Anyone have VIVO experience with Geforce4?

[Mallow]

Just curious if anyone had any experience capturing video with the Geforce4 cards. I'm thinking aobut getting a MSI with VIVO and I was curious what type of format it could actually capture to. MPEG-1, MPEG-2 DivX? tia.

 

[MatthewF01]

depends on the software you get with it, but with my Leadtek 4200, any format you want.

 

[Mallow]

you can capture mpeg-2?

 

[oldfart]

I use the VI on my GF4 before I changed over to a DV cam and firewire. Since this is an analog input, you "capture" analog video. Depending on the software package you use, you can convert real time to MPEG1/2 format (bad quality) or capture AVI, then convert afterwards to MPEG1/2 or whatever format you need (much better quality).

 

[Mallow]

hehe, avi = like 20MB/sec or something outrageous?

 

[kgraeme]

My ASUS with VIVO supports MPEG-2 capture. My Radeon VIVO did too. I would assume the MSI software would too.

 

[Mallow]

but is it good quality mpeg2 capture?

 

[Sachmho]

what do you all use to capture

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: Mallow
but is it good quality mpeg2 capture?

Not really DVD quality, no. A lot depends on the source though.

 

[Mallow]

It just seems that mpeg2 capture used to be a huge deal and now any old card can do it? I capture with an Ati All In Wonder. Back when I bought that card it was huge to capture to mpeg2 real time.

 

[oldfart]

Any card can do MPEG2 capture (via software). The quality is not very good. For much better quailty MPEG2, capture first to AVI with a codec such as Huffy, then convert to MPEG2 with a 2 pass VBR MPEG encoder like TMPGEnc.

 

[rbV5]

hehe, avi = like 20MB/sec or something outrageous?

hehe, "avi" is simply a container object that can carry any variety of codecs at any variety of bitrates. A divx file may be 8MB/min or less while uncompressed full resolution NTSC AVI can exceed 22 MB/sec. Capturing MPEG-2 may not be a big deal so to speak, but capturing/encoding "quality" MPEG-2 in real time is very much still a big deal, and not handled well by most consumer level cards.

Like oldfart says

 

[oldfart]

Yup, thanks to a lot of info from rbV5, and spending some time @ VCDHelp.com, I learned enough to get started. After spending some time working with encoding, I quickly learned that real time MPEG encoding did not produce the results I was looking for. To get good quality, you can not do it real time. TMPGEnc 2 pass VBR is what worked for me.

So the answer is yes, the GF4 VI can do real time MPEG encoding during capture via software, but you may not like the results. ATI cards can do real time MPEG encoding via hardware, and I would think the quality would be better, but I have never tried them.

 

[Mallow]

ahh, ok oldfart... thx for the posts, I appreciate it.

So you get great results capturing to avi and then using TMpegEnc to do a 2pass VBR mpeg2 encode? I definately want to get the best results possible.

 

[oldfart]

Yes. Very good results. I do it a little differently now. I have DV Camcorder and firewire card. I capture to AVI with the firewire card. I still use the TMPGEnc for MPEG2 compression. Its a bit harder doing it analog. When I was doing it that way, I used VirtualDub for the capture to AVI using best quality Huffy compression, then TMPGEnc to do the MPEG2.

It depends on how much video you want on a disc. For me, I wanted 1 HR on an SVCD (MPEG2). This really requires a 2 pass VBR for decent quality. If you could live with 30 - 40 min, CBR would be fine. If you have DVD recorder, CBR is all you need.

 

[Sachmho]

those w/ a gf4, what software do you use