USBMPEG2-Box: USB-Powered Realtime Hardware MPEG2/1 Encoder

Adding to existing MPEG encoder products, Inventa Australia has released a new high-quality USB-powered realtime hardware MPEG2/1 video encoder USBMPEG2-Box, that can be used in various video capturing 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 recording: absolutely clear and smooth video up to 25Mega-Bit-Per-Second, without jittering or mosaic distortion, producing a captured video that plays back in the same visual results of the original incoming signal. When DVD/SVCD/VCD mode is selected, the realtime captured video files can be used to burn DVD/SVCD/VCD movie disk immediately without any further lengthy conversion or re-formatting, and the captured audio is forever synchronized with video  -- beating all other USB MPEG encoders on the market that very often than not suffer from A/V out-of-sync problems.

Compared with previously available (now discontinued) FusionMPEG2USB device, USBMPEG2-Box has many significant improvement:

--    Much wider video capture data rates from 20Kbps to 25Mbps(higher than HDTV's bit rate)

--    Pressing "Record" button starts recording immediately with minimum delays (in contrast, other hardware encoders such as FusionMPEG2 need up to 20 seconds to "initialize" the hardware after "Record" button is pressed).

--    Realtime video preview goes hand-in-hand with realtime recording, therefore you 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 initialization 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 USB 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 those 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.

--    No hardware/software compatibility problems with any desktop/laptop PC using any motherboard/CPU/graphics card/Window combination

As a powerful realtime MPEG video encoder, USBMPEG2-Box also has many other important features:

--    Comprehensive video encoding and colour filtering parameter settings, including video bit rate, frame size, GOP structure, CBR & VBR, Luma, Chroma, etc.:

--   Proper handling of video signals from old VHS tapes without causing A/V out-of-sync or video jittering. When incoming video signal has break-ups, bad-timing problems and bad colour problems --- typical from old VHS tapes----- many video capture devices simply will go berserk and start capturing corrupted video contents with huge break ups and totally out-of-synchronised audio, but USBMPEG2-Box can still capture normal video and keep the audio in sync., as if a proper Time-Base-Corrector has been used.

--   Automatic hard disk switching during recording when hard drive is full.

--   Realtime adjusting colours (brightness/contrast/saturation/hue/sharpness) during preview, recording and playback, and the changed colour values are reflected in the recorded video files:

--    Still-Image Grab button conveniently located immediately below the video window for single-click image capture in JPEG or BMP file format. Continuous image grabbing can be achieved with automatic file name supplied.

USBMPEG2-Box also can play back MPEG video files with multiple transport controls inc. slow speed, reverse, single steps, etc:

USBMPEG2-Box runs on Microsoft Windows XP/2000/Vista operating systems and any ordinary PC with no special requirement on hardware components.  Typical applications will include high-quality DVD creation, video archiving, video analysis, video distribution on laptop and desktop PCs. As a robust video encoding device, USBMPEG2-Box can continuously operate in recording or preview mode for hours and days without mal-functioning -- it has been tested by Inventa Australia for one week (recorded files are split and reviewed/removed daily) continuous recording without missing a bit of incoming video and audio.

For application developers, an optional SDK (Software Development ToolKit) is available inc. full sample source codes for controlling the USBMPEG2-Box from within any custom software, full details is here. 

USBMPEG2-Box is priced at $399, compare it with other hardware MPEG encoders from Inventa.

Interested customers can telephone 61-2-95186100, or e-mail info@inventa.com.au for more details. 

USBMPEG2-Box Specifications:

MPEG2 Video Clip Sample Captured by USBMPEG2-Box at 4Mbps(minimum allowed as DVD-Compliant)