CompuServe Messages

Richard: >> How bad is a recompress of an m-JPEG using an avi software codec?<< This certainly depends on how good the orginal M-JPEG file is. If it was compressed at 4:1 or so, 640×480 it has a good chance of looking pretty good when it's recompressed. Unfortunately, the cards you've mentioned, miro and FAST, are really what I would call "multimedia quality." Not that they're so bad but they exist for a different reason/customer than higher end products like Targa 2000 or Video Vision on the Mac. To begin with they're only capturing at 320×240. This means 3/4 of the frame info is gone off the top before you even get to it doing the M-JPEG compression. Again, that's not catagorically bad and for output to tape you'll get something that is certainly viewable (not quite VHS, but better than a "video rental store" VHS movie that's been watched a few times). Recompressing from one of these sources, though, will yield worse results. FAST, for example, bundles XingCD with the MMP. XingCD is software that will convent and M-JPEG stream to an MPEG stream. What you're doing is making artifacts on top of artifacts. It looks very soft. OTOH, most video you see in a Multimedia evironment is not all that great yet either. Jeff