From owner-freebsd-multimedia Wed May 17 5:31:24 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Received: from dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de [139.174.243.252]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C31237BC11 for ; Wed, 17 May 2000 05:31:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA59142; Wed, 17 May 2000 14:30:57 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from olli) Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 14:30:57 +0200 (CEST) Message-Id: <200005171230.OAA59142@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> From: Oliver Fromme To: freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: video recording and encoding on FreeBSD X-Newsgroups: list.freebsd-multimedia In-Reply-To: <8ftopj$44s$1@atlantis.rz.tu-clausthal.de> Organization: Administration TU Clausthal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: tin/1.4.1-19991201 ("Polish") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/3.4-19991219-STABLE (i386)) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In list.freebsd-multimedia Stefan `Sec` Zehl wrote: > I'm thinking about transfering some videos from my VCR to my computer. > Now I wonder if this is feasible at all. Are there any (free/cheap) > encoders around to compress this huge amount of data into some commonly > used data-format (like mp2/mov/realvideo). And, which cards are > supported for digitising video data? If you want good quality and good compression and you don't have _lots_ of diskspace, then you'd have to use a hardware realtime MPEG encoder. These are not exactly cheap, and you cannot use them in FreeBSD, I'm afraid. (If I'm wrong, please someone let me know...) A single uncompressed (full) frame at VHS resolution (PAL) is roughly 1/3 Mbyte. Those are coming at a rate of 25 per second, so you get 8 Mbyte/s. This is not including audio, of course. Even when you do YCC-conversion and 1:2:2 downsampling of the C components (which can easily be done in software) that's still about 4 Mbyte/s. For a 4h VHS tape that would be 60 Gbyte. Well, some cheap big IDE drives could hold it, but you have to make sure that they're "AV certified", i.e. that they're guaranteed to provide uninterrupted sequential performace without rekalibration pauses or things like that. Once you have the uncompressed video on disk, you can use a software MPEG encoder. There are several to choose from; look at the ports collection. It probably needs some experimenting. Regarding the compression format: I'd recommend MPEG-1 with similar parameters as used on VideoCDs. MPEG is an "open", non-proprietary format, and there's software for almost every OS on the planet. Another advantage is the fact that you can put the MPEG file on a CD-R (using VideoCD-capable mastering software) and then play it on any standard DVD player (or any VideoCD player, of course, but those are getting rare). Regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany (Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) "In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt" (Terry Pratchett) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-multimedia" in the body of the message