Creative is about to ship a Video Conferencing/MVP like devise. The referance to Encoder software is confusing..................................................
asia1.com.sg
Video conferencing made easy
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By M.K. Wong
Product: Video Blaster Multimedia Internet Toolkit
Price: $210 (with GST)
Availability: Funan Centre and Sim Lim Square.
Creative Technology has just put together a complete multimedia Internet
tool-kit for no-hassle video conferencing.
The toolkit comprises its proven Video Blaster IE500 video capture card
and Video WebPhone 3.0 Personal Edition.
But it offers more than just video conferencing capabilities.
If you have a camcorder, you can plug it to the toolkit directly. Otherwise,
you can buy a video camera called the Video Blaster Webcam ($230) from
Creative Technology. This product is available next month.
Video card manufacturers use several approaches to capture video for
conferencing applications over the Internet.
One solution used by products such as the QuickCam is to connect the
camera to the PC's parallel port.
But because this port is incapable of transferring tons of data so
characteristic of video capture, it can sustain no more than 10 fps (frames
per second). Fortunately, this is sufficient for Internet video conferencing.
Creative's method
Creative Technology's method is to use a dedicated video capture card.
This ensures that there is no bottleneck and video can be captured at
320x240 resolution running at 30 fps.
Although this rate is an "overkill" for Internet connections via the modem, it
lends itself very well to making your PC truly multimedia capable.
formats supported
As the IE500 card can accept composite as well as S-video inputs, the
incoming video source is not only confined to video cameras.
The IE500 card supports NTSC and PAL formats, so users can pump in
video from a variety of sources such as the VCR, laser disc, VideoCD and
DVD players.
The dual function toolkit comes with software to capitalise on this.
Bundled multimedia software include Asymetrix's Digital Video Producer, Ulead's
ImagePals 2 Go, Creative MPEG Encoder and Family Album Creator.
These provide a complete solution for users to create their own multimedia
family album.
Starting with Digital Video Producer, you can put special tilting and
transition effects on your video.
Once you are happy with the results, you convert the Video for Windows
video clips in AVI format to MPEG format using the MPEG Encoder
software.
The video encoded in MPEG format is more efficient and does not consume
enormous amounts of hard disk space.
For the occasional stills, you can capture it with the Twain-compliant
single frame capture software and enhance it using Ulead ImagePals 2 Go.
And when you are satisfied with everything, you can put together your
memories using the Family Album Creator software.
The software bundle even comes with HoTMetaL Light 3.0 for users to
build their own multimedia home page.
+ Complete one-vendor solution with hardware designed for Internet video
conferencing as well as multimedia applications.
- Needs a desktop PC with a PCI slot and therefore not usable on a
notebook.
M.K. Wong, a regular Computer Times contributor, works for Test Labs
Asia.
Under half an hour
Installation of Creative Technology's Video Blaster IE500 video capture
card is straight forward. Locate a spare PCI slot in your PC and plug in the
card. Remove the VGA output cable from your video card and plug it into
the IE500 card.
Use the VGA loopback cable that comes with the card to piggyback
between the IE500 card and your existing video card.
Finally, connect the video input cable to the video camera and start up
Windows 95. The plug-and-play card is immediately detected by the
software and you will be prompted for the card's driver.
Insert the accompanying CD-Rom and re-direct the installation routine to
the drive letter and the software does the rest. You can then proceed to
install the rest of the software.
The whole installation went without a hitch and I was able to get video
coming up on screen in under half an hour.
I found that although I could use my existing camcorder, the video camera
from Creative Technology was a better solution. It had no messy AC
adapter-cum battery chargers to reckon with. |
