[KLUG Members] more on 8mm transfer

Scott Thurmond members@kalamazoolinux.org
27 Dec 2001 16:02:13 -0500


No, I don't have to burn them on DVD.  After looking at the cost I think
VHS will be more cost effective - I have a huge stock pile of 8mm so the
cost to put on DVD would be out of site.

On Thu, 2001-12-27 at 15:52, David Hamilton wrote:
> Just curious...Do you really need to write to DVD?
> 
> You can burn mpegs to VCD with just about any cd-burner and most DVD players (never seen 1 that couldn't) will read them...
> 
> www.vcdhelp.com
> 
> Bryan-TheBS-Smith extolled:
> > Russell Yonkers wrote:
> > > Just need to get this ATI card working for video
> > > capture etc now.
> > 
> > Ouch!  I guess I'm just used to using Matrox Marvel (G200, G400, RR
> > G-series, but *NOT* the e450TV), IOMega Buz (in Linux, largely
> > incompatible in Windows) and Pinacle Micro (various models, but not most
> > of them) hardware MJPEG capture boards.  There is a world of difference
> > in the quality, and you won't lose frames at 704x480@30fps.  I have both
> > an ATI All-in-Wonder AGP as well as a 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV and their
> > software MPEG-2 capture just can't handle the datarate over the AGP bus,
> > to memory, to CPU and back to memory -- even on a 1GHz+ Athlon.
> > 
> > For those that don't know, here are your different capture options:
> > 
> > - Pure software (ATI, 3dfx, newer Matrox, most capture cards)
> > 
> > Again, the problem with software is that the data rate is excessive. 
> > You are taking the raw pixels (640x480@16-bit@30fps =~ 20MBps) on the
> > video card, pumping them to memory, having the CPU work on them (and
> > thrashing to memory continously when it does -- which is where the
> > frameloss comes in), then put it back to memory (although it is now
> > reduced to ~1MBps, and then to disk).  That's a _lot_ of traffic in the
> > first few steps -- not to mention the CPU utilization!
> > 
> > - MPEG-2 hardware (Marvel RT2000/2500, others)
> > 
> > MPEG involves a two-step compression process.  First it must compress
> > the individual frames, then compress all frames together.  This
> > seriously reduces the data rate to ~1-2MBps, plus it's already done
> > everything so the CPU needs to do nothing (and the data can go to
> > disk).  For editing purposes, you might not want to compress quite as
> > much, so the rate could be ~5MBps -- but your not bothering the CPU
> > during capture, so there is no problem in handling the flow.  Note, this
> > takes some _serious_horsepower_ -- about 50x what MPEG-2 decoding does,
> > enough to cost thousands of dollars.  Do *NOT* confuse "decoding" with
> > "encoding" -- video chips that can MPEG-2 "decode" (most of which are
> > just "motion compensation") can *NOT* do _squat_ for encoding.  The only
> > "cheap" real-time MPEG-2 hardware codec I've seen is the Matrox Marvel
> > RT2000/2500 series, which runs ~$1,000.  It also only works in Windows.
> > 
> > - MJPEG hardware (Marvel G200/400/RRG-series, IOMega Buz, some Pinacle)
> > 
> > MJPEG is just the first part of the MPEG processs, the compression of
> > individual frames.  This is much easier to do, and can be done with a
> > ~$25-50 codec like the popular ones from Zoran (which are
> > _well_supported_ in Linux ;-).  The compression of individual frames
> > gets the data rate coming out of the card down to about 3-5MBps.  Most
> > of the time, you'll just write this to disk, and not bother the CPU,
> > coming back to it laster for editing and further compression into MPEG-2
> > for publication.  In fact, having MJPEG at editing time can be better --
> > especially versus the crappy MPEG-2 output you'll get from software-only
> > capture.  The only downside to MJPEG is the size -- upto 5x the size of
> > MPEG-2.  But after editing is done, you'll usually compress down to
> > MPEG-2 for distribution.
> > 
> > You can still get PCI MJPEG capture cards for <$200 that work great with
> > your normal AGP video card in Linux (although Windows can be a bit more
> > "finiky").  I also saw the Matrox Marvel G200-TV new on PriceWatch for
> > $62 AGP, $99 PCI (ignore the idiot advertising the "Marvel G550" -- it
> > doesn't exist).  You can use that sucker to capture and edit on even a
> > lowly PII-300MHz (thanx to the MJPEG codec).
> > 
> > -- TheBS
> > 
> > P.S.  This is the reason I bought a DVD-RAM drive back in 1998.  To
> > store the raw MJPEG captures I made on my Marvel G200.
> > 
> > -- 
> > Bryan "TheBS" Smith     mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org    chat:thebs413
> > Engineer   AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.   http://www.linux-wlan.org
> > President     SmithConcepts, Inc.     http://www.SmithConcepts.com
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Linux strives to solve computing issues, not ones Windows created.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Members mailing list
> > Members@kalamazoolinux.org
> > 
>