MPEG
15 messages in this thread
Is there any way to output to MPEG files.
Chris,
Xing Technology has a MPEG software compression tool and playback utility (or
possibly hardware playback card) for about $995. I don't have the details in
front of me and the latest number I have is quite old (805)473-0145, so maybe
someone can fill in the gaps and/or correct me. There's a couple of other
companies like Optibase (800)451-5101 who have hardware compression cards for
the PC ranging from $2k (non-realtime, low quality) to $20k (realtime, high
quality).
I personally have the Reelmagic Sigma MPEG playback card and I'm quite
impressed with the quality (sound and video, especially at double speed data
rates – 300kb/s) and it should improve over the next year. It blows away
anything I've seen on the PC sofar, at cd-rom data rates at least 🙂 I hear
rumours that display card manufacturers may well include MPEG chips with their
cards within a year if the technology takes off. Hopefully for nominal extra
cost.
Thanks for the info, but, is there anyway to make MPEG files from 3DS? Do the
products you mentioned take FLC files as a source?
Chris:
You may also want to check out the Smacker sample files in the libs here.
Smacker will outperform MPEG on 8-bit data in both playback speed and
compression ratio – and all in software.
Smacker doesn't yet do 24-bit data, so if that's your data, Smacker can't
help you.
->Jeff
I have not heard of Smacker before. Is it DCT based compression?
Chris:
No, a DCT is only useful when you can't do a brute force. Since there are so
many possible combinations of colors in 24 bit, a DCT is used to decide what is
the most probable non-noticable data that can be discarded. Since Smacker is
8-bit based, there are a relatively small number of color combinations.
Smacker tries ALL combinations to get the closest possible color match. So, we
get better quality than an approximation like a DCT function provides.
Scope out our press release here in the libs for features.
->Jeff
Martin,
>> Xing Technology has a MPEG software compression tool and playback utility <<
I've been investing a lot of time lately investigating options involving MPEG.
Though the file format is a standard … all MPEG is not created equal. The
software only option provided by Xing .. will only do 150kbs and less MPEG …
and that will not be as good as 150kbs MPEG done on a higher-end solution. The
software-only player won't doesn't provide much better output than the standard
AVI file. The software only product may be a descent option for "low-end" .. "at
least its better than AVI" type stuff (given you use atleast a ReelMagic card).
If you rely on software only playback .. you won't gain much.
Ang
Ang,
I hope the other chap who originally started this thread is listening in, since
I don't know much about the Xingit! solution. He wanted to know if it would
convert .fli files or .tga files etc.
>> If you rely on software only playback .. you won't gain much.<<
Agreed. That's why I have a reelmagic and am hoping the standard display cards
will include MPEG soon. Maybe it'll become part of the next MPC standard …
I am surprised on one seems to have a fli to MPEG converter. It seems like an
obvious thing to do.
Chris,
>> I am surprised on one seems to have a fli to MPEG converter. It seems like
an obvious thing to do. <<
I'm not sure I agree. Maybe, a .tga to .mpg converter or .avi to .mpg converter
makes more sense. Something that starts with 24-bit data and possibly
interleaved sound seems more likely. That's probably what Xing does.
Good point. I have no idea how much (if any) information would be lost going
from fli to MPEG. Still, there should be an easy way to output MPEG from 3DS.
I think it would sell a lot of copies.
I have some friends that are doing something that sounds weird but it actually
works well for them. The take their flics over to a Video Toaster which is
built-up enough to run them in realtime. They then add their vocals from
reel-to-reel and/or music from CD and sync them with the Toaster. They run all
of this out to their MPEG encoder and therefore get around the rendering to
tape and then encoding (which loses a generation.) They are limited to files
of up to 64 MB but that still gives them something to work with on most of
their animations.
Though I mention all of this, I would not be supprised to find a direct flic to
MPEG software convertor very soon with the charging popularity of MPEG. If you
can, my advice would be to hold out a couple of more months.
It seems like a bunch of people should be working on this as we speak.
AVI's would be best from our point of view, so that you could use editors like
Premier
to do Audio/Video synching. Right now, geting synched 24 bit AVI animations
into MPEG
is a major pain compared to slaping them together in premier and cinecrack'ing
them.
I'm not too excited about having to buy a diaquest & ohter video/audio
equiptment, or a toaster,
or whatever…
3DS outputs the most gorgeous 24 bit TGA files… why would anyone settle for
8bit FLC->MPEG?
MDH 47
Hi Mark,
Do you know the diff between MPEG and Motion JPEG?
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