Can AMD Athlon Cut the MPeg 2 Cake (please read)

[ejai]

Today I called a tech service engineer from J&R computer world in New York who deals with DVD authoring, and inquired about the Dazzle DVC II capabilities when it comes to capturing Mpeg2 video for DVD authoring.

He made it known to me that the AMD will not be able to cut the cake. In other words the AMD processor will not do a good job of capturing mpeg2 video without an abundance of frame drops. I own a AMD Athlon 850 and was attempting to purchase a product that would encode dvd standard on the fly. If this is true then there will be a lot of unhappy people out there.

I spoke to him about software Mpeg2 encoders such as Tmpgenc, he believes they won't make a compliant DVD file that will play on most standard DVD players no matter what authoring package. He feels the MAC is the only tool that can function correctly when creating DVDs, In his words the PC's architecture isn't sound enough for this type of multimedia. He claims to be an authority in this matter and has burned many DVDs.

I want to know if anyone has any feedback about this situation and guidance if it's true.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ejai on 2001-08-17 08:57:30 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ejai on 2001-08-17 08:59:07 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ejai on 2001-08-17 09:00:46 ]</font>

[patrickm]

i think the Dazzle products have some known incompatibilities with AMD chips. that isn't to say AMD isn't capable of doing MPEG-2 (i get excellent quality with my AIW 128 Pro on an Athlon 900), just that they don't get along with Dazzle very well. i don't think the new ATI software has the 48khz capability though, so the audio would need to be resampled.

as for "the Mac being the only tool that can function correctly when creating DVDs", i think he should get a life. i've read about plenty of people having success with PC DVD-R. i guess he's just trying to sell you a $3500 Mac though...

in terms of DVD compliance, i think the authoring package is of paramount importance, not as much the encoder, when it comes to DVD-R playback on a standalone. The Ligos encoders have had a DVD option for a year or so, and Ulead has even released a DVD plugin to video studio.

[VidGuy]

Just for the record - I use a Dazzle DVC II on my 1.33 GHz Athlong with an Asus A2v motherboard with no problems. I can't tell you for sure how many frames dropped because they didn't bother to give us a way to figure it out, but the resulting video doesn't have any obvious drops and I'm pretty picky.... The Dazzle support group told me that as long as I don't do anything else while I capture video - there should be no dropped frames, and my experience seems to bear that out.

This service tech sounds like one of those guys who works for Frys - act like they know everything, but don't know a thing.

I'm sure that you can author a DVD with an MPeg-II from TMPGEnc. I have friends who have done it. Certainly, the Macintosh is pretty easy to author a DVD, but you can definitely do it on a PC......

[ejai]

Thanks for the feedback, I called AMD and spoke with a technician and found that they also felt the tech was a jerk. They did agree that the 750 chipset in my Gigabyte motherboard might cause a problem with the Dazzle DVC II, only because of the technical incompatibilites, yet he assured me that the AMD can handle the job.

[ejai]

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On 2001-08-17 11:29:02, VidGuy wrote:
Just for the record - I use a Dazzle DVC II on my 1.33 GHz Athlong with an Asus A2v motherboard with no problems
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Vidguy, would you be so kind as to tell me what you think about the quality of the Dazzle DVC II. I'm still up in the air on wether I should purchase it or not. I've been getting conflicting reviews.

Also I've read reviews that state some people have problems with audio sync.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ejai on 2001-08-17 11:52:04 ]</font>

[VidGuy]

Depends - Audio sync seems like it could be a little bit of a problem, but I don't have any audio sync problems when I just trim the garbage from the front and back of the capture - it might get tricky for cutting out commercials, but I haven't tried that yet.
Quality-wise, it's "ok" for SVCD or VCD direct capture, but I wouldn't say it was great (but then, I'm a perfectionist, too). However, I use it to capture at 10000 kbps then use DVD2AVI to reencode down to SVCD specs, and for that, the board works like a champ. Capturing at 10000 kbps VBR, I still get about 2 Megabytes / hour of video which isn't bad and the picture looks really good. I think this board would be awesome to use with a DVR - you could get a 2 hour movie onto a 4.7 GB blank with no problem at all.

[Mdanner423]

Go with a WinTV PVR... I am capturing MPEG-2 on my athlon just fine, not 1 dropped frame... People say alot of bad things about the PVR, but so far my experiences have been wonderful... I have owned it for a while, and was makeing awsome svcds... But then I wanted to make dvds, so i got a compaq with a dvdr and am now attempting to make dvds...

matthew

[THE RIPPER]

I HAVE A ATHLON 1.4,AND HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH DAZZLE DVC2.AUDIO SYNC PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED BY NOT PREVIEWING THE AUDIO DURING CAPTURE.