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Date:      Wed, 17 May 2000 11:37:04 -0700 (PDT)
From:      just matt <matt@dqc.org>
To:        freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: video recording and encoding on FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0005171115030.28055-100000@dqc.org>
In-Reply-To: <3922B687.BD179A77@intercom.com>

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> > How much diskspace would you require for an hour and a reasonable quality?
> > I think 90 to 120 minutes of video take a very huge amount of temporary
> > space and encoding even on a "fast" PC, say 600 MHz PIII, what seems a
> > good machine for home use, would take more than "just a few hours" or
> > overnight.
> 

Hrm, yes, that would take a huge amount of space.  It's roughly 3 gigs per
10 minutes, so 9 x 3 = 27 gigs for 90 minutes, but you still need space to
hold the mpeg video stream + raw audio data + compressed audio data on top
of the 27 gigs for the 90 minutes of the raw AV stream just do to the way
fxtv compresses things.  For a Video CD quality stream, the multiplexed
mpeg file should be aprox 1hr per cd, or 300-325MB per half hour.  If the
stream size is not even clsoe to that, then something is wrong.  As far as
encoding time, it's not too bad, but it takes several hours (4-5) to
encode 10 minutes worth on my p233.  It's usually the space req's that are
the problem.


It's worth playing around with if you have all the hardware just sitting
there already, but I wouldn't advise blowing a lot of money on big fast
disks thinking things will work perfectly.  I've been mucking with mpeg-1
encoding under freebsd since last fall, and I have yet to get one encoded
stream that conforms to the mpeg-1 standard closely enough to not have
problems.  I mean, for short clips like 5 minutes or so, the streams ran
fine \w the MpegTV player or windows media player, but other players
typically crashed or wouldn't work, windows
based mpeg-1 editors (real expensive stuff, not dinky shareware) wouldn't
edit any of the streams and gave me all sorts of hideous errors, and with
any stream longer than 8 minutes mpegTV and the windows media player would
freeze.  No matter what the length none of the streams would play anything
more than audio through my hardware mpeg-1 decoder.  So, a word to the
wise, don't expect perfect results from the process.  Things prolly won't
get fine tuned until someone can land a copy of the IEC mpeg-1 standard
papers, but those cost over $400 USD so...  I've already ranted about this
in the past so I'll stop now.

I'm supposed to get a low end hardware mpeg-1 encoder come this friday,
and perhaps it it performs admirably under windows come vacation time in
Jul/Aug I may start exploring ways to integrate it into bsd, but... we'll
see how it performs first.  I'm hoping the quality of the streams it will
produce will be on par (or close) to that of the professional vcd's.  Not
to knock mpeg_encode, as it makes a much better picture than that stupid
Xing encoder or other windoze encoders, but the picture quality is not
that of a professionally mastered mpeg-1 stream on a vcd.  That and I
really want some long mpeg-1 streams that comply enough to standards such
that they will work in hardware decoders and a wider variety of software
decoders.

	- Matt



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