INVENTA Australia has released a high-quality USB-powered realtime hardware MPEG2/1 video encoder USBMPEG2-Box, which can be used in various video archiving and DVD creation applications.
Built on high-quality Conexant and Philips chipsets, USBMPEG2-Box processes MPEG video/audio encoding entirely on-board that will not be affected by the host PC's hardware - therefore slow or faster PCs, laptops or desktops will all achieve the same high-quality video and audio recording.
When DVD/VCD mode is selected, the realtime captured video files can be used to burn DVD/VCD movie disk immediately without any further lengthy conversion or re-formatting and the captured audio is forever synchronised with video.
Compared with the previously available (now discontinued) FusionMPEG2USB device, the USBMPEG2-Box has many significant improvements:
* By pressing the "Record" button, the recording starts immediately with minimum delays (in contrast, other hardware encoders such as FusionMPEG2 need up to 20 seconds to "initialise" the hardware after "Record" button is pressed).
* The realtime video preview goes hand-in-hand with realtime recording, therefore users can enjoy video watching during the entire recording process with video displayed always following the realtime incoming video signal.
* Video preview is automatic and always on, without any hardware initialisation and manual pressing "Play" button etc.
* Lengthy recording can be reliably split into multiple video files with every split file valid for DVD/VCD creation - currently this is the only MPEG hardware encoder on the market that can guarantee such a perfect record file splitting. All previously available MPEG encoders, PC or USB included, or even digital TV tuners acting on already encoded MPEG2 video streams, failed to achieve such a splitting, which is very useful to make sure long recording can be created onto multiple video files for easy DVD burning.
* PAL and NTSC video signals can be automatically detected and treated properly.
As a powerful realtime MPEG video encoder, USBMPEG2-Box also has many other important features:
* Proper handling of video signals from old VHS tapes without causing A/V out-of-sync or video jittering.
* Proper recording at incoming signal loss or fluctuation.
* Automatic hard disk switching during recording when hard drive is full.
* Realtime adjusting colours (brightness/contrast/saturation/hue) during preview, recording and playback and the changed colour values is reflected in the recorded video files.
USBMPEG2-Box runs on Microsoft Windows XP/2000 operating systems and any ordinary PC with no special requirements regarding hardware components.
Typical applications include high-quality DVD creation, video archiving and video distribution on laptop and desktop PCs.