MJPEG vs. DV

[Phire]

Ok, im starting to get fedup with my G400-TV becuase of the many problems i'm having with it, one of which is major which you can see in another post i've put up.

NOW, im on to searching for a new capture card, and i need to know the details. I've read on videoguys.com that MJPEG cards have a higher data rate than DV.. Sometimes 2x or even 3x more.. Does this mean the quality is lower than MJPEG?

Also, is there any DV card out there that just has analogue? I dont intend on using it with a cam. I just need one that can use composite and is under or around 500$

Also.. I'd be most greatful if someone could show me a fullsize DV screenshot of anything.

[Walrus]

Well the basic differences between MJPEG and DV are as follows:
MJPEG uses a single quantization (SP?) matrix for each frame. DV splits the frame into areas, each with it's own matrix. This gives DV an inherent advantage in keeping as much detail as possible. On the other hand, DV is locked at a very specific data rate (about equiv to Marvel's maximum). Some MJPEG capture boards can capture at higher data rates, at which point MJPEG can look nicer than DV. However, all things being equal (with both at about 3MB/sec) DV looks better than MJPEG.
As for analog in.. I think Sony sells some kind of Analog->DV device
This all said, if you want max analog quality, invest in a RAID setup and use a good quality TV card and capture YUY2 raw. That gives the best possible quality (for any kind of reasonable cost)

[Phire]

Seems most DV cards that have analogue with them are out of my price range.. Also a RAID setup would be quite costly also..I belive over 800?

I wasn't considering buying another MJPEG card, but if these cards can do higher datarates than the Marvel then I think they're worth it. I'm assuming the Marvel has a datarate of 3mb/s.. well on videoguys.com i'm reading that the Studio 10 DC+ has a data rate of 6000.. twice as much as the marvel, but it does 640x480.. not really a problem considering that the marvel captures are close to that minus the borders. And it's only 199$

Another thing, the DC50 has 7000 but goes for 1,499$ :P. It seems to have the highest data rate for PC MJPEG cards. What really shocked me is that the ToasterNT card has a data rate of 22500 and it says its uncompressed and costs 3k.. what would be the use of that if all cards can do uncompressed video?

And it seems macintosh has better MJPEG cards than PC.. their cards go as far as 9000 datarate.

[Walrus]

Phire: IDE RAID setups aren't terribly expensive actually. I think the Promise IDE RAID card is under $100. Pop in 2 20 gig 7200 RPM IDE IBM hard drives and add in a $100 stereo TV Tuner board and you should be able to capture "uncompressed" YUY2 at datarates around 20MB/sec for a total investment of about $600-$700. The nice thing about doing things this way is you can use software MJPEG codecs assuming your system is fast enough like the free PicView codec. I think it maxxes out at about 10MB/sec with 4:2:2 color space.
If you have a 500mhz+ Celeron/P3 or Athlon, you should be able to get away with this. Even if you don't want to do RAID, you can just use PICView to get lower compression rates than the DC50.