Re: Dream video machine or nightmare?

From: Måns Rullgård (mru_at_inprovide.com)
Date: 05/28/05 

Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 12:14:56 +0200

Captain Dondo <yan@NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> writes:

> On Fri, 27 May 2005 19:19:09 -0400, John-Paul Stewart wrote:
>
>> Captain Dondo wrote:
>>> I have a project where we're trying to capture 4 video signals. For
>>> various reasons, we want to use 1 box if possible. Disk I/O and CPU are
>>> going to be limiting factors.
>> [snip]
>>> I want to use mencoder
>>> to capture the raw data, then post-process it to compress for storage
>>> and distribution.
>>
>> Just out of curiosity: why store raw data and compress it in post
>> processing? Lots of cards (e.g., the Hauppage WinTV PVR series) support
>> real-time hardware compression (i.e., the card does the compression rather
>> than the host CPU). That would eliminate the time-consuming
>> post-processing step, reduce load on the host CPU, and reduce disk I/O
>> requirements (storing compressed streams rather uncompressed).
>
> Well, I looked at the hardware compression cards; they're a bit out of our
> price range. Although it looks like getting hard disk bandwith might be
> the bottleneck...

The price depends on what quality you need. The Hauppauge cards are
affordable, as are the MPEX cards made by BMK. These cards are in the
same price range as pure frame grabbers. For better quality you'll
want something like a Vitec card, but that's where the price starts
getting unpleasant. 

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@inprovide.com

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