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Rainbow Runner Studio for VCD authoring?

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  • Rainbow Runner Studio for VCD authoring?

    I have a Mystique220 and Rainbow Runner Studio collecting dust. The thought occured to me that I might be able to use the RR to record some of my old VHS movies and burn them as VCD's.

    Why VCD? I just picked up a laptop fairly cheap (K62-500 for $30) and it doesn't have a DVD drive. My kids woul dlike to watch a few of the movies that are now on tape on their PC's (it would eliminate the argument on who gets to watch what first). None of the PC's in the house have DVD drives in them.

    I can drop the RR into an old Dell GX200 - P3-866 box I have and use it for video. Any thoughts on this?

  • #2
    It should work okay.

    For those who don't know, the Rainbow Runner by Matrox is a PCI card that captures to the MJPEG .avi file format.

    I see no reason why you couldn't use an MPEG encoder to encode those to be VCD compliant MPEG-1 files.

    You would only need to make certain that you have the latest driver for the card because the early drivers had some issues.

    I took a trip to Seattle in late 2004 and visited one of the Seattle Community College campuses where they have a truly massive video encoding and serving infrastructure.

    Believe it or not, one of their crafty technicians had installed a Matrox Rainbow Runner into one of their broadcast arrays and he said it worked great.

    I told him I used to own one and he smiled and gave me a "high five."

    Jerry Jones
    I found a great domain name for sale on Dan.com. Check it out!

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    • #3
      The RRS was one of the better analog capture cards Matrox made. It had better procamps than any of its sucessors (Matrox cheaped out on the Marvels), allowing it to capture from sources that choked its siblings.

      I used it to produce many, many VCD and SVCD discs. Those Matrox MJPeg sources can also be used on other systems if you install the PICVideo, Morgan Multimedia or MainConcept MJPeg softcodecs on them.

      For encoding I like the MainConcept standalone MPEG encoder. Very fast and it has every setting you'd ever need. TMPGEnc is also nice and has the advantage of some pre-processing filters including many delacers, but it's way slower than MC.

      Then again Uleads DVD MovieFactory 4 is a great option that has the MC encoder built right in along with DVD burning capability. My middle son runs it on his Dell PIII-850 laptop and gets great results burning VCD/SVCD and DVD using an external Lite On burner.

      Dr. Mordrid
      Dr. Mordrid
      ----------------------------
      An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

      I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

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      • #4
        Don't try using it with anything other than Win95 or 98 maybe WinMe

        Were a great card in their day. I still have one but haven't used it since I went to DV several years ago..
        paulw

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        • #5
          I'd advise Win98 SE instead of ME. ME had a few quirks, to say the least. Mine ran great under SE.

          Dr. Mordrid
          Dr. Mordrid
          ----------------------------
          An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

          I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

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          • #6
            I still use RRS for VCDs on a slooooooooooow PC with Win98SE and it works fine.

            Debbie
            We pass this way only once. Make the most of it !

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            • #7
              It would definitely run Win98SE. OF the dos based Win32 OS'es, 98SE is the only one I fully trust.


              Good. I'll drop it in this weekend and get it going.

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              • #8
                RRS still an icon.
                I used huffy at 352x288 (pal) with AV_IO, great quality on playback.
                found Nero 5+ best converter/burner.
                Cheers
                Clem Reid
                Toshiba P200 notebook
                Dual core 2.16Ghz
                2Gb Ram
                2 x 160Gb HDD
                XP Pro
                DVD Multi drive

                Intel P4P800 865PE
                2GB DDR333
                1 x 120Gb SATA Seagate 7200
                WXP Pro
                A06 DVD Writer
                Samsung CDR/RW

                Intel 815EP P111 1ghz
                512mg 133Ram
                40Gb ATA Seagate 7200
                200Gb ATA Seagate 7200
                WXP
                Samsung CDR/RW
                Poineer DVD Rom

                1 X 250Gb ATA Seagate 7200 in caddie
                1X 250GB Maxtor in Caddie

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                • #9
                  Doc, I always thought that capturing capabilities were equally good with RRS or Marvel G200 / G400. All of those using the Zoran MJPEG encoding chip. G450 eTV was a totally different thing, so I have to agree with you there.
                  -Off the beaten path I reign-

                  At Home:

                  Asus P4P800-E Deluxe / P4-E 3.0Ghz
                  2 GB PC3200 DDR RAM
                  Matrox Parhelia 128
                  Terratec Cynergy 600 TV/Radio
                  Maxtor 80GB OS and Apps
                  Maxtor 300 GB for video
                  Plextor PX-755a DVD-R/W DL
                  Win XP Pro

                  At work:
                  Avid Newscutter Adrenaline.
                  Avid Unity Media Network.

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                  • #10
                    Like all the others said, YES.
                    When i had my MilII/RRS i had produced many VCDs and even DVDs. The mjpg capture on the RRS is hardware based which means it does not need a lot of horsepower.
                    As it is already stated, the best OS to go with is Win98SE.
                    mits,
                    System specs: primary : Asus P5B Dlx/Wifi, C2Duo E6600 with thermalright 120 and 120mm Scythe S-Flex
                    model E, 2 Gb Ram Kingston HyperX PC6400, MSI RX1950Pro with ViVo, 2 * WD3200AAKS, Sound Blaster Audigy ES, NIC onborad, IEE1394 TI onboard, dvd-rw Nec/Sony Optiarc AD-7173A, dvd-rom Pioneer 106-s, Win XP SP2. Secondary : Asus P4B266-E, P4 2GHz (Northwood), ram 512 MB DDR400 , 2*80 Maxtor, vga asus 9600XT with vivo, sound card c-media 8738 onboard, NIC D-Link 538TX, dvd-rw sony dru500AX, cd-rw yamaha 2100E, Win2k SP4.

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