Announcement

**Brian Ellis** · 12 June 2000, 02:35

Brett

I respectfully suggest you come down to earth if you expect a cheap analogue capture system on a PC to capture digital pro quality footage. I don't know what your input is, but the Marvel is intended to be a little better than super VHS or Hi-8. If you want pro quality, buy pro hardware and software, but you are talking of tens of thousands of $, typically 20 - 50 times what you may pay for a low-cost PC video set-up. Personally, I find that, for the price, it is Marvel-lous and quite adequate for capturing analogue signals and for recording VHS tapes from the edited footage.

After all, do you expect to find a refrigerated cocktail cabinet or the performance of a Ferrari when you take delivery of a Ford Fiesta?

As a sage once wrote, "Youse pays your money, youse gets what you pay for.".

Sorry if this seems harsh, but if you have specific problems, please detail the symptoms and not just shut the piano lid on the player's fingers. We could then probably help you to tweak your system to max performance, but please remember, Marvel is a non-professional, consumer, analogue system, capable of a better resolution than any TV set or VCR, qalthough it is used by some pros and semi-pros.

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Brian (the terrible)

**Dr Mordrid** · 12 June 2000, 09:44

When I want better MJPeg quality I just use the PICVideo MJPeg codec at quality=20. This is equivalent to a data rate of 5 megs/sec and gives very good quality when using effects & titles.

Dr. Mordrid

**Tinnes** · 12 June 2000, 10:21

And it's FREE!!!! unlike the Morgan.

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Get paid to surf http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=MAC649 it really works. Free Money.

**intomisery** · 12 June 2000, 12:52

ok, Brian, I understand where you're coming from and I'm sorry to say that I was expecting a little more from the card. I mean, I'm not a professional myself.. I'm an 18 year old punk kid who uses S-VHS or less.
I just find the matrox mjpeg codec a bit fuzzy. it has this haze over it.. it looks like it's been through the computer. I use RCA (I know I should use S-video) and the output quality is good, but not incredible.
just wondering if another codec would be compatible so I could capture and output with it and retain good data rate/quality.
will increasing my ram to 256 and get a new 7200 rpm harddrive make a difference?

Mordid: Thanks so much for your advice. can you tell me where I can get this wonderful codec and if Marvel will recognize and output it?

thanks a lot guys
-Brett

**intomisery** · 12 June 2000, 13:09

nevermind the address, found the codec... thanks..
will give it a try when my card comes back from the shop.. it messed up on me big time.

but can you still tell me if the codec is suppored by the marvel.. i.e. will I be able to capture using it and output through marvel a file used with this codec

thanks again

**Dr Mordrid** · 12 June 2000, 14:36

You can capture with PICVideo and render to it as well. The problem is that the Matrox PC-VCR program doesn't support external codecs for capturing. For this you need to use either AVI_IO ($25 and worth every penny), VirtualDUB, Microsofts VidCap or Uleads MSPro capture program. They allow the use of a custom compressor.

Dr. Mordrid

[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 12 June 2000).]

**fluggo99** · 12 June 2000, 20:49

I suggest you make sure your card's output is tweaked, as per the settings listed <a href="http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002171.html">here</a>. You'll find those settings in control panel; either under a separate "Matrox Display Settings" control panel or "Advanced..." on the Settings tab of the Display control panel. (Well, okay the settings aren't right there, but I'm too lazy to spell it out. Good hunting.)

**intomisery** · 12 June 2000, 22:56

One more quickie please
will getting more RAM (256 or even more) and getting a dedicated fast scsi or 7200 RPM maxtor make a difference to capture quality when it comes to using the marvel and various codecs?
I'd love less than 4:1 compression.. 6 MB/second or more.

thanks again!

**intomisery** · 12 June 2000, 23:05

P.S.
anyone tried Cacheman for playing with various cache/memory settings?
any other tips for increasing NLE performance.. perhaps to sustain higher data rates and get better overall capture quality?

**Patrick** · 13 June 2000, 02:00

A lot of us use Cacheman. The Doc has mentioned it many times. I don't know if there's any definitive settings, but I'd also like to hear any further comments on how to enhance the various settings for individual computers.

I'm no expert, but I don't believe you're going to be able to increase the quality for MJPEG much over the factory settings without sacrificing reliability. You can lower the compression ratio by tweaking the registry, but you can also end up destabilizing the card's capture and playback capabilities.

Increasing the RAM will do nothing in regards to image quality. We've discussed this many times here before. Increasing the amount of RAM may decrease rendering times for some procedures, but that's about it.

Why are you limited to using a composite signal? You'd achieve much superior quality with an S-video input. I think if you moved in that direction you'd be way further ahead with image quality than by messing about with different codecs, compressions, harddrives, RAM, etc.

It doesn't matter how efficient the computer or capture card is, if you're supplying an inferior signal, the resulting video image quality is going to look like crap.

[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 13 June 2000).]

**Spielberg** · 13 June 2000, 06:07

Intomisery,

If you love less than 4:1 compression, how about no compression at 10 MB/sec?

Try HuffYuv 1.3 (http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html).

With the performance improvements in version 1.3, I am able to capture full resolution with my PIII 500MHz and a 7200rpm UDMA Harddisk.

Spielberg

**intomisery** · 13 June 2000, 07:13

Whoa Mr. Spielberg, I'm extremely EXTREMELY excited. please, tell me more!! Marvel will accept this codec.. capture using it and output video when it detects it?
how do I manipulate the card settings so it will play the files created with this codec??
And although it will bring the compression down, will quality go up? this is my main concern...
as it stands right now, the marvel card + the matrox mjpeg codec don't seem at all loss-less (you can see that it's been run through a computer), hence my mad run around for an alternative..

thanks all

[This message has been edited by intomisery (edited 13 June 2000).]

**Walrus** · 13 June 2000, 11:47

intomiseryz:
Prepare to be even more excited. Marvel (with the YUY hack) will easily capture with this codec (at least it will on my Celeron 550) Once you install the codec, playback is no problem (assuming you have a G400-based system, if it's g200, you will still play them back, but not through TV-out) As for the quality, huffyuv is a loss-LESS codec, meaning that the compressed stream will decompress exactly into the full UNCOMPRESSED datastream. On my system I seem to average around 8MB/sec for full resolution capture.. and the data coming through is exactly the same as if I were capturing YUY2 raw. There is NO lossy compression at all, therefore no generational loss (in theory).

**intomisery** · 13 June 2000, 15:18

Walrus:
it's the "in theory" that's the problem
is it the matrox mjpeg codec that's giving it a lossy look or is it the marvel g400 card itself?

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Codecs & Marvel's less than pro quality

Codecs & Marvel's less than pro quality

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