720x480 MJPEG possible on Celeron 500?

[cjv]

Hi,
I have an old computer that is currently running Linux. I was thinking of making a TIVO/PVR type box, but before I repartition and install windows, drivers, apps, etc...I was wondering if this would be enough to capture 720x480 MJPEG@19.

Here are the specs:
Celeron 466@525 (66 FSB)
20g ATA66 DMA
256 SDRAM
ISA sound (hmmm, problem?)

I will add:
Win2k SP3 (is 98SE better?)
iuVCR
Radeon 7500 AIW

Anyone with a similar low-powered box that is able to capture high res MJPEG/Huffy/DV?
Thanks,

cjv

[dar1us]

Hmm, NTFS would be useful, so Wind0ws 2000 could be nice.

I think it may be just about able to handle it, but big old action scenes could pose a threat. You may get some dropped frames. I think anything faster than a 600 Duron/Celeron should fit the bill a lot more wisely. I know you can get a 1.3gig duron for about £35-40 here. That is pretty cheap but I am not sure about celerons. Though... I am aware that if you hot a duron, you would also need a different mobo:) - I aint' just a pretty face.

ISA sound is possible a little crooked for a smooth audio capture, how accurate is the card, exactly what card is it?

If you lowered the capture res below 640 horizontal, it should be ok, one thing that it should do fine is capture at NTSC svcd size, 480x480 it should be able to handle easily.

My advice is you quickly put it together and give it a whirl, it takes not much more that 20-30 mins to build a computer from scratch and windows, with Win2k boot-disks will take maybe an hour and a half without drivers on such a computer. It isn't really that much work is it?

Nice to see that you are making use of your old card we seen the samples from:) - Speaking of samples, I got one for you, it will appear at: www.ab296581.force9.co.uk (sorry, but that is mighty fast service considering I didn't pay a penny:) - I'll call it dar1usMSI.avi or something, sure you will be able to work out which it is. - It'll be there by tommorow morning at the latest.


Now I am off to town to go and see whats happening for the new year.

Happy New Year all and also happy all of the other stuff I should say.

[Mike456]

I'm not sure it it works with 720*480, but 720*240 should not be a problem with huffyuv (probably it's possible with MJPEG too) and you also get great Results with this resolution if you resize it to 720*480 afterwars. But 20 gig is not really very big. A captured video with huffyuv need ~2000-3000 KByte/s and MJPEG also need some space (look at http://www.vcdhelp.com/compmjpeg.htm ). So you probably want to buy a new harddisk some days/weeks later.

[dar1us]

Yeh, I agree, the hard-disk is a little small. I got a 100gig and a 80 gig on my capping machine (main computer). There is 60gig free on each:)

Reducing resoloution to 240 isn't the way to go, it will create too much of a loss of detail, reduicing the horizontal res would be a much better soloution. You can reduce it by eigth's on most cards and that means you will be able to play around until you find the max realistic settings where as at vertical, you can select only one of two, the second resulting in a loss of half of the vertical detail.

[1loser]

I'm using the Radeon 7500 AIW, have a 1.1 Athlon and capture using virtualdub at "352 x 240" and usually get < .06 % dropped frames. I captured 2 hours of video yesterday using MJPEG@19 compression and temporalsmoother set to 2 and got a file size of 7 GB's.

Here's a partial example of my script for making an MPEG-2 video, from the avi file, to play in my DVD player:
________________________________________
LoadPlugin("C:\avs\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\avs\Convolution3D.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\avs\UnFilter.dll")
v=AVISource("speedway motorcycles.avi").AssumeFPS(29.970,True)
b=BlankClip(60,352,240,"YUY2",29.97,1,48000,true,true,$000000)
c1=trim(v,0,8053)+b
c2=trim(v,11663,22624)+b
c3=trim(v,24885,33719)+b
c4=trim(v,36429,45688)

#more lines go in here

alignedSplice(c1,c2,c3,c4)
Convolution3D(0,12,36,12,36,4,0)
BicubicResize(352,480,0,0.60)
Unfilter(4,4)
ResampleAudio(44100)
________________________________________

VCDhelp (http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/98177.php)has a good article explaining the CVD size as compared to SVCD. If you capture at 352 x 480 you need to use a de-interlacer which reduces the quality and slows down the encoding so I prefer to capture at 352 x 240. I have found that using MJPEG@19 compression and 352 x 240 resolution is the best way to go if you plan on converting the file to play in your standalone DVD player.

Especially read this section from the article

"Update
Now, it is a perfect opportunity to clarify a myth here: There is no way to grabb from any analogue source (including TV broadcasts) and with the use of "S-Video in" to get a usefull resolution beyond 384 X 576/480."....."Overall, don't expect higher resolutions beyond 384 X 576/480 with the use of S-Video! It is practicly impossible to have them! And because 384 X 576/480 ain't a supported resolution in any optical media, go straight for 352 X 576/480. And guess what, that is the resolution of CVD!"

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

you really shine now as i senior member,don't you?
dvd has support for interlacing and therefore it DOESN'T need
deinterlacing because standalone dvd player will play it back fine as
the tv itself is interlaced display.......

320x240?
your motorcycles then take a lil stop every so often?
(like every 1/60 of second which is still jerk when you look at it!)
the way you do it,you are discarding every other field,and you're not capturing complete timeline.........
your bikes don't look that fluent in motion,do they.......

alsoif vcdhelp says 352/384x480/576 then why are you using 240?
also this seems like forum thread excerpt,so my message to you is:why did you buy that crap?

svcd pal res is 480x576.........and i prefer to capture at 7xx x 576 and downsize horizontally to 480.....

believe me:VD resizes better than any capture card!

[cjv]

Thanks for all the advice. I know that the specs are low, and the 20 gig drive is kinda small, but I was just using some spare parts I had.

Anyways, I went ahead with it, and unfortunately it didn't work out. The best I can do is 352x240 MJPEG q19, which is crappy VCD res, and utterly useless to me. It can't even do 1/2 D1 without dropping frames. I know I can upgrade it for next to nothing, but I just bought a new laptop, and I have my eyes on a DVD burner and a nice new 3ghz+ hyperthreading P4. :)

cjv