GeForce2: Duo Deluxe (6/12) ASUS V7700 Deluxe Video-IN To display a video on your monitor, you are obviously going to need a source, for example a VCR, camera or camcorder or a TV. If you don’t have any of these but are thinking of getting a card with a TV tuner, the upcoming ASUS V7700 Deluxe TV might be interesting for you.
The greatest problem with video on a computer is the incredible amount of data that makes up a videostream. Take for example the standard PAL signal which displays a picture at a resolution of 752x576 25 times every second. At this rate, 30MB of diskspace are needed every second! And that’s still without any audio! To reduce the datarate, modern (lossy) compression algorithms like MPEG-1 or 2 are used. Specialised video editing cards usually use a dedicated encoder chip to handle this compression. Since the V7700 is primarily meant to be a 3D card, and not a video editing solution, ASUS has decided to stick with a purely software based solution. This means that a software codec utilizes the CPU to compress the signal. Understandably, a software based solution is never going to be as effective or efficient as a dedicated hardware solution, which will usually handle the sound compression as well. In the case of the V7700, your PC’s soundcard will have to take on that part of the work. As long as you’re using a well configured system with decently fast hard drives, you should nonetheless be able to record and edit some short video clips at full PAL resolution without any dropped frames and in decent quality. On the softer, I mean software side, ASUS bundles a variety of programs with its card. For a start there’s ASUS Live, a video viewing software with a host of options and settings for picture/frame interlacing. You can select anything from full screen video to minimum window size. You can even record your own clips using this software.
The specialised recording software in this bundle is Digital-VCR, though, which also lets you catalogue and sort all of your video clips. On top of that, it also has a useful time shifting feature that allows you to watch a stream that you are currently recording with only a slight delay. Another great feature is programmable record, which works pretty much the way our home VCR does – set a time and a date, and it’s good to go. Not all is happiness and sunshine, however. A few small bugs still need some squashing. For example, the recording software stubbornly insists on trying to save your stream to drive c: by default - a setting that can’t be changed. And if you don’t remember to add the .avi extension to the filename, you’re also in trouble. But both of these inconveniences just need some getting used to, and soon you’ll be working without any further trouble.
The video editing software that ASUS bundles with the board is tried and true: Ulead Video Studio SE 4.0. A detailed list and analysis of all of its features would deserve an article of its own, so let’s just say that it’s powerful enough to create even elaborate video clips with various animation effects. Version 4.0 finally also comes with full MPEG-2 support. An English language tutorial helps you get acquainted with the (English) software. (At least ASUS was thoughtful enough to include a German language user’s guide in the form of some Acrobat PDF files on the CD for us Germans - besides other languages of course.) Video OUT Unfortunately, ASUS is still treating Video Out like the proverbial stepchild. As with AOpen’s card, there is no Dual View capability. This means that you’re going to be limited to using either your monitor or your TV screen. At least the driver lets you switch between the two displays using a hotkey. Good: When switching to the TV, the resolution is automatically set to 800x600. Bad: When switching back to your monitor it stays at 800x600 and doesn’t switch back to your monitor’s previous resolution. Also, 800x600 turns out to be the highest you can go via TV Out – all of these are shortcomings that have been haunting ASUS since the introduction of the V3800 Deluxe. Hopefully someday they’ll do something about it...
On the positive side, the newer revisions of the drivers finally include an overscan option in the TV-Out menu, allowing you to scale the picture to fit your screen size and avoid those loathed black borders. Unfortunately you can’t adjust for the level of overscan – it’s purely an "on/off" setting. As a result, the image was scaled too strongly and its outer edges were cut off (see the pictures above). The entire Windows taskbar disappeared - this results in very bad Windows handling without DualView! This is simply embarrassing coming from a company like ASUS, especially since many freeware tools available on the net offer more functionality with greater comfort and ease of use!!! ASUS should finally do something about this. Seriously, what good is the ability to produce your own video clips if you can’t even properly watch them on your TV or record them on your VCR?! ATi and Matrox have set the standard in this department with their own ViVo (Video-In/Video-Out) cards. Better ease of use, better overscan. Then again, seeing as AOpen and Hercules fair even worse in comparison, at least you can give ASUS credit for putting the effort into trying. Still, that’s just not good enough. |
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Copyright: 04.10.2000 -
RIVA
Station 2000 - Lars Weinand Translation by Benjamin Kraft URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/gf2-deluxe_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
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