I have a DV clip and want to capture it for SVCD. My plan is to download the clip to my harddisk through firewire, then use bbmpeg to generate SVCD-compliant files and finally create the SVCD with I-Author.

Is the process correct? Do I miss out anything?

-- Daniel Lee (siangneng@hotmail.com), March 21, 2000

Answers

Daniel

Here a few things to consider:

I donot have the burner program but you should get an excellent output from it. My tests with bbMPEG gave very good quality when played with the decoder card to the TV. You will find it is quite slow in encoding, hope you do not have 20 minutes worth to encode. You do not say how long the clip is so I will add the details as a result of my tests.

I take it your talking about using the standalone version and not the Premiere plugin.

I have not checked the input limit on the encoder, just remember that it might be a low as 9 minutes or maybe 18 minutes in the standalone version, I would suggest you consider playing it safe with 9 minute captures and use the option to batch the files into ONE output file, otherwise your running the risk of it cutting out a 9 minutes, maybe 9 hours after it starts. The fact that this encoder is the only one to address the batch to a single output file suggests to me that it will have a 2G input limit. They are to be congratulated in coping with the bill gates limit that no one else has addressed in the standalone versions. If your using W2000 you will not have the limit, that only applies to w98, W95 NT etc.

I would do a test encode first and check the output log to see if you have VBV under or over run as it may be necessary to change the VBV buffer settings to stop at least under run in the buffer. Its the only encoder that suggests that there can be problems with the VBV buffer size in Mpeg-1 & mpeg-2. Quite a program, at least it will resize from the 720 x 480 size you will probably start from.

Good luck, the process will surprise!

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 21, 2000.

This 2/4 GB limit is an "AVI file type" limit. There are also limits depending on operating systems for "file size" for any file. You can have an operating system with a 64 terabyte file size limit and any AVI file will still be limited to 2/4 GB. Depending on how you have your system set up, you can have either AVI 2 or 4 GB limitations. But many applications will still not recognize any AVI file over 2 GB.

Also, there "are" other encoders that do multiple AVI to single Mpeg batch encoding. One that comes to mind is the Heuris Mpeg encoder.

-- rich (richa@home.com), March 23, 2000.

Rich, Why do you say the 2/4 GB is AVI file limit? Have you really verified this? I am now trying to set up a W2000 system to see if the 2/4 GB limit could be overcome. If what you said is true, then it makes it pointless to do it at all.

-- Daniel Lee (siangneng@hotmail.com), March 23, 2000.

Daniel

Here are a couple of examples. Adobes edit program Premiere 5.1c is limited to 2G on input and outputs. The Ulead VideoStudio programs and MS6 have the full 32 bit limit of 4G. The LSX encoder version 3 has a 2G limit on avi's as inputs and there are others, I have not actually tested Panasonic to the limit but I was told it had the 2G limit as well.

The 2G limit on a half size frame gives you between 27 and 35 minutes for an avi. With full frame sizes about 9 minutes. Twice those figures in the 4G case, so unless your using full frame captures there is not really a problem.

Windows 2000 does not it seem have these limits at all - see other postings on this subject.

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

Judging from what you said, the real limit is apparently in the 32- bit format itself. This means that both the operating system and capture software must operate in 64-bit in order to break the 4 GB (2^32)limit.

Is Windows 2000 a 64-bit system? If yes, then it's high time software writers start developing 64-bit based capture software. Don't know how easy or difficulty it is for them to do this.

-- Daniel Lee (siangneng@hotmail.com), March 23, 2000.

I am not skilled enough to answer that, but gee I do know what problems these limits cause in NLE and VCD authoring from full frame capture sources. Spent most of the last 5 years getting fixes to get the most & best I can out of the system limitations.

One of the troubles we have is the many different uses for the VCD, it took me a while to realise that a lot of people here are only capturing/copying from professional source material, no editing and only a few are actually putting edited home brewed movies to a VCD.

Let me just give an example. In the later programs with w9# we are limited by the 4G (MS6) but if you edit at all then you must also re- render the whole file and that means you endup using twice the hdd space, so with my system I am stuck with an 8G from 10G space limit as the requirement for 18 minutes of full frame video (216M/minute x 2) UNLESS I do an intermediate resize in another codec to the correct frame size in which case I can make a 35 minute video track before the hdd becomes a problem. Anyone not editing is not subjected to the same restrictions and no doubt has a hard time understanding what this fellow from down-under is on about.

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