Radeon MPEG2 Issues

[rminnig]

I would tend to agree. I have not had any luck capturing any quality stuff with the radeon MMC7.1, 480x480 MPEG2. I use AVI_IO to capture, VirtualDub to edit, then TMPGEnc to encode. The resultant MPEG2 file is about 400MB for a "half hour" with commercials removed. I am studying how to get a little less quality and hence smaller file size so that I can fit 2 "half hour" shows or 1 "hour" show on a CD. Both turn out to be around 42 minutes of actual showtime after commercials edited out. When all is said and done, I'm very pleased with the quality I'm getting right now, so don't mind losing a little to fit 2 shows on 1 CD.

[homerpez]

The reason I do it is because I can better (read more compressed) capture high quality video this way. VirtualDub is a total piece of crap. I have tried it to capture, but it only works for AVI, and what's worse is that the captured video is INTERLACED. When you capture to MPEG-2 using MMC the result is progressive. No fuss, no mess, no "combing".

I admit the whole finding 15 programs to edit with can get slightly annoying, but the only problem I have thus far (after working with it a bit) is a slight noisy video (this would happen with any TV capture), and the audio doesn't like to be converted thru TMPGEnc. I have to make a video project file with DVD2AVI (very painless, takes mere seconds) and extract the audio to WAV via Cleaner (since TMPGEnc doesn't like the Layer-2 file that comes out of DVD2AVI).

[homerpez]

I should add, yes I also noticed that 480x480 is no good... I always do 640x480 (and maybe I'll start going to 720x480 is I need to...)

[Steve_h]

I am able to get my MPEG-2 videos captured by the Radeon directly into TMPEGenc by this method:

1) Start TMPEG
2) Start the ATI file player and open any small MPEG2 file.
Press play and then pause. Then minimize the player window.
3) Open the MPEG2 file in TMPEG. TMPEG will then either accept the file or promptly crash.
4) If TMPG crashes, immediately start it up, open the MPEG2 file again, and TMPG will usually take it.

[homerpez]

<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 2001-07-02 16:00:22, Steve_h wrote:
I am able to get my MPEG-2 videos captured by the Radeon directly into TMPEGenc by this method:

1) Start TMPEG
2) Start the ATI file player and open any small MPEG2 file.
Press play and then pause. Then minimize the player window.
3) Open the MPEG2 file in TMPEG. TMPEG will then either accept the file or promptly crash.
4) If TMPG crashes, immediately start it up, open the MPEG2 file again, and TMPG will usually take it.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Talk about work-around!

I'll have to try that, if I can figure it out...