Mpegator vs MG100 vs PV231 ???

[CoCoNiPs]

I was just wondering how an ATI Radeon for example the radeon ddr Vivo with their hardware mpeg 1+2 encoding rage theatre chips compared to the quality of these cards?
CoCo

[asarb]

The ATI Radeon ddr Vivo don't have a hardware mpeg1+2 encoder chip !
ATI Theatre chip is not a hardware mpeg encoder !

[Anonymous65]

All the ATI AIW use software for mpeg encoding. Only a superfast CPU can even come close to a hardware encoder (in real time).

[CoCoNiPs]

eek!
I knew the old all in wonder cards didnt but from what I read about the radeons on the ati website it seemed so much like it did hardware encoding
grrr so misleading!
What is all the talk I see here about mmc? is that a purely software related way of encoding and can it be done with a wintv card?
Sorry to be a bit off topic
CoCo

[Anonymous65]

MMC, MultiMedia Center is ATI's software capture program. It has an internal mpeg encoder (software), and some type of AVI option. The MMC can only be used with ATI cards, not WinTV. If yuo have WinTV, and want to do software real-time compression, there are several programs that can do it. Ulead videostudio use Ligo encoder engine, and other VCR "type" programs have internal mpeg encoders. For what I have seen, the ATI MMC does a better job at real-time software encoding then other programs like WinVCR, PowerVCR, NanoPVR and so on.

[ylong]

Thanx skittelsen and markm for all the info. Hope this weekend will give you more experience on PV233. I really want to buy one. Did you buy it from http://shop.store.yahoo.com/akidacomputer/encar.html or somewhere else?

[markm]

I bought it from Akida.

skittelsen was correct, the audio sync I saw was only in the preview. I captured 1h45m VHS with perfect sync to the end.

The *only* complaint I have so far, is that TMPGenc can't edit (cut/merge) the resulting mpegs. It doesn't seem to recognize the audio. vcdimager also seems to take a long time to process the streams. If I enable warnings, I get tons of warnings about unknown code 0x02 or something along those lines. I had to hunt down a version of MyFlix to edit the streams with.

I re-captured an old VHS to compare. The first VCD I had done was captured with a WinTV-GO card using Huffy/AVI, and encoded with TMPGenc after filtering with Virtual Dub. The 2nd I did with the PV-233. Playing them both, they look very similar. The TMPGenc version is a little less noisy, but that's because I was able to filter the noise. They both have about the same level of block noise (it was low bitrate, 900'ish). The PV-233 appears to have smaller blocks though, so the noise isn't as noticable. At least that's how it appears.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the card. I get the same quality as I was with TMPGenc, without the time spent processing, and with far less disk space usage. Now if I could only find a way to use it to process AVI's. I did try the Svideo out on my laptop direct to the card. Quality was pretty decent, but I can't seem to get rid of the black borders.

[ylong]

Markm, you may try to use VCDCutter if you only want to cut or merge pieces. You can get version4.03 from http://www.seller-club.com/~vcdcut/loadv.htm. I used it just several times for MPEG1 files captured by ATI TV Wonder and it seems work fine.
BTW, What's the OS it runs. Can it run on Win2K?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ylong on 2001-11-17 13:48:14 ]</font>

[markm]

Everything I've read says that VCDcutter doesn't make VCD files and not to use it, though I haven't tried. And I'm using Win98SE ylong. There are Win2K drivers so it should work.

I've been pulling my hair out with a problem that I ran into once in the past, and I think I've got it solved. I captured a tape at 1800bps. When I played it on the computer it was fine. When I played it on my DVD player (Apex 1531) the audio dropped out every 2 seconds or so.

Any bitrate over standard causes this, anything under doesn't. I know the player can handle over 1150, since I used to encode TV episodes at 2300 and didn't have this problem.

My theory is that if it's muxed as a standard VCD, the player can't keep up. If it's muxed as an xvcd, it doesn't have a problem. All my previous recordings were done with TMPGenc with muxing as MPEG-1 VideoCD (non-standard).

I took a 2200bps file that wouldn't work, simple-demuxed it in TMPGenc, simple muxed it again with TMPGenc with the non-standard setting and it plays fine. A note to skittelsen here, once demuxex/remuxed, you can edit the file in TMPGenc and have audio (I noticed in another post you were unable to edit with TMPGenc and have audio, I had the same problem with these streams).

I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to do higher bitrate captures with this card, but with a little post processing it seems to work ok.

I tried some other solutions as well, but none seemed to work right. Demux with TMPGenc and mux with BBmpeg fixed the audio, but the video was choppy.

I wish there was a way to just adjust the headers in whatever way TMPGenc does without having to demux/mux.

Somewhat off topic, but since the problem was caused by the streams created by the PV-233, I thought I'd toss it here.

[glinckens]

Skittelsen,

You made a small calculating error in your best registry settings for the PV231. Under VBV settings you have:

"MPJ_MPEG_VBV_INITIAL_FULLNES"=dword:00000026
"MPJ_MPEG_VBV_SIZE"=dword:00000028

These HEX values correspond to 38 and 40 in decimal.

The VCD standard value for the VBV size is 40 Kbytes, which gives the best performance on playback. However, the registry settings of the PV231 uses units of 16 Kbits (16384 bits).
40 Kbytes = 320 Kbits
320 /16 = 20 units of 16 Kbits
So the VBV size should be set to 20 decimal (14 HEX).

The VCD standard value for VBV initial fullness is 38 Kbytes which also gives the best performance on playback. This corresponds to a registry setting of 19 decimal (13 HEX).

Read this page for a technical explanation of VBV and it's effect on delay times:
http://www.zapex.co.il/tech_mpeg1_1.shtml

Please give some feedback on this...

Regards,

Guido Linckens

[Anonymous65]

For editing the mpeg-1 files from the PV231/233, I use Cineplayer Editor (i-Film). It will edit the files correctly, and not damage the VCD file information. Before starting to cut something in the editor, select the VCD format. The editor will not reencode anyhting, but will make copies of the original file. It's nice to have a fast hard drive.

And yes, the original VBV buffer settings should be 19 and 20, that is the VCD standard.

[loudanddeep]

I am considering getting a caputre card, and this one looks decent.

Is this product related to the PV256t?
The posts seem to indicate so.

The difference would be the PV256t can do mpg2 and might not come with a remote.

I would like the ability to do mpg2 (for scvd), and the remote sounds cool.

Also, does anyone know of any cards using the SM2288, I read the specs on it, and it looks good.

If someone has a card coming out soon, I might wait...

thanks..

dp