Capture from VHS video to DivX

[sehh]

Hello people.

I'm capturing VHS videos to DivX 5.0.2, i've connected a video (aiwa)
via a 'SCART to Video Composite' cable to my TV-In on my GeForce2 Ti/500.

I'm using VirtualVCR 2.3.1 to capture the video and encode it realtime
to DivX. The sound stays uncompressed PCM 44khz 16bit Stereo.

Now my problem:

1) I'd like to also compress the sound realtime, but VirtualVCR doesn't
seem to be able to do that. Any suggestions for other similar applications?

2) I tried VirtualDub 1.4.10, but it is so badly written and its awful
to use. It also can't capture from my WDM drivers, it gives weird errors
about unsupported video format and stuff like that, when VirtualVCR does
it perfectly.

3) I also loaded the resulting DivX file from VirtualVCR with the
uncompressed sound into VirtualDub, and i told it to compress the
sound only and leave the video as it is. The result was awful,
the sound was TOTALY out of sync with the video.

Now my questions:

1) Is there a program which can capture properly and compress
both video and sound without sync problems?

2) If not, is there a way to compress the sound in my already
created DivX files without causing sync problems?

I'd appriciate any help. Thank you.

files

[tuco]

2) I tried VirtualDub 1.4.10, but it is so badly written and its awful

First of all vdub is not meant to work with wdm drivers only vfw drivers (there are exceptions depending on hardware.)

If you *really* want to capture with divx, I don't think you will be able to capture compress audio without synch problems but I may be wrong. I would send your divx file created in virtualvcr and open it in vdub. Then make sure that video processing is at direct stream copy and you can compress the audio to mp3. Make sure that you have audio processing set at full processing. For a one hour clip, it normally takes my system (athlon 650 classic) about 15 minutes to encode the audio.

PS
I forgot to mention that you can strip the audio out of the divx file using vdub and use an external mp3 encoder program to encode your audio. If you want vbr mp3s, then you need to use nandub to mux the audio and video together.

[sehh]

tuco, thanks for the answer, below is my explanation...


1) I understand that VirtualDub may not work correctly with WDM. On
my system it seems to show the input signal without any problems in
Preview mode, and i can record to avi video. I just avoid using it
because of the awful interface and its many crashes. VirtualVCR hasn't
crashed a single time, and has a much better interface.

2) I understand that it may not be possible to compress the audio
while i'm capturing, so i followed your suggestion and encoded my
video (divx 5.0.2) with uncompressed audio.

I loaded VirtualDub and did what you said to compress the audio. It
worked and produced the same video but with compressed sound.

The problem is that the sound is now out of sync! Is it because i'm
compressing a 1gig avi file? I've tried MPEG Layer-3 default
compression and MPEG Layer-3 via LAME Codec ABR encoding. Both
resulted in an out of sync sound.

Any suggestions are welcome.

[battyice1847]

I would say that your sync problems are due to dropped frames. Try capturing with a codec other than divx, such as the Huffyuv codec. see if this helps.

[theReal]

When the sound is in sync uncompressed, it should also be in sync after compression - can't be dropped frames, I think.

Maybe it has to do with b-frames... try to seperate audio and video, compress the audio with Lame, then mux it again.

[sehh]

Indeed it can't be dropped frames. First of all the encoding to
divx from the VHS tape was done with 0 (zero :) dropped frames, and
we are talking about 3 hours of tape. The reprocessing only affects
the compression of the audio, so there are no dropped frames here either.

The result avi file (divx,uncomp. pcm audio) is perfectly sync'ed.

Apparently the sync problems were caused by the VBR encoding. Once i
compressed the audio with the latest LAME codec in CBR 128kbps 44khz,
the result was perfectly sync'ed.

Is this problem with VBR and sync very common? Or am i doing something
wrong?

[droolian01]

Firstly i think the interface on vdub is simple and logical considering the amount of stuff going on, but that is only an opinion (one i would feel would be supported by the countless people who use it every day - see the xvid forum). I use it to capture in win98, although i think that the capture element of the software is only a small part of the total - it is primarily a video editing package.

Maybe your critisms are a little harsh considering it is FREE, not designed for wdm drivers, has exensive third party support with many talented filter developers and has been adapted and emulated many times (sbc [nandub] encoding, gordian knot etc).

As vdub is so poorly written, you may choose not to use the help i can give because it involves using nandub (vdub variant). Capture as you do now (pcm audio) then load the file into nandub, select video (direct stream copy) and audio (avi audio) then save the wav file. Compress to your chosen with your chosen encoder (i compress to mp3 128CBR joint stereo with dBpoweramp). Now load this in from ausio tab (as you can see it supports many different formats) then save as avi. Job done.

Hope this helps.

[theReal]

@sehh, VBR or ABR mp3 must be muxed with Nandub, not VDub.

When you said you used mp3 default compression in VDub, I thought you compressed with the Fraunhofer codec (which is CBR only).
However I also had problems with that CBR Fraunhofer method recently (even it had always been working when I last used it, but that was even before Divx4 :))

For Divx5 and mp3, I only use Lame now and I always mux with Nandub - this was never problematic.
However VBR mp3 is indeed not the most compatible audio for avi files - for example BSPlayer is always running out of sync with VBR mp3 on my computer (even it is a really good player, no doubt about that).

[sehh]

Originally posted by droolian01
Maybe your critisms are a little harsh considering it is FREE, not designed for wdm drivers, has exensive third party support with many talented filter developers and has been adapted and emulated many times (sbc [nandub] encoding, gordian knot etc).


Indeed you have a point there. I was carried away by the fact that
DVD2SVCD is also free software, and i expected that other software
around here will also have similar high quality.


Originally posted by droolian01
As vdub is so poorly written, you may choose not to use the help i can give because it involves using nandub (vdub variant). Capture as you do now (pcm audio) then load the file into nandub, select video (direct stream copy) and audio (avi audio) then save the wav file. Compress to your chosen with your chosen encoder (i compress to mp3 128CBR joint stereo with dBpoweramp). Now load this in from ausio tab (as you can see it supports many different formats) then save as avi. Job done.
Hope this helps.

I appriciate your suggestions.

I understand. I've downloaded nandub and i'll give it a try.

Although, i dont understand why i should use an external program
to do the encoding to mp3, when nandub can also do it by using
the LAME codec. What is the difference?

[sehh]

Originally posted by theReal
When you said you used mp3 default compression in VDub, I thought you compressed with the Fraunhofer codec (which is CBR only).
However I also had problems with that CBR Fraunhofer method recently (even it had always been working when I last used it, but that was even before Divx4 :))

At first i used the Fraunhofer codec, but then i installed the Lame codec
and used CBR instead of VBR.

[ronnylov]

AVI_IO (http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/) is a good alternative capturing program. It's not freeware but there is a trial version that works 30 days. I liked it so much that I bought it.

My experience is that I get better audio sync when capturing in AVI_IO. It capture audio uncompressed only but I alwas compress audio afterwards anyway.

There is also a special virtualdub version called virtualdub_sync (http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~dittrich/sync/) which is freeware. This program tries to keep the audio sync at capturing by adjusting the audio sampling rate and then convert it with ssrc. I tried it but it did not work well for me, I got more dropped frames than with AVI_IO. In theory virtualdub_sync does not drop frames to keep audio sync while AVI_IO drop frames to keep it in sync.

[sehh]

ronnylov, i downloaded and tested AVI_IO, indeed it is a superb
application. Not only does it create perfectly sync'ed divx files
(that vdub didn't do), but it also has a nice and easy to use interface.

:D

Definetly worth paying for.

I hope the author adds support to encode the audio aswell.

[theReal]

(...) and i expected that other software around here will also have similar high quality.

VDub is one of the highest quality tools I know of. You can buy commercial video editing tools for hundreds of dollars only to realize in the end that you can do most things better with VDub. It doesn't have a fancy interface, but it's one of the tools I would never want to miss.
And, for example, the fact that VDub can't mux VBR mp3 with avi is not an argument against it because: 1. find any (commercial) tool that can do this... 2.There's a mod of VDbub (Nandub) that can do it.

btw. VDub never crashes on my comp. - but I can tell for sure that my system is not even slightly unstable, I've just recently been running Prime Torture Test for nine and a half hours without any errors. Maybe that's the difference?

[sehh]

theReal, i understand we have different perceptions on 'quality
software'. Thats understandable, we are different people, so we
are bound to have different ideas.

I personaly found vDub to be a very poorly designed piece of software.

Obviously i do not have a long experience with video editing software,
so i can't compare with the competition.

But as a software developer i can guarantee that vDub would never pass
a single QA (Quality Assurance) or UI (User Interface) test in ANY large
software development team.

On the usability side, it did work reliably when i had to edit a huge
avi file to compress the sound, and remove some unwanted parts. Although
it did not work correctly when i did some capturing or video encoding.

[sehh]

Originally posted by theReal

btw. VDub never crashes on my comp. - but I can tell for sure that my system is not even slightly unstable, I've just recently been running Prime Torture Test for nine and a half hours without any errors. Maybe that's the difference?

This is not the case here, system has been running reliably for 4-5
months now, both cpu's running at 100% most of the time.

When vDub crashed, it was only vDub that crashed, no other application
or even windows. Not a system stability problem.