Creating AVI files larger than 4gb

[j0w]

hello guys,

i've got an pIII 500MHz and a ELSA ERAZOR III pro video edition card with 32 mb, 256 mb sdram, 40 gb hdd and win98.

i cant capture avi files with automatic compression, my pc is to slow and has a high frame drop (about 60%).
so i capture the video files without compressing them, but they are very big. now i need a program that splits my video file after reaching a size of 4 gb (because windows can't handle bigger files).

mainactor v3 (my current program, i got it with my capture card ) just shows me an error message after some minutes of recording. i capture with 25 fps and a res. 352x288 (mpeg)

which programs could i use? plz help me....

j0w

[rsquirell]

500MHz is marginal for any capture method...but the 4GB limit is for transferring data between Drives on a FAT32 system. Convert to NTSF and the portals are open. If you still have problems with the >4GB files it's due to that pigmy processor.

[j0w]

gnaaaa

hmmm u know ... elsa isn't any more, there are no drivers for win2k or xp (thats why i am running win98), so i try installing win nt in order to get ntfs and i hope that they got some drivers on their cd...

[videopnut]

First of all, it's your hard drive speed (sustained transfer rate), not your processor speed, that's going to be the determining factor in successful capturing.

I did many successful DV captures with a 500Mhz Processor and never had a dropped frame. But, I had 2nd and 3rd hard drives installed that were used strictly for capturing. And they were merely Ultra-33 drives. I used Canopus DVRaptor capture card.

If you're trying to capture onto your system drive (C: drive) you're skirting the edge of Murphy's law. It can be done, but make sure you have PLENTY of free space; the drive is defragged, and you have at least one virtual drive (such as D configured as the capture drive. Virtual drives are created using FDISK (but require format and re-install), or a special 3rd party program (such as System Commander) that can create virtual drives without destroying your current data. A "virtual drive" is a separate chunk of a drive that answers to a different drive letter, and has its own directory structure.

As to the 4Gig limit, if these are DV captures, why not simply capture in 18-minute segments or less?

[j0w]

well, my 40 gb hdd is seperated into a system partition (4 gb, maximum for win nt) and a ~35gb part for temporary data and captured videos.

the reason why i tryed avoiding 18-minute segments is that i do have the tools for setting them together, but if i record i segments, i will always have overlaying/missing parts in my final movie :/

well i checked my drivers, installed win2k and winnt, but there are no programs/drivers working with my video adapter
even newer versions of mainactor, 5.0 and 3.65 (a version especially for use with elsa graphic adapters), did not show any result...

so it seems i have to make short segments, sitting in front of my pc all the time he's capturing and putting them together after transferring to my other, powerful pc...

[sfheath]

I don't know off-hand the chipset of the Erazor but on my last machine, my Elsa Gladiac (GeForce II Ultra) was using nVidia's driver set happily. I imagine there's W2000/XP version of that.

There's a software application called ShowShifter (www.showshifter.com) that might do a better job of recording. You can download a trial after checking your hardware is compatible on their site.

[j0w]

thx, i'll try it immediately