Can't find the G400 anywhere...Any other solution ?

[iparout]

Hi there guys,

I've been searching for a capture card for more than a month now and after recommendations from this forum, I decided to buy the Matrox Marvel G400. However, when I searched for it in several stores, I was unable to find it, since this model is very old. Now I'm desperate again... Can someone recommend another capture card which is as good in AVI capturing as the G400 (don't say the DVC II as I want a card that can capture AVI)

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thx in advance

PS : I have a PIII 450, 160 MB Ram so frame drops would be an issue here...

[rwarren]

There are currently several Matrox G400 Marvel cards on Ebay. Not sure if you do Ebay or not but they are there if you are interested. Looks like they are going for around $200.

Don't be to sure about the dropped frames. I have a 1Gig Athlon with 384MB of RAM and I drop frames like crazy with my ATI Radeon 64 VIVO whenever I go above 352x240. I am sure it is a driver issue but you might find the same thing with the Matrox. Also, I can capture with no dropped frames using the VCD setting in the ATI capture software. However, it looks like crap. I also drop frames when using VirtualDub. So, now I use my Sony TRV20 camcorder to convert analog to DV. Never miss a frame. Then I encode with TMPGEnc. Then I burn VCD or SVCD using the DVD Plugin with VideoStudio 5.0. It takes longer but the results are very good.

[iparout]

Thx for your input rwarren, but my question really was :

Are there any good capture cards that can hardware capture in AVI (uncompressed or MJPEG), giving a quality equal to G400 ? The hardware capturing is very impportant because my PC is very week in performance for capturing...

Thx again.

[AndrewDV]

There is a hardware MJPEG solution from Pinnacle called the DC10+. It is around $79. The captures are supposed to be very good. Take a look at it here:
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/productpage.asp?templ=8&Product_ID=2

They also have a more advanced (and expensive) solution. That is called the DC30+.

Just a FYI, take a look at:
http://www.videoguys.com

[T-Bond]

To rwarren
I have Marvel G400 and 1Ghz T-Bird with 128Mb of RAM. I capture 720X480 with it and no droped frames at all.

[iant]

I'll go along with T-bond. I only have a k62-500 and regularly get zero frames dropped on 704x576 ( Full PAL )captures. If you can turn a G400 Marvel up second hand it is probably worth the gamble.

Just on a longshot, have you tried asking any dealers if they can get hold of any old stock. Or a demonstration unit languishing on a shelf somewhere. Probably wont work but may be worth a try.

From what I hear, the Pinnacle DC10 is probably a good second choice. If you want to make sure you get minimal frame drop at high res, look for a card with hardware assisted capture, be it MJPEG or something else.

Good luck.
Ian