVCD.
2) When using ati AIW and capture in MPEG-2 format what kind of format is *.mp2 that I have not found any software besides MMC that will play both sound and play video from this format.
3) VirtualDub, anyone have this problem "No Capture Driver Available"
I have a Radeon AIW 32DDR AGP video card in a Dell 4100 PIII at 1GHz, 256MB 133MHz SDRAM, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card Windows 98se and am trying to capture "good" video from cable. I have used the registry hack to enter better specs for capturing to VCD and have had success but not really good quality. I have tried other setting in MMC for MPEG-2 I get video and audio to record with little frame loss but when I want to make a VCD or SVCD the MPEG-2 format is in *.mp2 and is not usable, that I am aware of. Also I have tried to use VirtualDub but when I try to capture in AVI it gives me "No Capture Driver Available" anyone have a fix for this?

[Stinky]

1) use my tool (found under the tools section) too boost your bitrate about the VCD standard and still keep the "vcd bit" in the MPEG so it burns as standard in NERO - it's xVCD but it's more reliable on standalone players that way. With MMC 7.5 you can capture usable SVCD's now.

2) mp2 is just MPEG-2 with a very strange extension - mp2 isn't used by too many others - it's usually m2v for MPEG-2 video and/or MPEG-2 files - but ATI went with mp2 - just rename it to mpge --- you can get it to play in MS Media player if you get the MPEG-2 codec from the tools section also (I wrote the installer for it )

3) you need the WDM Wrapper - the URL has been posted a hundred times in the forum - search for VirtualDub and WDM Wrapper and you will find it - installing it will let you capture through virtual dub - you can also look at old posts by me - I've answer this question about 10x so far and posted the URL - just dont have it handy at this moment

MPEG-2's are done much better in MMC 7.5 - there is a link to the download from my web site http://64.80.22.253/stinky/

you will never get a MPEG-2 into virtual dub
mp2 is just a file extension just rename it to mpg or associate mp2 with MS Media player

if your after the best quality possible you have to capture to AVI with Virtual Dub and Huffyuv

[Dragonfly2337]

I bow before you stinky I appreciate your help and wisdom. If I knew the correct questions to ask I would have saved myself a lot of time.

I seem to be stuck on one thing right now. I can now use VirtualDub but I cannot change the channel. I open ati TV turn it to the correct tv station, still not right. I open Ulead Video Studio and change it to the correct channel, still not right. I open Genstar and Guide Plus+ and change to correct channel, still not right. Any suggestions from wise one Stinky.

[siaododo]

Like you said, capturing directly to mpeg 1 using MMC, the video quality is just not good enough. I would prefer using VirtualDub & Huffy Codec to capture, however, because I don't have that much HD space left, I am left with no choice but to capture with MMC 7.1 to mp2 format.

My set up is Athlon 1Ghz, 256 Ram, 100 MHZ SDRAM, ATI AIW 128. If I set the MMC Capture setting to Best Quality, I get 40 to - 45% frame drops, so I set the setting to Good Quality, and I get < 1% frame drop. I think the video bit rate is about 6.0 m/sec.

Because I have just recently upgraded to Windows XP, using the NTFS HD format, my files are no longer limited to 2 gig with the old FAT 32 format. For 2 hours of Capturing from VHS or Cable, it takes about 5 to 6 gig of HD space.

By installing the mpeg 2 codec, Tmpegenc was able to read the mp2 format, I could then use Tmpegenc templates to convert my files to VCD/SVCD formats. No need to Frame Serve. The result I get is somewhere btwn VHS & DVD depending on the quality of my source.

I'm going to try & install MMC 7.5, may be the video quality will be better. We'll see.

[Dragonfly2337]

Thanks for the info siaododo,
Where did you find a mpeg 2 codec for tmpegenc so that it would read the *.mp2?
I take it I should go out and buy the biggest darn hard-drive that I can afford for using virtualdub and avi's.
As I understand it there is a Fat 32 limit of my avi's to only 4Gig. Is there any other way around this without upgrading to windows XP?

[siaododo]

Sorry, I forgot where I download the codec. I am sure if you read the HOW-TO section, you will be able to find it.

If you E-mail me, I will send you a copy.

I don't think there is a way around the 4 Gb limit. If you are using VirtualDub, enable the Multisegment/spill system, it will simply create multiple files when the 4 Gb limit is reached, all you do is covert the files to mpeg, and join the files together. Like I said, you will need a lot of HD space. You can get more info on this by reading the HOW TO CAPTURE guide, it has a section on how to capture using lossless codec.

This is a matter of personal opinion, I think the mp2 capture with MMC is as good as Virtualdub with HUFFY Codec, it takes less HD space, about 1 hour 15 mimutes at 4 Gig. It looks like you have a faster computer than mine, so you may be able to capture using the best quality setting in MMC without a lot of loss-frame like I have. If you use NTFC HD format, you won't have the problem with the 4 Gb limit. I have recently caputured 2 hours of VHS, and it took a little less than 10 gig. If you are only interested in making VCD, not SVCD, you can set the capture to 352 X 240, it will take less HD space & less time to convert. The quality is good at my standard.

Hope this will help.

[Stinky]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-21 10:13:22, siaododo wrote:
Sorry, I forgot where I download the codec. I am sure if you read the HOW-TO section, you will be able to find it.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

hmmm.. if you re-read my first post you will see you can find my MPEG-2 codec in the tools section

or here is the direct link

http://www.dvd-wizards.com/vcdhelp/mpeg2codec_installer.zip

[drandles]

My AIW card will capture in MP2 (MPEG2) format. Can I then use Tmpegenc to create an Xvcd that I can burn with Nero? Where or what are the Tmpegenc templates?



Dale

[siaododo]

Go http://www.tmpgenc.com and download the latest version of tmpgenc, its free. Make sure also get STINKY's Mpeg2 plug-in, so it can read mp2 files.

Well, I tried MMC 7.5, I just didn't like the quality of the captures, and it is not very stable.

Uninstalled 7.5 & installed 7.2, I am very satisfied at this version. You can set up a custom capture profile using HUFFY Codec, so Dragonfly2337, if you are still having problem capturing with VirtualDub, give this version a try.

I made short captures using HUFFY & MP2, comparing the two, I still think the ATI's MP2 Capture is a lot better than HUFFY, and it takes a lot less space.

[pedersen]

Well, speaking as someone who has used this daily for the past six months to record babylon 5, I think I can answer to a few of the questions here

My system is a nicely done system, and has few problems with any of the capturing. The two main concerns were quality and space. Quality doesn't have to be fantastic, since we ARE talking about low-res mpeg1 here. It does have to be non-annoying, though. Space is also a tight concern, since I've only got a 60G hd, most of it in use at any given time.

My solution? an mjpeg codec (they used to have one at http://www.jpg.com/ for $20) for avi capture. Then use virtualdub to chop out the commercials, and TMPGenc's batch conversion utilities for producing the final mpeg1's.

Total HD space? about 13G per episode (includes the 7.7G of unedited episode recording, and the substantially smaller commercial free .avi files).

Use Nero to burn a vcd, and I'm done. Total time: about 2 hours (from end of episode), and I've got a static copy of the episode that I can watch later, commercial free.

Now, this was just one of the sites which helped me figure out all of this. I think I'll be reading more of the forums in the near future, to try and help out from there.

And a quick thank you to all the people who have posted in the past. You've made my life somewhat easier, to say the least.

[Dragonfly2337]

I did get virtual dub to work and change the channel that it was on with your help siaododo at first I tried to use what was written in the vcdhelp and it may have been written on a different version of Virtual Dub got me confused.

Why did you not like MMC 7.5? I have only used MMC 7.1 than upgraded to MMC 7.5. So in your opinion/ or any one else reading this whats the difference?

I also want to thank Stinky for help and the vast amount of resources pointed out to me.

[siaododo]

The main reason is the captures. Somehow the quality of its captures is not as good as 7.2.

When watching TV, the resolution is a lot grainier.

7.5 VCD player won't play the VCD's I made, but 7.2 will.

[Roginator]

You can't get MPEG-2 files into VirtualDub? Oh contraire!

You can use a little avisynth script like this:

Loadplugin("C:\software\greedyhma\greedyhma.dll&qu ot
LoadPlugin("C:\software\greedyhma\MPEG2DEC.dll&quo t
video=directshowsource("C:\<filename>.mpg&quot
audio=wavsource("C:\<filename>.wav&quot
audiodub(video,audio)
converttoYUY2
greedyhma(1,0,4,0,0,0,0,0)
temporalsmoother(2)

Assuming you have the .DLLs and avisynth installed, this script will read the MPEG-2 file, merge it with the WAV audio, convert to YUY2, then do an inverse telecine. Finally, it does a small noise reduction.

Name it something like "script.avs" and you can open it with VirtualDub (and probably TMPGEnc).

There is a small problem if you try to chain a bunch of MPEG-2 files this way. The audio eventually seems to go out of sync. I'm working on solving this by compressing each section individually and then merging them in TMPGEnc as a final step. In a few hours, I'll know if that works!

[pedersen]

Roginator, I found the same problems of audio getting out of sync. I knew I was forgetting something in my earlier post.

My solution was to tell TMPGEnc to stop using the internally built OpenDML reader, and to use the Video For Windows compatibility mode, which seemed to work really well.

Now, I'd be very interested to know the results of your experiement, as that would make things very nice and easy for me trying to produce some watchable quality vcds. Please keep us informed!

[Dragonfly2337]

Okay how do I get MMC 7.2?

[Roginator]

The solution to the audio-video sync problem appears to be:

Use a commercial MPEG-2 editor like MyFlix XE to separate out the actual program from the commercials. Then you can run each MPEG-2 piece (7 pieces for a normal TV show) through Avisynth and VirtualDub and into TMPGEnc. Each piece will retain sync. Then just merge them using TMPGEnc.

Presto!

Interestingly, you can have multiple pieces being processed at the same time. This is important for those who want to set it up to run overnight.