On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 14:21:52 -0500
Fountainhead <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> My old PC is a PIII - 1GHZ (512MB) that currently has a 64MB AIW7500.
> I'd like to use this machine as a dedicated personal video recorder.
> The problem is that the AIW7500 simply can't capture video at full
> 720x480 MPG2 without excessive dropped frames. I have to cut it back
> to 352x480, which I can use at up to maybe 6 m-bit/second before
> dropped frames become an issue. I see that the AIW9600 or 9800 has
> some type of hardware MPG assist. Would either of these cards be able
> to do full 720x480 MPG2 captures on a PIII-1GHZ, or would they do no
> better than the older AIW7500?

You'd be better off getting (a) a faster CPU, or (b) a purpose made
hardware MPEG board such as the Hauppauge PVR-250 or (c) a video board
with full hardware compression such as the Matrox G-200 Marvel (not the
G-400 and later). The faster CPU will be the most versatile solution,
the purpose made MPEG boards generally use relatively uncommon chips
with little software support and Matrox has dropped support on the G-200
series. The hardware assist in the new Radeons is just that, an assist,
it's not full hardware compression.

Before you do anything else though, make sure your system is clean, that
there are no background processes running, and that your disks are
defragged--ideally you should have a drive that is used for nothing but
the video capture files--if you're trying to capture to the same drive
you're using for the OS and pagefile that's going to give you problems
regardless of what you do.

> Thanks.
>


--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

My old PC is a PIII - 1GHZ (512MB) that currently has a 64MB AIW7500.
I'd like to use this machine as a dedicated personal video recorder. The
problem is that the AIW7500 simply can't capture video at full 720x480
MPG2 without excessive dropped frames. I have to cut it back to 352x480,
which I can use at up to maybe 6 m-bit/second before dropped frames
become an issue. I see that the AIW9600 or 9800 has some type of
hardware MPG assist. Would either of these cards be able to do full
720x480 MPG2 captures on a PIII-1GHZ, or would they do no better than
the older AIW7500?

Thanks.

Limit your captures to 352 x 480 or get hold of a hardware encoder Mpeg2
Capture card, such as the Hauppauge PVR which is designed for such tasks. No
analogue capture cards which encode using the CPU will capture without
dropped frames at high quality Mpeg2.

This is why many people are capturing in Avi using low loss codecs such as
Huffy in the video editing arena.

BTW How often have you got the timer function to work on Ati's card? I
rarely have any luck.

> My old PC is a PIII - 1GHZ (512MB) that currently has a 64MB AIW7500.
> I'd like to use this machine as a dedicated personal video recorder. The
> problem is that the AIW7500 simply can't capture video at full 720x480
> MPG2 without excessive dropped frames. I have to cut it back to 352x480,
> which I can use at up to maybe 6 m-bit/second before dropped frames
> become an issue. I see that the AIW9600 or 9800 has some type of
> hardware MPG assist. Would either of these cards be able to do full
> 720x480 MPG2 captures on a PIII-1GHZ, or would they do no better than
> the older AIW7500?
>
> Thanks.