First Impressions: ADVC-100 & Main Concept 1.4 MPEG Enco

[DVWannaB]

How it succeed 2 Pass VBR?
Well... It seems that it buffers some seconds ahead (probably in a temporary avi) frameserve it realtime to the encoder engine and then encode realtime to mpeg 2. Mainconcept is a very fast encoder, so something like that is possible.
Or, it does CQ VBR (1 Pass VBR) in an ABR way. This is more true I think, but really, I don't care: It works, that is what counts for me!

The bottom line is that captures realtime on mpeg 2 with 2 Pass VBR and actually, it works with low birtates.
Tested with an AMD Duron 1200 with no problems @ 704 x 576!

That way, it is 30 min for 30 min.

Satstorm and others,

I tried the ADVC-100 and trial DL of MC 1.4.1 last night on on P4 2.8GHz 512MB WinXp laptop.

I tried for about 2-3 hours to get the capture to a level that I liked. I used both 352x480 and 720x480 VBR. My first clips had a really soft picture. My last cap, a 10-minute 720x480 satellite cap of Windtalkers, was by far the best. The tweaking of the settings are pretty hair-raising. I found that the NR (noise reduction setting) at I believe 11 default, was WAAYYY to high. I finally settled on a setting of 1. I finally settled on motion search at a setting of 8 (default 6).

The Windtalkers 10 minute segment was good, but I did see slight "softening" of skin features on slight camera pans. I also experienced some very slight heat-waving on camera pans of on the battlefield. I used 720x480 VBR 5000 average, 9000 high and 2000 low. NR at 1, motion search 8, 29.97 fps, DVD-setting.

Can anyone share their set-up of their MC 1.4.1 capture? I want to do more testing before I commit to buying. Thanks.

[SatStorm]

ADVC-100 is I think a bt8xxx card. I believe those cards best work with 704 x 576 (704 x 480 for NTSC)
I only use the NR for quick VHS captures, never for TV captures. It softs a lot the picture.
Also, I don't use any kind of de-interlace.

Since I know well TMPGenc is easy for me to set up mainconcept. But I guess for someone else this looks tricky...

[mracer]

SatStorm, Nothing personal but MY MY MY HOW HOW HOW can internet information go so horribly WRONG...

ADVC-100 is not/never was/never will have anything, even minutely related to a BT8xx capture chip in it. Where oh where in this crazy internet world did you come across that information?

[SatStorm]

From nowhere...
I tried to recall from memory, and I mess it up with the avermedia cards... Who knows why...
That's why I add "I think" in my sentence.

And thanks God you was here to correct me. And really fast. Thank you

The last weeks, it happens to me all the time: I open 10 - 12 posts, read all together and answer in the raw... Seems that I'm getting old and I mess up posts...

My brain starts cracking up...