Hi,

I noticed in your post about selling your Broadway card that you're upgrading to a solution that does both MPEG-1 and -2. This is very new hardware and since I'm interested in such capability (VCD authoring now; DVD later) what cards offer this combination? If it's not too much trouble, could you elaborate a bit on their relative merrits i.e. according to your research thus far, which is the best and/or most cost-effective solution, and/or which one do you have your eye on and why?

Thanks in advance,

Frank.

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), May 13, 2000

Answers

Sorry, forgot to mention that I'd love to hear from anyone else with ideas on this subject as well...

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), May 13, 2000.

The Realmagic DVR does Mpeg1, SVCD and Mpeg2. Visit their web-site at www.realmagic.com

-- Timothy (waithim@hotmail.com), May 15, 2000.

The new ATI All-in-Wonder cards capture in scaleable MPEG 1 and MPEG 2. I haven't seen anything produced with them. I know there have been previous compliancy issues with ATI captures producing non-VCD compliant files, but I believe they've fixed that bug with updated software.

If anyone does have experience with ATI AIW cards, let us know...the cost is quite reasonable, and will probably give us consumers much better quality than Dazzle or VideOh!

-- Ric Dykes (arlington@galaxy-7.net), May 17, 2000.

Tim

I read through the RealMagic DVR website, but did not see SVCD support listed - have you actually used this product ?

Tks, Guy

-- Guy Nicholson (guynicholson@yahoo.com), May 17, 2000.

The ATI AIW is a worry. A combo graphics and MPEG1/2 video card starting at US$200, you'd think everyone on this list would be using it... Hey Ric, maybe you could start a new thread like *ATI AIW good for VCD yet?*

Thanks for the clue about Realmagic DVR, Tim. Would you know how much it costs?

BTW, I found another solution, the DMC (DVD Media Cutter) by Vitec at US$700+ looks the goods and is a combination DVD and VCD authoring solution based around a combo MPEG1/2 card and DVD toolbox software.

At less than half the price, it would be nice to know if one could seriously consider the ATI AIW for VCD/DVD authoring.

Anyone?

Frank.

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), May 17, 2000.

I just visited Rich Aubin's website, he posts here and his website is all about using the ATI AIW for VCD creation. Bottom line, there are new drivers and you can encode VCD- compliant MPEGs with it but the quality isn't great. This must be why most AIW users still post-compress with Panasonic Encoder to create the best quality VCD-compliant video files.

Cheers,

Frank.

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), May 18, 2000.