Well not quite but ......

Posters on this site have, for some time, talked about making vcd's at higher data rates and if one had the right set top one was in another world. I was not lucky in my choice of a DVD player. SVCD has been talked about also.

Some of us have also talked about archiving for the future with DVD compliant mpeg2 files so that down the track we can perhaps use the DVD authoring process on old projects.

Well here is something for you all to consider, particularly those that have archived DVD compliant files of their projects. I have several produced with the LSX encoder at the normal vcd frame size of 352 x 288 (PAL). They cannot be played on my PC without being jerky (at a low frame rate of about 6fps according to windows media player instead of the required 25fps).

I have just up dated to a DVDrom in the computer, a Pioneer 104S (sorry EMartinez and Lone Ranger, the supplier said 114, another case of not knowing what they sell) and after a lot of searching the web a RealMagic DVDmagic PRO mpeg2 decoder card. I believe it may still be marketed as the Hollywood Plus in the States. Price around $80US, but I bought locally from the web because the $50US handling charge brought it up to almost the local Australian price.

I asked for information about hardware encoders on this site and Mattias came back off line with a discussion about this card as being excellent - thanks Mattias your spot on.

Its a PCI card and has been around for a long while it seems. I had some trouble getting my system to see it and had to reposition the PCI cards, 3 of the 4. The problem was that the mounting on the card was such that it would not allow the card to seat in the slot so I had to find one that it would, (I removed all PCI's but the video card) and only one of the 3 slots actually allowed it to seat correctly, hell of an exercise.

I then installed the software and presto she was up and running. My VCD's were as smooth as silk on the computer screen and because I use a professional studio TV monitor for editing I connected the "Magic" card to the TV in svideo and wow some picture, better I thought than my Philips DVD produced but I will have to compare to confirm that.

Then I got out one of my mpeg-2 DVD compliant archives and wow what a picture on the monitor that was. I often wondered what an Mpeg2 of the same source material and frame size would be like. I switched to the computer and there it was at the full frame rate of 25fps (not 6fs as was previously the case). Some card this Magic thing!

So here I am with an old 233mmx cheating bill gates of more money because I refuse to update to a you beaut 500 etccc computer when this sort of hardware is around to make it possible to effectively used old equipment, were do I find a PC these days with 4 PCI slots and as many other ??? slots? Now I need to hire a DVD, the deal included five free DVD hires and then I must connect the PC to the lounge room TV.

So there you are my friends, I wonder if any enterprising set top manufacturer will ever do the equivalent of the Magic card; provide an option to actually select and play mpeg2 files from a CD in a DVD player as well as the normal DVD/VCD's, bet it will never be Sony.

Now for the down side: I use VideoPack 4 for interactive VCD menus and the Pioneer/RealMagic card seems to have some crazy logic. It does not automatically "see" the menu that actually resides in the "segment" folder, it lists it in the play list and if you actually select it then it runs interactively from the main menu and allows the use of all sub menus as well. On automatic it goes straight to the 1st video track when it senses a VCD. I think RealMagic will be notified of that. Maybe I missed something as I only played for about 30 minutes after the earlier troubles.

A most interesting few bucks in this serious world of home brewed VCD's.

Cheers!

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 22, 2000

Answers

what? boooring.....

-- shuttit! (shutit@tightlipped.co.uk), February 22, 2000.

hey Ross thanks for the info, ignore the child who had posted above mine. I to would like to encode things as mpeg 2 ( i have some things that will let me do this to some extent) but i figure until i can afford the damn dvd burner (currently around the 4000.00$ mark) i will stay with my high rate(2500) vcds. But its good info to know. thats what makes these post boards great--rock on

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), February 22, 2000.

Forgot to include the card works in conjunction with a normal CDROM and will play VCD's and mpeg files with the same quality output. Guess the DVDrom just adds DVD's to the list of what it can do.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 23, 2000.

It also does on-the-fly PAL -> NTSC or NTSC -> PAL conversions so any Mpeg (vcd, Mpeg-1, Mpeg2) can be put directly to vhs, Svhs, hi8 or any video tape.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 24, 2000.