Good I got your attention.

My friend let me borrow his Dazzle the other night. It was my first adventure into video capture. I set it up, captured a TV show, edited out the commercials and burned my first VCD. No sweat. The capture quality was low, but the capture and editing software is nice.

How excited I was today to get my Matrox Marvel G400 TV in the mail today. (www.outpost.com $289 out the door). I set it up at work, which was a pain in the ass. Mostly because the software package is weak. Well, I got it installed, and I was depressed at how bad the software sucked. Avid Cinema might be ok for editing home movies, but for editing out comercials it's weak. You have to import into it's own proprietary format. The Matrox PC-VCR software is ok. I really like the report feature, but you just can't fine tune the capture data rate and video quality as much as I would like.

What editor and capture software is everyone using with the Matrox Marvel G400? What settings should I use to make the best quality VCDs? I'm sure the card is great, if I can just get some software to compliment it.

Also, Avid Cinema and Matrox PC-VCR handle the line input poorly. Even when you kill the applications, they still send the sound to the line input which keeps playing on your speakers. You have to then use the Microsoft tray bar speaker volume to mute the line in. It's annoying.

Then again, maybe I'm just stupid and using the damn thing wrong. Either way I would like to hear your input. Maybe then I'll sing the praises of the Matrox Marvel G400 TV.

Thanks for reading this far,

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 07, 2000

Answers

I capture with AVI-IO (25$) at 352 x 576 (PAL). AVI IO overcomes the 2 Gb limit of the captures made in AVI format, and has a rock-solid audio-video syncro. On the edit side, I use Premiere 5.1c, but Ulead products (Media Studio and others) are also great. Avid Cinema is too simple. In Premiere, I resize to 352x288 and export to MPG with Panasonic Plugin. Good Luck

-- Brambus (kdwbr@tin.it), March 07, 2000.

The one thing most everyone does worth his salt upon getting hold of a G400 is flushing the bundled Avid Cinema down the toilet because it just plain sucks. Considering that the one great strength of the G400 is the Matrox MJPEG codec I have always wondered why the editing application bundled with it not only does not take advantage of this strength; it forces you to install and accept codecs for .mov and .qt, around which Avid Cinema captures and is based. To pour salt into the wound the maximum capture and output resolution is a heavenly 320x240 (which not only doesn't correspond to quarter-res CIF 352x240 required for VCD, the latter which paradoxically fits neatly with the native resolution of the MJPEG codec 704x480) making for a VCD even blockier and nastier than anything Dazzle could aspire for. In any case Matrox saves the day if only for the MJPEG-codec and the G400 hardware itself, so the thing to do is this: capture using the PC-VCR application. There are enough presets in it to produce our MJPEG-coded AVIs. Put color saturation to maximum (because Panasonic later decreases it). Choose 352x240 for digital-sourced material, 352x480 for VHS material. On the recording tab on the PC-VCR properties these settings are what you get when you slide the bar for quality and HDD space. Choose minimum compression for the video tab, and CD-quality sound. Play with these controls and get a feel for the quality of AVIs eventually produced. By the way, after installation of that G400, the FIRST thing to do is "introduce" your capture drive to the G400 by performing drive tests or benchmark or somesuch which is included as one of the applets after finishing installation successfully. This is so that the G400 "knows" your HDD is capable of such and such high data transfer rates, and will therefore allow you to capture high quality video all the way to 30fps, 704x480 CIF full- res, and full 44k/16bit/stereo audio, this is what the MJPEG codec allows for at around >3MB/s data transfer rate. In any vidcap card installation job in fact, it's essential to always benchmark the HDD so soon after so that the vidcap card and the capture HDD "know" each other. My G200 "knows" that my WD drive can max at 20MB/s, way over the >3MB/s needed for the specs above. The documentation on this G400 is scant, but this should never put you off. THIS is NEVER easy. That's why Dazzle is so tempting to use, and look at the crap you get. How charitable for you to say the Dazzle quality is "low". Come on. It's the absolute pits. Dazzle is among those that give a bad name to VCD quality. After capturing and your AVIs are hopefully sitting on your HDD you open Panasonic and encode. The next day you inspect the created MPEG files and edit them, cutting out unwanted portions by using a wonderful little app called VCDCutter ($20 legally, if you e-mail me I'll tell you where to get it)), join and cut MPEG clips where you want. Then you author your VCD. Oks?

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), March 07, 2000.

It always amazes how people talk about how great the Dazzle is because of it's ease of use, features, etc....and it never fails they mention the quality is low. Isn't quality what it's all about in video? Don't mislead people into buying that piece of crap. I wasted a lot of disks trying to get a VCD that was watchable before I finally returned it.

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), March 07, 2000.

hi all I am useing a G200 PCI, the 352x240 captue is decent and the 704x480 is poor(my HDD is well above the requirements), would moving to a G400 AGP get me any better quality?

thanks

-- shane (madunga@mailcity.com), March 07, 2000.

In response to Al, I used the title "Dazzle better than Matrox Marvel G400 TV!" to get your attention. It worked. Do I think Dazzle is better that the Matrox Marvel G400 TV. No. For my needs, I want high quality, archive worthy VCDs. My intent was not to "mislead people into buying that piece of crap", but to get pepole to tell me exactly why they like the G400 and how it should be used. On the flipside I was impressed with the Dazzles software package compared to the G400. All the G400s bundled software is shit. But, I can always change the software to something better. It's more expensive to change the hardware.

I'm sorry if you misunderstood and though I was advocating the Dazzle. I'm not. But as a beginer it's hard to get good information on these products. It would be nice if there was a post for beginers that said something like:

"If you want the best possible VCD set-up under $300 get the Matrox Marvel G400, the Panasonic MPEG1 Encoder, (a good avi/mpeg editing program, I haven't found a good one yet), encode at 30 fps at 704x480, maximum MJPEG quality, and your resulting VCD will be better quality than a $1500 MPEGator"

Of course, replace my assumptions in the above with the facts where they apply. So far I've used the Dazzle and the Matrox Marvel. I hear the MPEGator is the bomb, but I haven't had the money or the privilage to use one and compare the output.

Therefor I will have to rely on you good fellows for some sage-like advice.

Please let me know what hardware, software and settings you use to get the best results.

Thanks in advance,

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 07, 2000.

I'm sorry...wasn't directing anything at you....Actually when I was originally getting into this "hobby" I did a lot of research on different products buy people I thought knew whwt they were talking about...PC Magazine among others. They all highly recommended the Dazzle so I bought one. When I discovered the actual results I went back and re-read the reviews and they all mentioned that while the features were great that the video quality was fair. I've also seen others on this site (Not you)say how great it is. Check out some of their comments.

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), March 07, 2000.

Oh yeah....After further review, In my opinion, the only way you are going to get the results you are looking for by encoding to MPEG-1 is to go with the higher bit rates. I just don't think it's possible to capture video from a VCR or a camcorder using composite cables and create a Video CD that you can watch on a DVD player on a regular sixe Television set (27" to whatever size) and not have a lot of annoying artifacts unless you encode higher than the standard bit rates. I have tried over and over. Most of the people I've talked with are trying to archive old home movies from camcorders and VCR's that were made before S-Video was available.

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), March 07, 2000.

its because most of you people have to learn how to capture properly when using the damn Dazzle and then you will have some nice results. on the downside you now have the extra encoding step which sucks, but.... all in all i get the same kind of results most of you get when you use avi to mpeg, and i just follow my method of mpeg capture instead

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), March 07, 2000.