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Cougar Video Edition
By Darin Genereux
000221
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Built
around the TNT2 M64 graphics chipset from NVidia, the Guillemot
Cougar Video Edition provides respectable 3D acceleration and
excellent video capture for value oriented consumers.
Don’t let the low price fool you, this is a complete
video solution in a small package.
Guillemot
has been getting a lot of attention these days.
After releasing the highly acclaimed GeForce 3D Prophet and
with the recent acquisition of Hercules, Guillemot has attempted
to secure itself as one of the few remaining video card
manufacturers who do not produce their own chipsets.
Through all the mergers last year, it was inevitable that
only a handful of companies would survive the ensuing cataclysm.
Undaunted, Guillemot’s aggressive product development and
marketing departments have positioned their company into the top
tiers of an ever-changing multimedia marketplace.
However,
even amongst all the rave reviews and glamorous publicity that
follows today’s hottest products, Guillemot has not forgotten
the needs of the special few.
They realize that out in the real world exist customers who
are need of more than the fastest polygon pusher.
These consumers want more video features without the
wallet-bleeding wizardry. They
want video cards that can do it all, from video capture to DVD
acceleration, and without breaking the bank in the process.
The
idea of producing an ultimate all-in-one consumer video board is
not new. I believe it
was ATI who pioneered the trend, and thus set the stage for more
powerful and versatile products such as their latest All-in-Wonder
32MB Fury, the Matrox Marvel G400, and the ASUS V6600 Deluxe.
Still, as great as those products may be, they are very
expensive and therefore not very practical to a large majority of
consumers.
Thankfully,
Guillemot has introduced the 32MB Cougar Video Edition.
Using the ever-popular NVidia TNT2 M64 chipset, it comes
standard with video capture, TV output, 3D acceleration, and DVD
decoding abilities.
Throughout
the rest of this review I will examine the Cougar Video in detail.
I will include 3D benchmarks against a NVidia TNT video
board, provide test results of the video capture feature, and
describe my experiences with the card’s user friendliness and
image quality. In
addition, the video capture tests will be performed on two degrees
of computing power—a high end Athlon 700Mhz and a more moderate
K6-2 300Mhz system.
GENERAL
SPECIFICATIONS
-
125MHz
128-bit NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 M64 processor
-
32MB
on-board Synchronous RAM clocked at 150MHz
-
Vision-friendly
32-bit SVGA display performed through a 300MHz RAMDAC
-
Extended
display resolution up to 1920x1200 in 16 million colors
-
2X/4X
AGP interface with full AGP texturing support
-
Meets
all Microsoft PC 98 hardware design requirements
3D
FUNCTIONS
-
Complete
DirectX 6.X and OpenGL ICD support
-
100%
hardware triangle setup
-
Anti-aliasing
-
TwiN
Texel (TNT) 32-bit graphics pipeline
-
Texture
blend support (Bump map - texture modulation - reflection
map…)
-
Backend
blend (32-bit ARGB rendering - bilinear, trilinear and
anisotropic filtering…)
-
Per
pixel perspective correction mapping (fog, light, mip-mapping)
-
32-bit
Z-buffer: 24-bit
Z-buffer and 8-bit stencil buffer
2D
FUNCTIONS
-
Optimization
for minimal software overhead on Windows GDI calls
-
DirectDraw
acceleration: Direct Frame Buffer (DFB) access
-
Accelerated
primitives for color translation, points, line display
-
Pipeline
optimized for multiple color depths (8, 15, 16, 24, 32 bits
per pixel)
-
Execution
of all Microsoft Windows defined 256 raster operations
-
Fast
text rendering from a hardware font cache
-
DMA
Pusher using NVIDIA Vanta multi-tasking features in the 2D
graphics pipeline
-
True
color hardware cursor, hardware color dithering
-
Multi-buffering
(double, triple and quad-buffer) smoothing animation
DVD
VIDEO
ACCELERATION
-
Palette-DAC
pipeline. This accelerates full-motion video playback,
sustaining 30
frames per second while retaining high quality color
resolution, implementing true bilinear filtering for scaled
video and compensating for filtering losses using edge
enhancement algorithms.
-
Video
Acceleration for Microsoft DirectShow, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2
-
DVD
sub-picture alpha blending composition
-
Backend
hardware video scaling for video playback
-
Hardware
color space conversion (YUV 4:2:0 and 4:2:2)
-
Planar
YUV 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 conversion for software MPEG acceleration
-
Multiple
video windows with hardware color space conversion and
filtering
-
Per-pixel
color keying
-
Support
for scaled field interframing to reduce motion artifacts
-
Multi-tap
X and Y filtering
VIDEO
I/O
PORTS
1
SVGA monitor jack
1 S-VHS video input
1 Composite video input
1 S-VHS video output and
1 S-VHS to composite converter cable
SOFTWARE
Installation
of the Cougar VE couldn’t be any easier.
For those unaccustomed to adding and removing new hardware,
Guillemot has provided a very comprehensive manual on the entire
procedure. For even
further info, a PDF manual on the driver CD explains all the
advance D3D and OpenGL settings that are available.
Be
warned that due to the video capture feature, you must install the
drivers from the CD or else the video capture device will not be
recognized. Even
though the drivers on the CD are fairly outdated, based off
NVidia’s 2.40 reference drivers, I did not encounter any
noticeable bugs. However,
the later reference drivers provide better 3D performance and it
is possible to install them without compromising the video capture
functionality.
After
the initial drivers are loaded, the CDROM setup program installs
all the necessary software and video CODECs required for jumping
into the video capture fray.
With
a 300Mhz RAMDAC and the NVidia TNT2 chipset, the Windows desktop
never looked better. The Cougar VE definitely delivers the sharpest imagery I have
ever witnessed on my trusty 17” monitor.
I definitely have no complaints concerning the Cougar’s
2D abilities.
I’ve
noticed that a lot of video cards will tend to lose image quality
when pushed to their maximum refresh rate, especially text
crispness which can be very distracting.
By incorporating a 300Mhz RAMDAC, Guillemot has pretty much
assured that this card will not suffer the same fate.
The
first thing I noticed after installation was a new icon in the
system tray. This handy little icon provides quick access to the video
editing and recording tools, as well as adjusting monitor settings
and launching a video-in monitoring window.
The video window is great for watching a TV program or
movie from an external source, and even has nifty feature that
places the video into the Windows background.
Of
course live video capturing is what it’s all about, and here is
where the bundled software comes into play.
Ulead’s VideoStudio makes the process as simple as
pointing and clicking. The
basic interface may seem a bit too user-friendly with its stylish
buttons and curvaceous control panel--typically a sign of reduced
functionality. However,
after a few sessions all the appropriate icons become very
familiar and its clear that versatility has not been compromised.
VideoStudio
(VS) functions as a complete video-editing package.
It captures video and audio to AVI and MPG files using
practically any CODEC (compression/decompression routines)
currently installed on your system (thankfully the Cougar VE setup
program installs the latest CODECs).
Each CODEC usually has its own set of parameters for
adjusting the image quality vs. compression ratio, and VS allows
you to modify them. In
addition to basic capturing, VS uses a film-style motif for
creating compilations of video, images, music, voice-overs, title
pages, and fancy transition effects.
For those who have never experienced video capture,
VideoStudio makes the whole experience very smooth and addicting.
I
captured video using two different machines to get an idea of how
much horsepower is really necessary.
The first consisted of an AMD K7 700Mhz, UDMA/66 hard
drive, and 256MB of SDRAM (see
the 3D Performance
section for complete details).
The second machine had the following hardware:
Ø
AMD K6-2 300Mhz
Ø
FIC VA-503+ mainboard
Ø
128MB SDRAM
Ø
Quantum Fireball 1.0GB hard drive
Ø
IBM Deskstar 4.3GB hard drive
Ø
Aztech PCI-338 A3D soundcard
I
tried capturing with a variety of CODECs and audio formats.
For best quality capture, I used the Full Frames
(uncompressed) option. To
reduce the file size, I tried several compression CODECs including
Intel Indeo 5.06, Microsoft MPEG-4 V3, and Radius Cinepak.
Unfortunately the only one that would successfully compress
on the fly was an Indeo RAW format.
The RAW format produced files about 25% smaller, but at a
cost of performance. Image
quality appeared to be similar to the uncompressed captures.
All
tests were performed at a standard resolution of 320x240 and 30fps
(the NTSC frame rate). For
the test sequence, I chose to use the snow speeder sequence from
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back®.
This sequence has lots of full motion video that provide a
good stress test for the compression algorithms.
After capturing, I used the Windows Media Player to verify
the actual capture rate and image quality.
System 1 - K7
Athlon
As
expected, this machine had no problems with capturing full motion
video at 30fps using the uncompressed capture method.
Of course the file sizes are pretty large, roughly 2.7MB
per second of video and 44Khz stereo audio.
A 5 minute clip required approximately 800MB of free space,
not very appealing for long vid
Even
with 700Mhz of Athlon power, the most the RAW CODEC could capture
at was about 22 frames per second using my test sequence.
The frame rate varied slightly depending on the amount of
action in the video stream, as scenes with slower moving video
needed less CPU power.
System 2 - K6-2
First
off, DMA would not function properly using the old 1GB Fireball
hard drive. The most I could capture was at about 15 fps with DMA
disabled. After
adding the IBM Deskstar, DMA mode functioned properly and helped
the framerate quite a bit. However,
still using uncompressed capturing, it was limited to around 23
fps. Not bad really,
as I had expected worse. Limiting the capture rate to 24 fps helped to significantly
reduce lag effects in the final output.
Of course RAW mode faired worse, though a constant 15 fps
was attainable.
After
capturing and editing, the next step was to compress/recompress
the video segments into a single AVI or MPG file.
Again, VideoStudio provides a choice of CODEC and
compression options for tweaking the desired quality vs. file size
ratio. The final
rendering process can take a long
time (depending on the CPU), but it’s worth the wait. For example, using the MPEG-4 V3 CODEC, a 40 second 110MB
clip reduced was reduced to approximately 20MB with very little
loss in quality. Sacrificing
image and sound quality can attain much higher compression rates.
Alternative
to recompressing with VideoStudio, the provided NetShow encoder
can also be used. It
managed some really spectacular compression ratios, though the
setup options aren’t quite as inclusive as I was looking for.
The Netshow encoder is geared for streaming over the
Internet and therefore it doesn’t have a lot of high quality
options. However, it
managed to do a respectable job on 1GB uncompressed AVI file
recorded at 172Kbps stereo and 24fps.
The final output was only 96Kbps stereo and 15 fps, but the
file size was a mere 10MB!
Bottom line:
To adequate capture video, you’ll need a) plenty of hard
drive space, b) a properly functioning DMA mode, and c) a decent
amount of CPU power. From
my experience, I’d say that the K6-2 300 would be a realistic
minimum.
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