Micromv

[el_sr_al]

Hi there,
I'll tell you a story. Sony released its IP5, IP7 camcorders that use this new type of recording format called MICROMV. Suppossedly some type of MPEG_2 format and I thought great, a microscopic camcorder 370 grammes with battery, that records in MPEG_2, therefore I will be able to Use DiVx to transform my recordings in my beloved 3.11 Alpha codec.
I decided to do a bit of research on the web looking for bitter reviews from buyers that scrutinize it properly not like some a**** l****** that thing everything is marevellous and in review from amazon.co.uk I found that american guy that said the following:


"The Bad News:
Here is where the camera is really let down. There is no software that will let you manipulate Sony's MPEG2 output from the i-Link except Sony MovieShaker (comes with Camera). The MicroMV format is MPEG2 Transport Systems which are completely incompatible with DVD MPEG2! There are no applications like Adobe Premiere that let you import Sony MPEG2 Transport Systems. Sony MovieShaker only lets you save as MPEG1 for emailing or lets you save back to the cassette. Grrr.

Forget trying to make DVDs or anything high quality. You should avoid this camera and stick to DV Camcorders for computer editing. Why Sony did not create a plug in for Premiere? or a MPEG2 (DVD compaptible) save option in MovieShaker baffles me. And because you will need to store your work on MicroMV tapes be prepared to pay a lot for them.

As a gadget for taking with you everywhere, 10/10. As a closed proprietary format (MicroMV)- which has nothing to do with DVD MPEG2 - 0/10.

My opinion - Wait a while until Sony fix this. "

Sorry about the long rewiew but I thought it was interesting and would make my questions clearer:

What is the difference btween that MPeg2 transport systems and the MPEG2 used in DVDs?
From your experience is it easy for video editor software manufacturers/developers to create plug ins to deal with new formats??

Is there a way around this format to end up encoding my recording in DIVX??

If I have to go for DV camera instead, what is the amount of hard drive space required per minute in comparison with DVD MPEG2?

Thanks for your time if you manage to get till the end of this posting and even more grateful if you could enlighten me with some answers or comments..

El_SR_Al

[unit01]

Hi,

I did'nt know the sony micro mv format was mpeg I thought it was just consumer dv I was wrong I guess. Anyway if it does mpeg 'transport' and you can save this directly in one form or another on the hard disc there is no reason an existing application like flask or xmpeg could'nt be modded to read and re-encode the file.


In fact there was a version that read the pva files from satellite recorders (satellite dvb uses mpeg transport ) and you could re-encode to avi and vcd, svcd ,dvd type mpeg.

There is a full scene of guys making apps that among other things convert the transmission steams to high constant bitrate mpegs you can play with normal pc dvdplayers without reencoding.

You should find out :-

1. does the camera record mpegI frames (all the frames are recorded independently of one another better for editing) or mpeg IB or Mpeg IBP where an I-frame is encoded (a refererence full independant picture) then a sequence of frames are encoded with the difference of that I-frame usually around 15 frames so when it comes to edit you can only cut with a accuracy of about 1/2 sec for ntsc or for pal it's slightly more about 0.6 of a second unless the editing prog rerenders a new I frame where you wanna cut.


2. what bitrate does the camera use to record? If it uses MpegI frame i'd suggest it should be around 3.5 mega bytes a second if you hope to get quality like a normal minidv camera. ALthough if it uses Mpeg IB or IBP it could get by with less bitrate to get the same quality as minidv it would depend how good the encoding chip is in the cam also noting the editing potental drawback



Anyway have fun shopping :)

[hunzl]

Well a friend of mine has this Sony MICROMV cam.
In my opinion, this suxx.
I am a sort of "expert" in DV editing but this format is totally incompatible to anything.
- It only will be played by quicktime, not by MP.
- With the programm "XMUXER", you can remux the MICROMV to a mp2 stream.
- After this its quite hard to edit this and the put it back to tape as MICRCOMV. The Programm movieshaker is sooo slow, you cant believe !!!!

HANDS OF FROM THIS CAM !
Try better a good old SONY PC 6.


Hope this helps....
Hunzl

[bb]

Pinnacle Studio 8 has Sony MicroMV support built in.

bb

[maxfu]

Good news:
1. The audio is MP2 format. Compatible with DVD.
2. Use Sony MovieShaker to capture the MPEG TS Video. They will be saved in the folder you set when the first time you run MS. And format is MMV. The bitrate is 1.2Mps cbr. The latest mencoder with full codec can read this format. You can use mencoder to encode these files to avi formats with whatever compatible codec you like and I suggest to use CQ setting and Q=1 with pp=md/lb the deinterlace video filter.
Commandline as following:
mencoder.exe "Your_File.MMV" -vf-add pp=md/lb -oac copy -ovc xvid -xvidencopts fixed_quant=1:quant_type=mpeg -o "Your_Output_File.AVI" 2> 2.txt
Then ... you know what to do.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Once you've transfered the MPEG-2 .TS streams onto your PC's HDD. Have any of you tried feeding them into DGIndex?

DGIndex is able to provide basic editing. And will also de-mux the audio and video streams. Making it possible for you to author your own DVD's with say MuxMan or DVDPlannerBasic.


Cheers

[megamachine]

el_sr_al: I've had an MMV camera for several years now and used it for quite a few video projects. I've gotten best results by first using MovieShaker to capture the vids to the HDD. Then I use a command line utility called MMV2MPG, which converts it from transport stream to program stream without re-encoding. Once in that format, I use any one of a number of editors that accept MPGs, or something like AutoGK to encode those MPGs to XviD. The MMV bitrate is 12mb/s and the quality is good enough for my projects. In my opinion, MovieShaker has no other use except to capture. Some editors, like Ulead VideoStudio, claim to be able to capture from MMV cameras, but I have had audio sync issues. With MS and MMV2MPG, no real problems to date.

maxfu: Thanks for the tip about mencoder. I'll give that whirl!

[squid_80]

In this day and age there are many programs that can deal with transport streams, unlike nearly five years ago when this thread was started.