replacement mpx3000 card for spruce

[BradMiller]

Hi

Does anyone know if there is a replacement card for the MPX3000 for the spruce, or if there is an equivalent card available that I can use....

:thanks:

[Arky]

To the best of my knowledge, the MPX 3000 remained the flagship encoder card for Maestro right up until (and including) Sonic pursued their dubious action against Spruce, the results of which are historic. When Apple bought the Maestro code and ported it to OSX, they made no attempt to support the MPX3000 hardware, and no attempt to develop a replacement hardware encoder card for OSX, since they chose to integrate the (AWFUL!) Compressor 2 software MPEG 2 encoding engine into the DVD Studio 2.x+ authoring environment.

Whether this decision not to support hardware MPEG 2 encoding within OSX was a good or a bad move is now irrelevant. What is, IS.

Therefore, though I would be happy to be proven incorrect, I am extremely certain that no replacement exists for the MPX3000.

If you are really serious about using Maestro with an MPX3000 (since there is no alternative HW encoder for use within the Maestro interface), I assume this is because you already own a Maestro license and wish to take advantage of segment-based re-encoding. IS this the case, or do you simply wish to use an MPX3000 for coventional encoding duties?

Since SD is now, in the eyes of many, on the way out (though I am not yet convinced about that, where SD DVD is concerned), you may be able to find an authoring studio selling an MPX3000 for a reasonable sum (although I expect this will not be sold seperately from a Maestro license and workstation). You could try making a request to buy one from a contributor to Tully's DVD List.

Do bear in mind that a genuine Standard Def Scenarist 3.1 license can now be obtained for about £2,500, which, if you are authoring professionally, is something of a bargain (I'm well aware of DVDLab but Scenarist is tried-and-tested at the professional level). Scenarist offers much more authoring power, down to Spec level, without nasty abstraction layer issues (although, on the logical level, at least, many of the shortcomings of DVD Studio Pro and Maestro can be overcome, using 3rd-party applications).


If you can be more specific about your true requirements (i.e. professional or personal use, plus specific technical reason(s) ) for seeking an MPX3000, I can offer you more specific advice.

Regards,

Arky.

[Mug Funky]

i think the SD-2000 by sonic has the same chipset and features.

the MPX's were pretty good though. they still get a lot of use these days. ratecontrol was pretty crap though - but they excelled at CBR, and can still deliver better low bitrate CBR than most software options today.

[edit]

btw, if you want segment based re-encoding within spruce it's actually quite do-able in software - put 2 markers around the spot you wish to re-encode, make an avs with those timecodes in them (a script that converts TC to framecount is very handy), encode in your favourite program, then "insert segment at playcursor" in spruce. save before and after because it tends to crash a bit when this sort of thing is happening.

doing it this way is advantageous even if you do have 3 MPX cards. no wasting deck time, more options to filter the picture for compressibility, etc.

if your MPX card is dead you might be able to get some life out of it by resoldering parts of it. i'm out of my depth there, but i've seen dead (almost irreplaceable) cards rescued by simply rebuilding them...

[Arky]

Hey Mug Funky, methinks Brad's left the planet, at least as far as this thread's concerned! ;)


I wasn't aware that the SD 2000 uses the same main chips as the MPX3000, though it seems logical, since such LSI chips were relatively few and far between, for such specialist purposes.


Arky.

[BradMiller]

Thanks for the responses guys - Arky I did leave the planet a bit but I am back :-)

I have noticed on the card one chip does not look happy so I will see if I can get it repaired.
I also use the spruce to encode video straight to mpeg2 for a digital signage network - it was the quickest way to get betacam tapes to mpeg but it used the card which is now dead, thinking of getting a black magic decklink HD capture card and just using the input from the betacams to convert videos with Adobe....