Raw AVI to VCD/DVD vs mid-range hardware MPEG

[Frank Marshall]

I realise there's been a bit of discussion about this already but I can't seem to find any conclusive opinions on the subject. It seems that to make really nice VCDs (and DVDs too I suppose) you need either raw AVI captures at full resolution or a really good hardware MPEG encoder.

There's a new Vitec card called the DVD Cut Machine (DCM) priced at around US$700 which features MPEG-1 and -2 in and out and on-board audio. It also comes with DVD authoring software.

What I'm wondering is whether this card might offer better quality results than software encoded raw AVI captures or whether I should be thinking about a RAID array to capture those big raw AVI files for software encoding.

I think set-up costs would be about the same when DVD authoring software is factored into the raw AVI solution.

Thoughts anyone?

[Dr Mordrid]

My question about this product is if it can output to a deck the edited MPEG streams. The specs show the outputs to be passthroughs, which indicates to me that they are for monitoring the source only. Looks like it's for CD/DVD authoring only and not video editing per se.

As long as that's all you need I guess it's OK, but it seems a bit pricy to me.

Dr. Mordrid

[Joxx]

If you use Huffyuv lossless codec when you are capturing AVI, you will have a fullscreen average datarate about 8MB/s, the theoretical maximum is 20MB/s but the realworld maximum should not be higher than 15MB/s. As long as you have a decent 7200rpm HD you should not necessarily need any RAID array because these 7200rpm drives do about 25MB/s sequential write.

But don't get me wrong, a RAID array is defenitly not a negative thing, if you want one - go for it!

Perhaps RAID is becoming standard since Abit is now including an ATA100 RAID controller with a new motherboard.

[Frank Marshall]

Thanks guys,


Doc:

If that's the case, forget it! I thought those video-out jacks were for dumping to tape...


Joxx:

Thanks for the info. I know the latest Maxtor 40plus, Quantum LM, and IBM GXP75s can do around 30MB/s transfers but even a 30-45G drive starts to look small when working with raw AVIs