Mpeg add-on card: which one?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Video CD : One Thread

I make vcd's using the pansonic encoder,and the quality is excellent. With all the filters, bells and whistles on, the encoder takes more than 1 hour to encode 10 minutes of video from avi (on a p2450). I've decided to buy an mpeg real-time capture board, but i don't know which one. A friend suggest Broadway, another Array Video One. The goal for me is to achieve the same quality in real time encoding as i have now w software encoding. Any suggestion?

Luigi (l.deangelis@libero.it)

-- Luigi De Angelis (dean@mclink.it), September 11, 1999

Answers

I've always chosen quality over speed and so have encoded .avi to .mpg instead of capturing it straight to .mpg. Another reason I use s/w encoding is because aside from high quality, it is also cheap. For those who really want quality and still do it h/w, you have to start paying hundreds here. First, forget Dazzle & Snazzi; everything that has to be connected to a parallel port is suspect. After them the cheapest that I saw was MPEGator USB, by Darimvision ($500), which, I'm told, gives very respectable quality. But because filtering has to be done realtime also (filtering, for one, is what gives the Panasonic its excellent quality) you may as well get the M- filter card ($700) also by Darimvision. Things quickly get into the thousands at this point; you already probably know that with Broadway. The original MPEGator PCI-card from Dar is $1200, for example.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@hotmail.com), September 11, 1999.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ