MPEG Hardware Encoder

[Betamax]

Hi,
Can anyone suggest me a branch, type (or just an URL) of a card (for PC) with which I could encode high-quality MPEG-1/-2 for (S)VCD, DVD?
Tx.

[Cosmo Kramer]

how about Dazzle-II card? Check the "Capture Cards"-section from the left of the screen for more info.

Dazzle-II card is on it's way to my PC right now due it was suggested by a friend in UK.

CK.

[Betamax]

No, I'm not looking for more capture cards. A Matrox RT2500 is on his way to my computer (and it does MPEG-2 DVD encoding on-board).
What I'm looking for is a card that does do the encoding of MPEG-1 VCD and MPEG-2 SVCD on-board.

[mike416]

Dazzle IS A HARDWARE MPEG ENCODING BOARD !
I'm not quite happy with it,especially in the audio sync
I'm using Broadway card, http://www.b-way.com
but I guess the best is from optibase, http://www.optibase.com
only I can't afford it

[Betamax]

Mike416, your link directs me again to cards I'm not looking for. The "Broadway Pro" is another kind of capture-card (which I don't want, the RT2500 suites me best) and the "MGW 3100" of Optibase is an encoder that is suitable for MPeG to IP.
I only want to have some card, that can encode using any AVI in the CODEC which is installed at the system and that doesn't do anyting else but encoding to MPEG-1/-2, where the encoded MPeG will be stored back to local disk on the system in which it's installed.

TMPGenc is good software, but it's too slow for the amount of DV I generate and it's quality cannot be set at high levels - just because it's slowiness. My system is an Athlon-1.2Ghz.

[Mirror_Image]

Is something like this more like your vision:

http://www.canopuscorp.com/products/dvrexrtpro.php3

Way outta my price range ($4,400 USD)

[Betamax]

The Canopus DV-products, which Mirror_Image suguested, aren't just what I'm looking too. The hardware MPeG-cards of them are only usable in combination with a Capture card of them..
No, I'm looking for just 'plain' hardware encoding, without any extra option (no editing, not authoring, no capturing - just encoding).

[bombom]

Try this one:

http://www.prolink.com.tw/english/news/news082001.html

I've been using it in making my SVCDs and it served me well...

Hi Betamax

I guess from your mails that you have got a batch of .avi's lying around on your HD's and you want a quick solution to hardware encode them to mpeg1/mpeg2.

Even though you anticipate the arrival of your Matrox RT2500 card, which can encode, you still want an additional standalone that is not a capture card.

You knock out the Dazzle ll and other cards on the basis that you do not want another capture card.

So. for what it is worth, this is the option that I have recently taken.

Firstly, however, I was not that impressed with the encoding abilities of the RT2500, even though I am a great Matrox fan. Canopus Storm is streets ahead in this area.

However, as I live in the UK, both the RT 2500 and the Canopus card, with their RT DV output, were, pricewise out of my league.

For this reason, I settled for a Pinnacle DV500+. And, for once, being in
Europe, I got $100 dollars back from pinnacle for sending them an ancient pinnacle tv card!

As I still wanted RTL mpeg output as well as RTL DV capture and edit, I also opted for the Dazzle Video Editor ll: all this for less than the price of the RT2500.

As both the DV500+ and the Dazzle card both come with BOB's, I have been able to install both cards on the same machine (only a moderate BE6 with a celeron 750, slightly o'clocked).

So, apart from any captures I make by either card, I can also directly pick up an avi from HD into Pinnacle DV500+, or, as often as not, into Premiere 6.01, edit and render or not, as the case may be, output directly from the timeline to a JVC S-VHS vcr and bring back via dazzle in SVCD format. And all without getting out of my chair!

Having spent a lot of time in the past year with Hauppauge PVR, ATI and Asus capture cards, as well as spending hours watching TMPGC cook, I can assure you that the SVCD's I get from this recipe are the best I have achieved.

[Anonymous65]

For hardware mpeg-1 and 2 try PV256. For mpeg-1 only (VCD), the PV231 is the best hardware encoder.

[SHS]

ProVideo PV256 TV Tuner/Capture
Asiamajor V-Gear DVD TV Plus
Hauppage WinTV-PVR
DViCO FusionMPEG
Canopus MTV2000
PixelView Video Maker
DVD Plus 3010, 3020, 3060
Dazzle Video Creater 2
Snazzi III DVD Creator
Pentamedia NAVIS-Pro
Sigma Designs DVR
Vitec DCM Plus or VM-2-2
Grand TV Master Vision
Optibase MovieMaker
LifeView FlyDV-MPEG or FlyDV-FX
Darim Vision MPEGator2
Pinnacle Systems DV500 Plus

take your pick there min more.

[igor666]

Betamax

Discreet do a software encoder called Cleaner 5 that has an optional hardware accelerator:

http://www.discreet.com/products/supercharger/

It's a bit pricey, but you might be rich......

Anyone know of any other similar products

[SHS]

igor666 that not a capture card it is firewire card

[igor666]

Yeah, I know it's not a capture card - it's an MPEG encoder like the guy was asking for.

[jbl375]

Having read the discussion of H/W encoder here, I start thinking to get one to try. But some basic questions:

What is the quality of the mpeg2 file encoded by H/W encoder? Could it be better than the mpeg2 file created by CCE or TMPEGnc?

In fact, I have my capture card (RT2000) and edit the avi file by Premiere. Can the H/W encoder accept the edited AVI file in the hard drive and encode it into mpeg2 file?

Thanks for your answer in advance.

[igor666]

A H/W encoder should give just as good quality as a software one - the major benifit would be encoding speed as they use chips specifically designed to encode MPEG streams - they should work much faster than software encoders.

As they're not capture cards, they work like software encoders - you give it an AVI from your hard drive and it encodes that - you may also be able to encode directly from Premier which would save a hell of a lot of time!

[OptimusPrime22]

That MPEG encoder looks pretty cool...I might get one for myself. Then I wouldn't need a dual proccessor system or such a powerful one. Has anybody ever tried one of them?

[the_macman]

I recently bought a DViCo FusionMPEG and am very happy with it. Comes both as an USB (max 6Mb) and a PCI (max 8Mb). Quality rocks with no visible differences for MPEG1/2 compared to TMPGenc.

Some Web reviews have pointed out an audio-sync bug, but that was due to a software problem. Downloading the latest app from their site solves the problem.

http://www.dvico.com

Hope this helps and let me know if you need additional info.

[verdomme]

Gentlemen ( and women ). i have the same problem.

All the reply's here mention CAPTURE cards. This guy is looking for an ENCODER card ( as am i ).

What is the difference ?

CAPTURE cards take VIDEO SIGNALS in and spit out a MPEG compressed file to the harddisk.

ENCODER cards take a file already on the harddisk , compress it and send it back to the harddisk !. None of the mentioned cards here can do that !.

People that edit video on computers have the finished edit available as a file containing most of the time a DV stream , quicktime , or an AVI embedded stream ( any of the windows media streams ).

All they want now is to encode this in MPEG1 or MPEG2. without first having to send them back to the video deck or camcorder! . Because this :

1) takes time, and requires the deck to be available. ( anyone seen the price of a DV deck lately ( not camcorder but standalone DV deck ! ) or anyone knows who makes a digital8 deck ?.

2) is yet another digital to analog conversion to store it, and then another analog to digital conversion to compress it . You loose half of the quality !

Why do you want hardware encoders and not use software ?

1) software encoders are slow

2) they crash on certain videostreams. The IBBP framing can be thrown off easily if the P frame does not contain what was predicted. Hardware encoders recover from that. ( sure they generate what is called an MPEG artifact but that is barely visible ). There are some software encoders that can adapt but these are no longer realtime.


simple as proverbial pumpkin pie.

So where are the MPEG ENCODER cards ? Anyone know ?

The only system i know of uses a chip made panasonic and its not even realtime !. This is an addon card to a product from canopus. the encoder card itself costs well over 1800 $ but it requires you to already own a DVrex RT priced at 5000$

[the_macman]

I think it's a matter of deciding how much you're willing to pay for an encoder-only card and whether you want it real-time or not. Because if I read you correctly, you have a DV stream that you want to encode to MPEG1/2 in real-time with a hardware encoding card. So, in this case you'd need a DV-MPEG1/2 encoder as the card will need to decode the DV stream before it encodes it into MPEG, correct?

What I do is:

1) capture from my Sony TRV-20 through FireWire in Premiere
2) edit in Premiere
3) record back/archive to miniDV on the TRV-20 (tapes are pretty cheap nowadays, US $18 for 10 in Singapore)
4) use FusionMPEG to encode the sections I want back to my PC in either MPEG1/2

Works flawlessly, and I don't see the additional value in the $5,000+ cards being mentioned above. Of course it takes a bit more time, but if you have a powerfull machine, I'm sure you can do a loop-back and have the encoder working while still pushing the edited DV stream to the camcorder (or hook it to a second PC).

Comments welcome!

[tom28]

I thought the Broadway Pro can use AVI (don't know if all AVIs) and do hardware encoding into Mpeg1 and Mpeg2......which is what you were looking for, isn't it?

[spiderman2k1]

Dazzle 2 is very good card has some problem's with VIA and SIS chipset's I have a AMD and a VIA chipset no problem MSI K7T266 Pro 2 with via chipset 266A for more info on what boards go to

http://stop.at/dazzle2

to buy the dazzle 2 cheep go to

http://www.shopharmony.com/

dazzle 2 had a timer you can get it here

http://stop.at/TWNH

Also if you have a fast CPU the ALL IN WONDER's are good now with MMC 7.6 it comes with the new 128meg AIW but you can download it from the net from other websites. Its good for SVCD and VCD use MPEG2VCD3.11

[tom28]

He already said Dazzle II doesn't serve his purpose..he wants a hardware encoder that can read in AVIs and do hardware MPEG1/2 encoding and not a capture board (he got the Matrox RT2500). I don't know...maybe the RT2500 doesn't read in AVIs and do mpeg1/2 encoding...I am confuse as what he wants now.

[verdomme]

MAC_MAN . That is what i am doing now. however : streaming out 1 hour of video takes ? one hour . Sending it back trough the mpeg capture card takes ? one hour ... that is two hours to make the MPEG file.
the software overhead is so big ( premiere running in output mode , and the Moviestar capture software at the same time ) that i get interruptions all the time. So that doesn't work.

I want to be able to make the entire movie in that time ( i take 2 hour editing time ) my customers want immediate results. ( I shoot underwater video. when i'm back from the dive its 5PM. by 7PM i want to have the editing done then i convert to SVCD or DVD and burn. by 7.30 pm customer picks up his disk ,Now this process takes me until 10PM

2 things i want to improve:
1) the customer has disk -same day this can't be done now because mastering takes too long ( encoding )
2) i get to go home at a reasonable hour ( 8pm versus 11pm )

Tom28 : havent heard of that one . i'll check it out

Spiderman2k1 : read my previous posting. Dazzle2 is CAPTURE card. i need an ENCODER card.

tom28 : correct. i dont have the RT2500. because that is ... a capture card. it does not have a hardware mpeg encoder on board

The only card i found so far is a plug in card for a Silicon Graphics station.
It seems that this is what mastering bureau's use. ( People like Laser Pacific , Sony entertainment , Time Warner etc , who make masters for commercial DVD's.

But then you are talking big $$ ( 12.000 $ for the Silicon Graphics computer without software or MPEG card alone ! )


Anyway , i'm working on a program to do it using the dazzle card. if someone wants to help please post here. ( will publish as FREEWARE )

Idea is to use the windows mediaplayer codecs to read the incoming stream ( can be easily done since this layer has an already existing and well documented API. )

The Dazzle driver has also an API albeit less well documented. I have the datasheet of the chip on the dazzle card as well.

All thet needs to be done is write a program that extracts a bunch of frames from the mediaplayer stream. dump them in the card , wait for encoding process to complete and then read them from the card and dump them in a file.

Later on i could try to make this a adobe premier plug in and use the premiere as 'frameserver' instead of the windows mediaplayer.

[the_macman]

Got ya!

I think the app you plan to develop will probably do the trick, and within a reasonable timeframe. I also agree trying to do Premiere output and MPEG input on the same machine is too much of a CPU burden. I'd still give it a shot though useing a second PC to the encoding. No matter how you look at it, a second PC might be a better/cheaper investment as opposed to a SG station.

[OptimusPrime22]

I think that would be a great program and since the Dazzle DVC 2 is dropping in price in some places it would make a great hardware encoding solution and not be too expensive. Can't wait to hear more about it. Good luck.

[Greg12]

They don't have encoder cards, only capture cards.

Your encoder card is your motherboard and CPU.

They make decoder cards, but not cards to encode a file you already captured

[OptimusPrime22]

If you follow one of those links in the previous posts you will see that there is such a device as an encoder card that takes in vidoe files and changes them to MPEG1 or 2.

[nemethmik]

If you follow one of those links in the previous posts you will see that there is such a device as an encoder card that takes in vidoe files and changes them to MPEG1 or 2.

Which one is that?
The only option is Discreet's Cleaner 5 + Mpeg Supercharger for $1600
http://www.discreet.com/products/supercharger/supercharger_overview.html , am I right?

[OptimusPrime22]

yep that is the one