Hardware MPEG Encoder

E

Escher

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2000
Messages
496
I'm looking at getting a hardware encoder to help reduce the time it takes to create DVD movies from my miniDV camcorder. I've been looking at the Hauppauge PVR250 or 350, but are there others that can do MPEG-1/2 encoding just as well for less cost?

Also, I'm assuming that by just installing one of these cards that software tools like TMPGEnc will be able to take advantage of the hardware. Am I making a poor assumption?
 
The 250/350 type cards encode TV into MPEG2, they have very little to do with what you want although you could (maybe) plug it into a 250MCE and do what you want (video capture). If you really want to reduce encode time then upgrade your system.
 
Hmm ... so there's no software package that can take advantage of a hardware solution to do the encoding for DVD-compliant MPEG-2?

I'm not set on any particular card. I just want a solution that will work for my problem.
 
Probably but I'm not to familiar since it sounds like it would be a "professional" thing meaning that it would cost a few hundred if not thousands of dollars. It's just that the way the 250/350 style cards are made for encoding TV and not for speeding up general MPEG2 encoding, different ball game from what I understand. Think of it as when DVD drives first started coming out how you had to use a hardware card hooked up to the drive so that it could decode MPEG2. Well you can still buy something like that but systems specs have gotten so good you no longer need a dedicated card for it. From what I know the software you listed is all software based and is dependent on the CPU and I think it's optimized for a P4 too.
 
No, you will need something that will capture it and then you can use TMPGEnc to cut it and so forth. Since its allready in mpeg-2 format all you really need to do is cut it anyways.

You can get a hardware card and encode into mpeg-2 with it but you better have some hardware there to back it up too. and it still wont look as good as a hardware card. You can find a hardware card 120 and less, its worth it.
 
Sounds like you know a little something about this Ryokurin. What hardware card would you recommend?
 
are you talking about transfering through minidv?

its already MPEG2... your just cutting and moving video... if its slow you either need a faster machine or faster disks
 
FLECOM said:
are you talking about transfering through minidv?

its already MPEG2... your just cutting and moving video... if its slow you either need a faster machine or faster disks
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DV != MPEG2, sir
 
Escher said:
I'm looking at getting a hardware encoder to help reduce the time it takes to create DVD movies from my miniDV camcorder. I've been looking at the Hauppauge PVR250 or 350, but are there others that can do MPEG-1/2 encoding just as well for less cost?

Also, I'm assuming that by just installing one of these cards that software tools like TMPGEnc will be able to take advantage of the hardware. Am I making a poor assumption?
Click to expand...
So let's get this right, you want to import movies off your mini-DV through firewire directly into a hardware encoder? Why? Edit, then compress. Otherwise, your stuff won't look as good as it could. If space is an issue, buy a new hard drive instead.
 
Not a lot in this thread makes sense, why would someone look to a TV tuner to help speed up miniDV tranfers?
 
CrimandEvil said:
Not a lot in this thread makes sense, why would someone look to a TV tuner to help speed up miniDV tranfers?
Click to expand...
I'm wondering the same thing. I would first think you'd check to see if the camera supports anything other than real-time transfers. Most don't.
 
To sum up, you can only utilize the MPEG-2 encoder on one of those tuner cards by capturing on one of its analog video inputs. That's not really the best idea, since (as mentioned) you are going digital -> analog (in the camcorder for analog out), then analog -> digital (on the capture card), reducing your quality. You should be looking at Firewire (which I would guess you are using now) for transferring the video, in which case you get no benefit. Unfortunately, I am not aware of a solution that would help you, though they may exist.
 
Zuht said:
To sum up, you can only utilize the MPEG-2 encoder on one of those tuner cards by capturing on one of its analog video inputs. That's not really the best idea, since (as mentioned) you are going digital -> analog (in the camcorder for analog out), then analog -> digital (on the capture card), reducing your quality. You should be looking at Firewire (which I would guess you are using now) for transferring the video, in which case you get no benefit. Unfortunately, I am not aware of a solution that would help you, though they may exist.
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There are definately high-speed DV decks that you could use, but that's not within the budget of mere mortals.
 
theacoustician said:
Why would he want to record to an uncompress digital media, go through a D->A converter to go into the card, let the card do an A->D, then encode it lossy to mpeg before editing. That makes no sense.
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Apologies, i evidently wasn't reading carefully enough. I am trying to pimp the card though so somebody will try it and report back to us... ;) :p
 
SJetski71 said:
Apologies, i evidently wasn't reading carefully enough. I am trying to pimp the card though so somebody will try it and report back to us... ;) :p
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I'd be happy to try the card and report back ... if someone wants to send me a sample.
 
you need something like the matrox RTX.100. this is the solution you are looking for. since that card is roughly $1000 you may be better off spending your money elsewhere to improve your video editing performance. for instance, a dual xeon system with some fast scsi disks would make a huge difference over your run of the mill gamers machine. if you already have something like that and are STILL looking to improve performance then look at the matrox card.

btw, they also have an RTX.10, but that is not doing much in hardware hence the lower price.

and anyone who tells you minidv is recorded in mpeg2 either had a big bowl of crack for breakfast or has not had their first cup of coffee yet ;)
 
Ok, I think I've generated a bit of confusion due to my confusion on hardware MPEG2 encoder cards. :D

What I'm currently doing, and hate, is transferring the video via firewire to my harddrive in uncompressed DV-AVI format. That's the easy and least time consuming part. Next, I cut/splice/etc the video and add titles and transitions and save it back to DV-AVI format. Again, this doesn't take long, less than an hour most times.

The time consuming part that I can't stand doing is the conversion from the DV-AVI to MPEG2 so that it's suitable for burning to DVD-Video. This takes roughly 9 hours to do on my current machine (Athlon XP 1800+). I was hoping, unsuccessfully it seems, that one of these TV capture cards with a built-in MPEG2 encoder would help to cut that time down.

I don't care if it's a TV capture card or not. But if there does exist a hardware MPEG2 encoder that I can offload the conversion process to, then that's what I want. I'd prefer cheap, but if I had to drop a load of cash to end my misery, I'd do it unless it's outrageously priced.
 
Escher said:
Ok, I think I've generated a bit of confusion due to my confusion on hardware MPEG2 encoder cards. :D

What I'm currently doing, and hate, is transferring the video via firewire to my harddrive in uncompressed DV-AVI format. That's the easy and least time consuming part. Next, I cut/splice/etc the video and add titles and transitions and save it back to DV-AVI format. Again, this doesn't take long, less than an hour most times.

The time consuming part that I can't stand doing is the conversion from the DV-AVI to MPEG2 so that it's suitable for burning to DVD-Video. This takes roughly 9 hours to do on my current machine (Athlon XP 1800+). I was hoping, unsuccessfully it seems, that one of these TV capture cards with a built-in MPEG2 encoder would help to cut that time down.

I don't care if it's a TV capture card or not. But if there does exist a hardware MPEG2 encoder that I can offload the conversion process to, then that's what I want. I'd prefer cheap, but if I had to drop a load of cash to end my misery, I'd do it unless it's outrageously priced.
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There's no cheap card that's going to do what you want. Getting a better processor is really the best bet here.
 
They're not cheap just forget it) just upgrade your CPU and get some memory (like a 1 gig) then you'll be good to go.
 
Yah, I've been meaning to upgrade to a P4 2.4c-3.0c 875p type system. Guess I might as well initiate that now.

I have a similar setup at work and it does help. I think it cuts down the 9 hour encode to about 4 hours or so. Still a hefty chunk of time for encoding a 30 minute video clip though.

Ah well.
 
Macs are traditionally multimedia workhorses. The only people that buy them, it seems, do so for the power they bring to image and video editing.

But I'll never go over to the dark side. ;)
 
Escher said:
Macs are traditionally multimedia workhorses. The only people that buy them, it seems, do so for the power they bring to image and video editing.

But I'll never go over to the dark side. ;)
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Maybe traditionally, but now it's also UNIX geeks who are picking them up. UNIX on a laptop, w/ a RISC processor? First thing I asked is where to sign up... ;)
 
Hey Escher. I hear ya.

I'm using Pinnacle Studio on a P4 1.5 GHz and it takes 4 hours to render a 1 hour movie. That's the price I pay for using consumer video editing software.

Here is the answer you are looking for... although it's a bit pricey.

What you are referring to is a REALTIME system... You edit, and the rendering and compression happens in real time, with no need to wait for it to render.

These solutions do include a hardware PCI card to help accelerate rendering. But, these cards are not available separately because they are part of the hardware/software package.

Matrox RT.10, Canopus Raptor RT2, Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Avid Mojo... There are many realtime solutions out there... they start at about $500 and go up from there.

One interesting note...

Adobe Premiere (software only) costs $500.

Matrox RT.10 with realtime PCI card and full versions of Adobe Premiere, Encore and Audition costs $700.

Although pricey... there are realtime hardware/software solutions that cost only a little more than the cost of the software alone.

On a sad note... A professional videographer friend of mine uses a $50,000 realtime system he purchased only 5 years ago... Now we can do the same kind of stuff for only $1000 on a home computer. :)
 
MScrip said:
On a sad note... A professional videographer friend of mine uses a $50,000 realtime system he purchased only 5 years ago... Now we can do the same kind of stuff for only $1000 on a home computer. :)
Click to expand...

:D Wow
Yeah those Matrox cards are pretty cool, I used one in a Dual G4 rig with Premiere (and then Final Cut) and thought they were just too cool.
 
I've heard some good things about the Matrox cards. If I can find a good deal on the X10 I think I may go for that. The X100 would be nicer though with that real time MPEG2 encoding ability though. Anyone feel like getting me an early Christmas present?

I thought the Pinnacle cards were good too until the digital artist at my company got one. Paid around $1000-$1200 for some ultra super duper professional package and it's never really worked right. Tried their support for a long time. I think he finally gave up trying to get it perfect. Been a year or two now and he's still bitching about how crappy it is at it's job.
 
Escher said:
Ok, I think I've generated a bit of confusion due to my confusion on hardware MPEG2 encoder cards. :D

What I'm currently doing, and hate, is transferring the video via firewire to my harddrive in uncompressed DV-AVI format. That's the easy and least time consuming part. Next, I cut/splice/etc the video and add titles and transitions and save it back to DV-AVI format. Again, this doesn't take long, less than an hour most times.

The time consuming part that I can't stand doing is the conversion from the DV-AVI to MPEG2 so that it's suitable for burning to DVD-Video. This takes roughly 9 hours to do on my current machine (Athlon XP 1800+). I was hoping, unsuccessfully it seems, that one of these TV capture cards with a built-in MPEG2 encoder would help to cut that time down.

I don't care if it's a TV capture card or not. But if there does exist a hardware MPEG2 encoder that I can offload the conversion process to, then that's what I want. I'd prefer cheap, but if I had to drop a load of cash to end my misery, I'd do it unless it's outrageously priced.
Click to expand...

I cant say I know much about the real-time-hardware side of things, but I'd go for a processor upgrade.

Also, if possible, dont render your titles and transitions to DV before converting to mpeg2. Some people dont notice it, but DV really slaughters artificial colors and text with its compression. If your getting artifacts and wondering why, thats it.
 
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