Capture Directly To MPEG Format.

[AlphaBeta]

Okay I know that people say that this isnt a good way to do it.... But I cant stand letting 1 movie convert to mpeg format for 1 day.... Just too much time. I have a ATI-In-Wonder VE. And the software only alows AVI recording. Virtual Dub doesnt work for me anymore. But is there a program that will do this? That wont take too much prossesing power? I dont like WinVCR or PowerVCR II... Any other options? I wouldnt mind if I could record directly to mpeg in Virtual Dub... But it wont record to Mpeg. Only AVI. So any suggestions? THANKS!

[AlphaBeta]

I Guess no one has herd of this...

[patrickm]

we've all heard of it. too many times. you have 3 objectives- speed, quality, cost. you'll never get all 3. you can only get 2, and that's if you're lucky.

for several thousand dollars, buy a hardware encoder. then you have realtime, very high quality.

sacrificing speed, you can get real good quality with even cheap cards like ATI tv VE and software encoders like TMPG.

you can get realtime MPEG via software relatively cheap. however, this is restricted by your CPU and the quality isn't great.

think about it- if it takes a day to process your movie at good quality, if you compress that duration by a factor of 12 to do it in real time, do you think the CPU will be doing all the operations it would during a 24hour encode? no, of course not. it has to skip some things.

another option is to shell out some bucks and get the LSX 3.5 encoder from Ligos. the quality is very good, and it's relatively fast. and if you're a student i think you can get it half price from them (may have to email and ask for an educational discount), which makes it about $90 instead of $180.

[etchris]

First, I think those who didn't have a decent machine shouldn't have too much hope in the first place. I have a 750mhz Duron which doesn't seems great, just decent if I capture in AVI using Huffyuv codec and later convert it to MPEG 1/2. Lots of time, but worth it for the end result.

Tried the MPEG realtime encoding of ATI's MMC 7.1, needs a huge CPU supplying the power to do realtime MPEG 1/2 encoding on full resolution.


Get the Athlon 1.2Ghz or the overclockable version, whatever is good for your budget, to do realtime encoding, which will not be good enough to me(yes I'm a bit picky at times when I know I can have better end products). Or try getting huge harddisk to capture to Huffyuv AVI format at about 9Megabyte/s which comes to about 32GB of video/audio for an hour's of show.


Cheers

[AlphaBeta]

I dont have the latest version of the ATI Software. Mine only lets AVI Recording. Do You know where I could obtain the newest copy?

[likkletree]

Has anyone heard of Flask mpeg ? use the cinepak plug-in NOT really designedto work with this app but it does ! ) and you can go straight to vcd format from vob files I have a Duron 750 and a 90 minute movie now takes about 2 - 3 hours instead of 10-12. The only snag being that after flasking the programme freezes and says something like 'Cannot gain last frame' Just hit control alt delete and close the programme and there it is ! (I think its cinepak } I can check !

[patrickm]

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On 2001-07-29 01:05:28, AlphaBeta wrote:
I dont have the latest version of the ATI Software. Mine only lets AVI Recording. Do You know where I could obtain the newest copy?
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support.ati.com

note- make sure you get what's specifically written for tv wonder VE. not all MMC's work with all cards. i think they allow MPEG-1 at 352x240 on the VE, but i could be wrong. i

f you really want to do realtime MPEG, you can get decent SVCD captures (still not really good quality at VCD bitrates though) using anything based on the Rage Theater capture chip. (AIW 128 Pro AGP, AIW Radeons, and some later versions of the AIW 128 PCI 16M. if you're on a real tight budget or don't want to change your current agp card for whatever reason, the last one is what i'd recommend. you can get them at best buy for like $89 sometimes, and maybe bargain with them because they're closing them out to make room for more radeon. the only real difference between any of the cards is the 3D performance, not video capture). i can do full-res MPEG-2 (640x480) IBP compression on a 900 Athlon with PC100 ram. so while you need a fast computer, it doesn't have to be the latest and greatest. you can do realtime MPEG-1 with much less (i was doing it with a k6/2-550 fairly well at 352x240 res)

[AlphaBeta]

Thanks everyone for your replys!!! But 2 things. ATI Only gives out there Drivers. No software. At least that is what I gatherd. Anyways if you can find a direct link then that would be great because I searched on there site also and nothing. likkletree: Thanks for your help.... Where can I find The Cinepak Plug-In?

[BlackWinterDay]

ATI does hand out their MMC software, but it's in the tech support section of their site under your specific product, not in the drivers section. However, if you have a TV Wonder VE, you will not be able to capture to MPEG. That is a limitation of the card, and the main reason why I chose the ATI TV Wonder that does capture straight to MPEG... Kind of a waste though, since now I think I'll be recording using VirtualDub and converting anyways... Oh well. Heh

[next]

On July 5th ATI released MMC 7.1 for the the TV Wonder VE and the comment at the ATI site says it can capture to Mpeg. I haven't tried it because I don't have a VE but I'd give it a try. It's here:

http://support.ati.com/products/pc/tuners/win98/tvwonder_ve_win98_mmc.html


edit-
oops sorry....I read it wrong. It says Mpeg playback. Sorry about that.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: next on 2001-07-29 15:54:49 ]</font>

[AlphaBeta]

Thanks everyone I will use your suggestions and comments!

[wimp]

I would recommend the ATI TV WOnder. I absolutely love mine. The new mmc 7.1 allows for mpeg -2 capture and I capture all the time with it in a athlon 750mhz with 256 meg of ram. I get 0% frame loss. The other day, I captured 3 hours of Scooby Doo for my daughters, set it up through Digital VCR to start and stop the recording because I would not be home, and it worked like a charm. Over 3 Gigs of Mpeg for 3 hours and 0% frame loss. You can't beat it. I am very pleased with the quality as well. I have filtered and enhanced some things with Tmpeg, but I do not do all, because many of them look that good. It is also relatively cheap as well.

[nittany]

Wimp,
Out of curiousity, what OS are you using with the ATI TV Wonder card. Also, can you capture the audio in stereo or just mono. Thanks for the info.

[nittany]

Another question: Is there a maximum amount of time for capture using a TV Card? What happens when you reach the 2G or 4G limit for FAT16/FAT32?

[AlphaBeta]

nittany: Ive herd of problems about the 2 gig limit thing. But make a new post and ask how to fix it. Because theres a deffinate way to. I dont know for sure. And yeah Im useing 7.1 for Windows XP (2000) But it doesnt work good for it. So I may just download it for Windows 98 SE. I have a dual boot. And Wimp: Yeah I want to be able to do that sooooo bad! But Im going to try to download 7.1 for 98. Because 2.0 only supported avi. But even though I wasnt suppose to get mpeg captureing there offering 7.1 for my Capture Card! Sweet.... Thanks for the information.