ADS Technologies Instant Video PCI - Manuel (Page 5)

5
Instant Video PCI allows you to easily capture video in multiple video
compression formats. This product is targeted at compressing video into
low bit rate formats that generate compact video files which are easily
transferred to portable devices or allow for lots of video to fit on a normal
CD-R disc.
The Instant Video PCI acts as a video digitizer and video pipeline
enabling raw uncompressed video to flow into the PC via the PCI port
on Windows XP machines. Once in the PC any number of software
video compression engines can be used to compress the video into the
chosen format.
Your Instant Video PCI includes the Ulead VideoStudio 8 video capture
and editing application which supports direct capture and real time
compression into popularly used video formats such as MPEG-1, VCD,
Windows Media Video 9 ® and Divx ® ® ® Video. ® ®
What is video compression?
When video is digitized the file size is very large. The video is more
manageable when it is compressed to smaller size. At its most basic
level, compression is performed when an input video stream is analyzed
and information that is not noticeable to the viewer is discarded. There
are different video compression schemes and each one analyzes the
video stream in a different way. Each video compression method has
the general goal of reducing the overall size of the finished video file
while retaining video quality but each video compression method may
have a different application goal, such as producing video for satellite
TV transmission, video e-mail, DVD video or getting as much video on
a standard CD. The result is that there are different video compression
formats for different purposes and applications.
What compression formats can I capture in with Instant
Video PCI?
Because Instant Video PCI brings raw, uncompressed video into your
PC via the PCI port on your Windows XP machine it can be used to
compress video in to virtually any video compression/decompression
(video codec) installed on your computer that is Microsoft Direct Show
compliant. This is called software compression. This means that the
software video codec installed on your computer makes use of the
computers powerful CPU to complete both video compression and
decompression. Keep in mind that video compression can be very CPU
intensive. New video codecs like DivX and WVM9 work to compress to
very low bit rates while retaining very good video quality. This process is
very CPU intensive. Divx Video, for example, is a compression