24/25/30 fps; videocapturing; mpeg.

Hi Guys,

When I videocapture with Adobe Premiere 5 at anything larger than 320 by
240 frame size, occasionally a frame is dropped. Even at one frame dropped
in every ten seconds or so, this is noticeable... not always, but
sometimes: when the actors are moving about they seem to 'hang' - now
dropping a frame may not be the exact same as adding a frame, but still, it
must be comparable. I can believe that adding one fps (from 24 to 25) is
hardly noticeable, but from 24 or 25 or to 30? Weird!
And what about the opposite, what happens when American TV series are
converted to PAL? What do they do to go from 30 fps to 25? Drop
frames? Can't say I ever noticed this in any programme on our TV. Or with
ntsc videos taped off American TV and then converted to PAL - and I have
quite a few of those.

Which bring me to the next mystery. My VCR plays both ntsc and pal videos.
I have one ntsc video (a few Nikita eps, actually) and it plays just fine.
How does my VCR cope with ntsc videos? By running slightly faster than when
it plays a PAL tape?

OK, on to the next subject: videocapturing. I know a few of you do a lot of
videocapturing (as I do :-) and I have a question. I have a Matrox Marvel G
200 and the Matrox software videocaptures at 352 by 288 framesize; I also
have the Avid Cinema programme which captures at either that size, or
double (704 by 576) - neither of which are a 4 by 3 proportion, which is,
of course, the original signal proportion. It baffles me that Matrox works
with this unrealistic not quite 4 by 3. Yet I get better results with the
Matrox and Avid Cinema software (no frames dropped when capturing at larger
frame sizes) than with Adobe Premiere Pro 5 (the bottom line of the
captured video is unsteady, it shivers and shakes) or with ULead's Media
Studio Pro (bottom line less unsteady but still noticeable than with
Adobe), which both capture at exact 4 by 3 rates. Of course, they must use
the Matrox codecs (or whatever software is used to do the *real*
videocapturing), so the conversion to an exact 4 by 3 size may have
something to do with the unsteady picture.
Neither Matrox nor Avid Cinema nor Adobe Premiere can convert to mpeg1, so
I use Mediastudio Pro for that. (How dare Adobe charge so much for a
programme that doesn't even do conversion to mpeg? Just as well I didn't
pay for it!) Which means Mediastudio converts a not-quite-4-by-3 avi to a 4
by 3 proportion mpeg1. Just as well Mediastudio does a good job with it, no
shivering lines at the bottom....

I had a programme to convert to Mpeg-2 (at least I think that's what it
was) but my computer wouldn't play the resulting file. So I trashed that
programme, then found a player for mpeg-2, then couldn't find that first
programme any more on the Net and trashed the player. Also, of course,
since the newer video standards are not playable on most computers, it's
not much use to put such a file on the Net, people wouldn't be able to view
it on their computers. Apart from which, didn't someone mention mpeg4?
(Where will it end? Mpeg-797204? How does one keep up?)
Anyway, if a good programme exists (one that's not a huge download) to
convert to a good video standard (better then mpeg1), AND a good programme
for people to download to their computers and get those to play those
files, maybe we could get first-rate video clips on the Net?
Those of you experimenting with stuff like that, could you send me an email
and tell me what programmes you use? (Just don't suggest the quicktime
standard, or both Yuchtar and I will flame you :-)

Thanx!

Lieve


Col. Lieve Peten, Commander MarsBase - Mailto:[hidden email]

"That's what life is all about, I guess - The things we never say."
Cmdr. Ed Straker, UFO Series, Subsmash episode.

SHADO/UFO pages : http://shado.simplenet.com/aspects
MarsBase/UFO: http://shado.iwarp.com

--- In [hidden email], Lieve <shado@g...> wrote:
> ... (Just don't suggest the quicktime
> standard, or both Yuchtar and I will flame you :-)

And me. I have a flamethrower also (a Poser (3D graphics) model on
http://www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/3d/fl.zip , picture on
http://www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/3d/spmanfl.jpg ). Quicktime and
Netscape together in the same computer is a disaster.