YOu may want to check here http://www.audioscience.com/. I am not sure about the firewire though.

Seems like a simple thing to make ... doesen't it? Several manufacturers make video cards with MPEG-2 hardware encoding. However, they seem to be proprietary. I don't ask for much, do I? All I ask is that people take advantage of inexpensive technology that already exists.

If you mean
ATI All in wonder
or Matrox Marvell 450

these use Ligos software MPEG-2 encoding.
If you have P-III 750 MHz this goes real time.

If you want to spend $3000 - Pioneer makes
DVD based VCR / DVD creator.
You plug DV in and take DVD with menus out.

Sorry i thought you had meant audio cards.

You are telling me that a PIII 750 will encode a 30 minute video clip into MPEG-2 in about 30 minutes? Am I missing something? I have a 650, and a 20 minute MPEG-2 takes HOURS (no editing what-so-ever). I am relatively new to encoding videos, but either the math does not make sense, or I am doing something severely wrong.

>>You are telling me that a PIII 750 will encode a 30 minute video clip into MPEG-2 in about 30 minutes? Am I missing something? I have a 650, and a 20 minute MPEG-2 takes HOURS (no editing what-so-ever). I am relatively new to encoding videos, but either the math does not make sense, or I am doing something severely wrong.
What he means is that you can capture it and have it encode to MPEG-2 on the fly (as you capture) using software, but you need the ATI AIW board.

Here is something that uses a any OHCI firwire card to convert the incoming firewire DV stream to DVD quality MPEG-2 on the fly:

http://www.mediostream.com/products/campegrt

Frawg

This software looks promising.

However, I do not understand how a $150 video card can do real time mpeg-2 encoding, while a PIII 750 cannot (or at least with any ease). Perhaps it is easier to convert an analog signal directly to MPEG-2 than it is to convert an AVI file to an MPEG-2 file.

A Video card (such as an ATI) certainly does not have anywhere near the processing power of a PIII 750 yet it claims to very simply and effortlessly take a live video stream and dump it directly to an MPEG-2 file.

Why are these software codecs so slow?

Perhaps motherboards should come with a hardware codec so that when we ask VF2 to save our compilations into MPEG format, it will happen at least in real time.

Maybe I am naive, but it seems like this is not rocket science. If APEX can spit out $99 DVD players (which are MPEG-2 decoders), then why can't someone speed up this encoding process for somewhere close to that dollar amount? (I am referring to encoding from all formats into MPEG format, nit simply live video).

Encoding video is a resource intensive task for any PC unlike a set top DVD player which is designed from the ground up to perform a single task. Sorry, today a 750 Mhz P3 isn't considered a "fast" computer.

Aside from slower clock speeds the biggest bottleneck is a slow BUS speed. It don't help things if your CPU is running 800Mhz and data between the processor and all the accessory cards and devices are moving along at only 66Mhz or even 33Mhz which are typical BUS speeds on may systems still in use. So even with a seperate hardware encoder on a video card or as a seperate card, it still communicates with the CPU through the BUS and until maybe the next generation of computers, BUS speeds still present a roadblock.

Even on my AMD 1200 Mhz system it only has a BUS speed of 266 Mhz and then only because it supports the newer DDR memory which in effect makes it possible to double the BUS speed of 133. I think the P4 now also supports higer BUS speeds but as far as I'm aware no system comes close the having the BUS speed match the CPU speed. If/when that happen, then perhaps you'll see real time encoding speeds.

I've used an ATI Rage Fury Pro and an ATI All-In-Wonder to convert
analog video directly to MPEG-II in real time. Let me tell you, it
STINKS!!!!!!! It's basically useful as an experiment only. The resulting
MPEG files look like they're encoded at around 50 to 100Kbps and are
full of skips and pauses. But then, those were the compromises that
ATI had to make to produce the files in real time.

In regards to your comment about cheap DVD players, keep in mind the
difference between encoding and decoding. I can't quote any
quantitative figures, but encoding involves and enormous amount of
calculations for each frame. The entire frame must be analyzed,
compared to a group of frames both before and after, the differences
identified and the data compressed. However, for playback, all that
needs to be done is that the data is uncompressed and the undefined
pixels filled in with easily calculated data. Far less processing is
involved.

There are realtime encoders available. They are usually based on arrays
of digital signal processors and have hardware optimized for that task,
unlike PCs which are generalized for many tasks and therefore don't
do any of them with a lot of efficiency. The pro encoders sell for many
thousands of dollars. It's basically a case of getting what you pay for.

Thank you all for your reply's. I am now an "enlightened" being :-)

I do have my eye on one of those dual AMD motherboards. I read there is a codec to take advantage of it, and at SVCD quality, it can encode at 63 frames per second. BUT, it's at least $500 for the board with two processors.

I WILL have every episode of Enterprise on SVCD and DVD when that becomes affordable.

Thanks again

ADS Technologies makes a usb capture box that captures in mpeg2
"instant DVD" after editing you can go back out to tape ! ! ! or other
formats like web or VCD.

http://www.adstech.com/products/USB_Instant_DVD/intro/USBInstantDVD.asp?pid=USBAV-700

I am guessing that this will work with video factory.

not shure if this is what you need?
I plan on getting this soon so I can edit on my laptop!
will post back and let you know.

For Real-time hardware mpeg encoding these are the two I would look at. DV-Storm is the least expensive of any I've seen at around $1,000 to $1,200. The card does real-time mpeg-2 output as well as DV output.

DV-Storm
http://www.canopus.com/us/products/dvstorm_2/pt_dvstorm_2.asp