Encoder/Decoder handles MPEG 1, 2, and 4 formats.

Press Release Summary:



Designed around Philips/VWeb MPEG hardware, MPEGIO encodes/decodes MPEG video and forever synchronized audio. It offers real-time arbitrary recording file splitting, start-stop recording as visual signal start-stops, and centralized remote management of unlimited number of capture cards. With encoding rates from 50 Kbps to 15 Mbps, unit supports 16:9, Square PEL, and normal 4:3 aspect ratios. Up to 10 MPEGIO cards can run on one PC to simultaneously capture, display, or transcode MPEG video.



Original Press Release:



MPEGIO: Hardware MPEG1/2/4 Encoder/Decoder with Powerful Professional Features inc. SDKs



has released a high-quality realtime hardware MPEG1/2/4 video encoder/decoder PCI card MPEGIO, that has many powerful professional features.

Designed around Philips/VWeb MPEG hardware and Inventa's powerful application software, MPEGIO encodes/decodes superior quality MPEG video and forever synchronized audio un-rivaled by any MPEG hardware device under $1000 price mark, and offers many unique features such as realtime arbitrary recording file splitting, start-stop recording as video signal start-stops, centralized remote management of unlimited number of capture cards, etc., that are nowhere else available in the world.

Since the MPEGIO's encoding and decoding are processed entirely by on-board hardware, not affected by the host PC's performance, slow or faster CPUs and hard disks, high-end or low-cost graphics cards etc will all achieve the same high quality video capture and playback. MPEGIO's significant features that outperform all other mid-range realtime MPEG capture devices include:

-- Superior video and audio quality encoding with multiple selectable parameters inc. VBR/CBR, colour sharpness, brightness, etc. When playing back to TV screen through MPEGIO or from DVD player, the MPEGIO-encoded video is always sharper and clearer than the original analogue footage, especially when the footages are from aged VHS tapes: the MPEGIO-captured video feels clean, vivid and smooth, as if time rewinds back.

-- Realtime Hardware-based MPEG Video Decoding(to TV/VCR) as well as Encoding, this allows live video or captured files to be displayed on external TV and VCRs in extremely high quality. During video capture and preview time, the video displayed on PC's screen and MPEGIO's TV output port are always synchronized with the live incoming video signal, which means watching and recording can proceed simultaneously.

-- Guaranteed Forever Audio & Video Synchronization at video capture and play back, no matter how long the video is. Furthermore, this forever A/V sync is kept on all times and everywhere: it's on live video preview on PC's screen regardless the recording is on or off, on TV output through MPEGIO's output port, and in the captured video files. If you look around the world-wide hardware MPEG encoder market, you will find such a perfect A/V sync guarantee is very hard to match, even among products costing thousands of dollars.

-- Realtime recording file splitting allows recorded video to be recorded on multiple any-sized files for convenient DVD/CD disk burning. Not only recording can be split according to pre-defined file size or recording-time, MPEGIO also allows arbitrary file split live at recording time by a simple mouse clicking:, and all the split files are guaranteed to have perfect video/audio for consecutive DVD movie disk creation, etc.

-- Multiple Fields File Naming allows the recorded video file name to contain recording date, time, video duration, video format, user name, PC name, auto-incrementing serial number etc fields that can greatly facilitate retrieving recorded video data from large volume of recorded files. For example, a user defined text string "MyRecord" followed by recording date, time, length, video format and bit-rate will create a 3-Min 15-Sec DVD video file as: MyRecord_20070130_164720_0H03M15S_DVD_Video7000Kbps.mpg

-- Multiple Aspect Ratio Encoding inc. 16:9, Square PEL and normal 4:3, gives MPEGIO an obvious edge over other encoders that can only handle 4:3 aspect ratio. As more and more video footages are available on 16:9 wide-screen format, using MPEGIO will be the best way to create true wide-screen DVD movie disks.

-- Wide-range Data Rate Encoding from the very low 50Kbps up to high 15Mbps, for all MPEG1, MPEG2 and MPEG4 format video. The high-bitrate MPEG1 encoding is un-usual among hardware MPEG encoders and will be very useful in creating exceptionally high quality MPEG1 video files that are universally acceptable by all operating systems across all hardware platforms (not just Windows and PCs), while the low-bitrate MPEG4(H.263) encoding can easily create 56Kbps full motion a/v synchronized video that slow dial-up modem and mobile-phone web browsers can realtime watch, and the excellent quality low-bit-rate MPEG2 video can be easily used for live video streaming acceptable by numerous browsers without special Codec installed. See live MPEG2 video encoded by MPEGIO at 150Kbit-per-sec. at 176X144-Pixel here playable directly in MS MediaPlayer etc software. Also Click here to download 56kbps MPEGIO-encoded MPEG4(H.263) video stream (H.263 decoder such as vlc.exe is needed to watch).

-- DVD-Compliant MPEG2 Encoding allows the real-time captured video to be burned to DVD Movie Disks without any further re-compression by DVD-Authoring software.

-- Unique Teletext function allows live viewing Teletext/Subtitle pages embedded in the TV signal and saving them to hard disks in graphics, text or raw data formats. Multiple MPEGIO cards can display multiple Teletext pages simultaneously on the same PC.

-- Centralized Remote Management Function allows one PC to remotely manage unlimited number of MPEGIO cards through Internet or any TCP/IP network from anywhere in the world: from one single screen all remote MPEGIO cards' operation status, recording parameters, etc can be viewed and controlled in realtime. The manager PC can remotely start/stop any remote MPEGIO card's recording and changing its video encoding parameters instantly. Bi-directional connection allows either the managing PC or any MPEGIO card to initiate a remote connection, whichever is the most convenient. Auto-polling allows any MPEGIO card to automatically connect to remote manager PC without human intervention, particularly suitable for unattended video capture operation. Remote Scheduling allows the manager PC to monitor, setup and change recording schedules for remote MPEGIO cards, exactly the same as scheduling on a local PC.

-- Send warning e-mails automatically when video signal loss, hard disk out of space, or simply starting or stopping the MPEGIO software happens, providing a convenient remote monitoring of its video capturing status.

-- Using Video Signal to Start/Stop Recording allows MPEG encoding starts when video signal appears, and stops when video signal disappears for a period of time -- this unique feature is ideal for capturing video from video tapes where the video starting point is usually preceded by some no-signal area or is at the very beginning of the tape: MPEGIO video recording will guarantee the recorded video will always start from where the video signal starts on the tape, and the recording can be optionally stopped when video signal disappears for a user-definable length of time --- useful for un-attended long time recording, etc.

-- In addition to MPEG1 and MPEG 2 formats, hardware MPEG4(H.263) Video Encoding and Decoding up-to full D1 Frame-size(720X576 PAL and 720X480 NTSC) is equally well supported, achieving high-quality MPEG2-level video encoding at less than half the data rates.

-- Hardware-based Video Line Masking allows masking out those annoying flicking pixel lines appearing in many recorded MPEG video files.

-- PAL and NTSC signal auto-detection & auto-switching saves time and effort to manually switch again and again in multi-TV system encoding.

-- Multiple MPEGIO Cards (up to 10) can run on one PC to simultaneously capture, display or transcode MPEG video: each MPEGIO card can be independently configurated with different settings. Mixed mode simultaneous encoding, decoding, and transcoding can also be set up so that different MPEGIO cards perform different tasks at the same time ---- one interesting case is to use a card to realtime playback video currently being recorded(and watched) by another card. System resources used by running multiple MPEGIO cards are low: normal Pentium4/Celeron PCs can run up to 5 MPEGIO cards without consuming more than 40% CPU time, click here to see a screenshot of multiple MPEGIO cards' simultaneous recording.

-- Overlay Live text/time/date and graphics onto MPEG video files (or OSD -- On Screen Display function), with different font colour, size, position and alpha blending methods:. Up to 2 bitmaps and 20 text lines can be dynamically added to MPEG video during decoding and transcoding time with various set up parameters, changes to these parameters can be realtime reflected on the live MPEG video through a simple "Apply" button on the OSD setup window.

-- Instant No-Delay Recording: unlike many other MPEG encoders, MPEGIO responds to user's "recording" command immediately without any visual delays -- critical for many realtime video capture applications. Currently almost all other MPEG encoders have visual delays after user issues Record command, some devices can even have up to 30 seconds delays.

-- Black Screen Recording for Long-Hour Audio DVDs: MPEGIO allows recording black-screen video at very low video bit rate while keeping normal audio recording, thus creating a long hours DVD movie disk that can play in normal DVD set-top box players --- e.g. a 24-hour DVD movie disk with quality audio but black-screen video plus date & time display, etc.

-- Hardware-assisted Transcoding: MPEGIO allows captured MPEG video files to be converted in realtime-speed to different formats in different data rates and frame sizes etc., in amazingly high-quality. This can be used in many applications where a master maximum quality video archive is initially captured, then multiple different quality video files can be created repeatedly from the master archive without accessing the original video source again.

-- All-User Access: MPEGIO can be run by any user logged onto the PC, not just the system administrator. This is especially useful in multi-user environment for video streaming, playback, or preview application where not every logged-on user has the system-admin access right.

-- Chipset SDK (Software-Development-ToolKit) is included on the set-up CD with sample codes, crucial for writing customized software. Inventa Australia also has an optional higher-level Application SDK that further facilitates rapid application software development on MPEGIO hardware, details can be found here. Further customization inc. realtime user-data insertion into MPEG streams, DVB-compliance and ASI interface etc. can also be provided.

Many other features and functions, including one-click still image grabbing, timed and Scheduled Recording, timer change during recording process, arbitrary video window resizing, 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio video window display, play list support, etc are also readily available.

Apart from its bundled software, MPEGIO can also be used with many generic video editing software such as Microsoft MovieMaker, Ulead VideoStudio, Adobe Premiere, etc to capture software Codec based video files for various applications.

MPEGIO runs on Microsoft Windows XP operating systems, click to view its full User Manual here.

MPEGIO's impressive hardware-based realtime features make it ideal for wide-range professional video encoding and decoding applications where video quality, absolute A/V synchronization, encoding flexibility etc. cannot be compromised. In heavy-duty 24/7 non-stop unmanned MPEG encoding environment MPEGIO especially shines with its quality and reliability.

RRP for MPEGIO is A$699 inc. gst.

Inventa Australia has MPEGIO in daily live demonstration at Unit 102, 288 Wattle St., Ultimo, NSW 2007. Interested customers can telephone 02-95186100, or e-mail info@inventa.com.au for more details.

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