Capturing analog nightmare - nothing is really acceptable

[maa]

This is getting rediculous, the capture programs I've tried are:

FreeVCR
Acap
VirtualDub -mod and allinclusive 1.54
VirtualVCR
FlyCap - all versions

I'm traing to capture my old collection of VHS tapes and some Hi8 camcorder footage.

I started with a AsusA7V 1Giga XP Pro
and went on to a 3Giga Asus P4C800 E Deluxe because of dropped frames but it made no difference - the 3 giga board is running capture at full DVD size and PicVideo comp18 at between 10 and 25% CPU. Used onboard sound and my Dmx6fire.

THREE problems:

1. Dropping seems relative to nothing - sometimes loads and other times none.
(tried fresh starts - seperate capture drive - ntfs - fat32 - cables open case etc.)

2. ATI Rage Fury VIVO is usually doing a great job except with one tape where it like peals the video from the top and flashes it to halfway down the screen for the first 15 minutes- fluttering like a moths wings. (doesn't do that on the tele)

3. Why does my German XP default to NTSC_M ? Is there a registry hack ?


Virtualdub mod throws more frames with the "sync" version than with no compensation
Virtualdub allinclusive crashes and freezes too much to be worth the hastle.
VirtualVCR drops a few frames (dropped2 whatever that is) at the beginning and continues just fine for 2 hours only to have caputed a few 100 frames at the beginning and although the file is big its just audio with a frozen picture - not reflected in the stats.
This program can freeze so badly on XP that it needs a re-boot to get out.

All programs are up to date and nothing is satisfactory except PowerVCR2 which uses the wrong audio frequency and is not syncable when re-sampled.
What a bloody mess - honestly - I've spent a week on this, read all sorts and built a new computer.

Should I buy a DV Camcorder instead ?

thanks for any magical help,

maa

[mustardman]

The problem is not your computer, even a 200MHz pentium can cope with capturing full-res (PAL) with a fast hard disk (7200RPM). No ATA66 or ATA100 when it rolled off the production line!

The problem is not the capture app either.

No, the problem is your capture card. I went through the same problems (as have others). Some capture cards are just crap, and not worth even plugging in to your PC.

Some guys swear by TBC, either as part of the playing VCR or a stand-alone device. Personally, I don't beleive they will work. No doubt they will stabilise vertical & horizontal sync, but they will drop & duplicate frames (depending on the model, maybe only fields). It's just you will never know about it, because the signal coming in to the capture card will be nice and clean.

I bought an ADVC100 (external device) and it captures great. However, it does drop FIELDS, and duplicate (usually frames, haven't seen a duplicated field). Because it is external, the PC never knows about these frames.

Sometimes I wish I had gone for an internal "ADVC100" (whatever its' model number is). Only guessing, but I would hope it reports dropped frames. But then again, the convenience of an external box is hard to beat.

I still run a DC30, but its' sync performance is crap.

BTW, I do captures of home video stuff. It is pretty challenging, as sync stability and signal integrety is usually pretty marginal. I usually use VirtualDub with the DC30, and WinDV with the ADVC100. Oh, and I also run 98SE without any problems.

edit: A DV camcorder will do a nice job converting your old footage depending on the brand and model. Usually only the better (ie: more expensive) models have A/V input. Stay away from JVC, the contrast/brightness ratio gets completely screwed going from analog to digital!
To edit nicely, you will still need to capture to your PC, but as I said above, that is no problem. The A/D conversion is what is causing you the greif.

[maa]

Thanks for the reply - thought it was just me, I'll try a friends TV Card next with BT?? chip set.
I really thought ATI was tops with their Rage Theater stuff.
Next test will be capturing through a borrowed Canon DV camcorded - I'll post back.

cheers

maa

[mustardman]

A lot of guys on this forum seem to use the BT based cards, and I do recall vague mentions of the ATI stuff.

From what I gather, the combination "PC monitor" cards that include the ability to capture TV signals are really not that hot. A friend of mine has one, and he has real problems capturing 25fps (PAL), as the card is designed for 30fps (NTSC). All his captures look shocking.

I reckon if you want to get good captures, you are better off getting an OK monitor card and hence (in total) spending a bit more to get a dedicated capture card.

Try the Canon DV camcorder, you may like it. To capture you would still need a firewire card - or port on your computer, most modern laptops have one of these...

[echooff]

I have recently started capturing my vhs stuff. I am using a Avermedia BT878 based card and I am using the wincap drivers. I use virtualvcr and picvideo mjpeg set on 19. My last 2 catures(only done 2 so far) had a total of 3 dropped frames, all at the beginning of the capture. Total time for both combined was 3 hours 48 minutes. Maybe I've been lucky. Now if I can just figure out Avisynth stuff (kicking my butt) for post processing I'll be a happy camper.

[rfmmars]

I will put ATI capture cards at the top with Campous ADVC 100. Never ever a drop frame NEVER!, and I dare you to see any difference between the two captures.

Your capture card is not the problem, but you may want to use newer drivers from ATI site. I have three ATI AIW cards, 8500DV,7500, and 9000, they all product excellent results, and I have two DC30 cards to boot.

I can use the ATI capture software, or if you install the VDF to WDM wrapper, and then you can capture with many codecs inside Virtualdub.

There is some thing wrong with your computer setup. IS the DMA turn on?

Are all the caches turned off?

Is nothing running in the backgrounsd?

A great place for help in configuation is in Pinnical web site, with problems with dropped frame using the DC30 cards. This is old info, but the the problem is current. One of the nice things about the DC30 capture software was it would test each hard drive for video data transfer speed. Then you could play aroud for the best setting.

Back then I was using a AMD KI pentium killer running at a wopping 233 MHZ at a data rate of 4200 with no dropped frames.

I am being forcefull about this because you are getting bad info.

Richard
photorecall.net

[maa]

I know I had less capture problems with this card on a PII400 than I'm having now. The drivers are the lates from ATI for this card (Rage Pro 128 Fury ViVo) the computer - well theres not much better at the moment and yes DMA_5 on all drives.
Even closed Explorer - no eye candy and optimized for performance - most services OFF, in fact theres only 16 services running in the task manager.
The picture quality is excellent when its not chucking frames.....

the VDF to WDM wrapper, and then you can capture with many codecs inside Virtualdub. Where can I get that ?

Are all the caches turned off? Which and where are they ?

The ATI software for the Rage Fury doesn't operate with 48Khz and I've never seen a Hack to make the newer software work with it - anyone ?

[rfmmars]

I forgot or you didn't say what operating system your using, but nothing should be running in the background, not even the clock. When you upgraded your computer, did you also use the same hard drive and just update the drivers or did you start from scratch.?

The VFW to WDM Wrapper. I just finished updating one of my workstations and couldn't get VD to connect with my ATI card. It did before,but I forgot how to do it.

Then looking at a ATI post that I had saved, there it was the VDF to WDM wapper artical, and the link for it. I clicked on the link, and it was DEAD. I used every search engine and found many links, but they were all DEAD.

I am a collector of knowlage, and I was sure that I had saved this on a CD, and sure enough I do have it.

I will send it to you, just contact me rfmmars@cox.net

The caches are in the mothboard bios, and in the control panel in system. Mess around in the bios settings also reguarding hard drive parameters, and do a sample capture of the same clip until you get results. These will be .AVI file captures, not Mpeg2. I like Xvid.avi codec.

My capture does work at 48khz, but 44 should be ok too.

I went though the same things you are dealing with, yes I ditched my AMD 233 mhz and got a 1.3 gig. It didn't make any difference until I downloaded those articals. On my old 233mhz machine I can still do a S-VHS capture with no drop frames never!!, I just want to save you time and money.

Don't use my e-address that on my web site but use rfmmars@cox.net I will do everything I can to solve your problem.

Richard
photorecall.net

[mustardman]

Hmmm, it is possible that my information is bad, but with maa's strong intonation that he is trying to capture old camcorder footage, I stick by my analysis.

I too can use the DC30 without a single frame drop when capturing direct from TV or from a VHS recorded TV programme. However, capturing camcorder video is an entirely different ball game. Somehow I don't think a 1k buck camera is going to compete with a camera that a TV studio may use, costing anywhere from $20k (for a cheapie)!

In my experience, even original tapes from a camcorder have dubious signal integrity. And then of course are copies of those tapes(putting video-8 to VHS, VHS-C, etc)

I'd almost (but not quite) bet my left one that if maa did a capture direct from TV, he would not experience any problems. (@maa - have you tried this? what happened?)

I spent several months struggling with my $2k DC30 and tried lots of different equipment (several TBCs, different VCRs, different capture cards, etc) before I decided my tapes were actually the problem.

Yes, the Pinnacle stuff does have some good "test" applications for hard disk throughput, I find them quite good. In addition, there are freeware applications that do very similar things. I have found Pinnacle very very poor for providing any technical support. I would now not touch their stuff with a barge pole.

With the speed of maa's computer, he should not be experiencing the problems he is, except of course if he is just not getting fast enough transfer to his hard disk. This is somthing he should check, and somthing I should have suggested. My apologies for not doing so. Certainly disabling the clock on a P200 made a difference (yes, I used to do it). But a system running over 1GHz? I have no problems capturing (TV material - stable signal) while using other applications (MP3 playing, document editing, spreadsheets, etc) without dropping frames.

A lot of people (me included) rave about the ADVC100. However, it is not infallable. I have conclusive proof of the ADVC100 dropping frames when capturing camcorder footage. However, the ADVC100 has no way of informing the computer this has happened, hence, the user is usually unaware....

[maa]

Ok - to recap a little - I'm using WinXp Pro but have seperate partitions and can easilly start Win98se up to compare.

The video source is not Camcorder stuff its OLD VHS.

I'm pretty good tuning computer for HD throughput as I also run a recording studio using 16 inputs to Samplitude and mixing up to around 40 tracks. You can't do that without DMA and highly optimized systems.
So - this video capture thing hits me in the face !!!

Maybe there are some cache settings somewhere in XP that I've overlooked - Virtualdub says its dissabling windows write behind caching though.

Funny but I've had nearly acceptable results with FreeVCR thats not being developed anymore as far as I could find out.

Also I refuse to capture at 44.1 audio.
Thats silly but MANY apps are bound to it for some historic reason I dare say.

As I said - my system doesn't demand any more than 25% CPU and thats only now and then.

So before I try another card I'll test with a realy clean signal from a DVD Direct connection !

pause


Well I got 5 minutes of Star wars II car chase with 4 frames dropped.
(perfect picture though....)

[rfmmars]

Four frames dropped isn't too bad but we are looking for perfect. Go ahead and use win98 and see if there is a difference, you will have files size limitation but the test is worth while. If AVI the cpu is not a factor, harddrive is the name of the gain.

Are you running the cpu priority as background?

Keep me imformed

Richard

[maa]

I'm wondering if my ATI card is bad production.
It always has a dirty edge at the bottom - interferance of some sort.
Sometimes about four pixels high and flashing different colors.
I know its in the overscan area but wonder how much this can irritate the codecs.
The Star Wars test was to uncompressed AVI about 8 Gigabytes.
I also tried cropping off 8 x 8 x 128 x 128 but there was no differencein performance.

[rfmmars]

The thing at the bootom could be the switchover of the heads on a VSH tape. I don't think that causes any problems because this video info is exactly that video.

One other thought, If you have a extra hard drive, do a clean O.S. install, and put only what you need to do video capture.

Richard

[mustardman]

Ahhh, sorry. When I read some Hi8 camcorder footage in the first post, I had assumed all your material was from camcorders. I'll just get back in my hole now...

But following on, the junk few lines at the bottom of a VHS capture is normal. It is due to the way a VCR works. You will not get this direct from TV.

But you should get no frames dropped for direct from TV, so there is a problem with your PC or your capture card... more time that you will have to spend finding out which...

Best of luck!

[maa]

Hey - its a new computer - remember? Yes I have empty partitions to capture to - Big Fast Seagates.

I've got some good news which I can't explain though.
I just captured 30 minutes of pure, directly connected DVD without a single dropped frame !:)!

So what did I change ?
Well I installed PowerProducer which insisted on having DirectX 9 first so I obliged.

However, PowerProducer does not work - "unable to configure capturing device"

After that I started up VirtualVCR (the one that would free on me so badly) and cropped 32 x 32 x 128 x 128 (very wide screen ratio) set "19" in PicVideo and hit go

So has DirectX9 or PowerProducer changed something vital ?

I'll try some more VHS now...


thanks for your patience

maa

[sarahjh69]

I gave up trying to capture on a PC
I wasted a load of money and never managed to get satisfactory results.
Went out and bought a philips dvdr75 standalone dvd recorder
(£220 from richer sounds) every recording is perfect now.

[mustardman]

@sarajh69
every recording is perfect now What is your source material?

[maa]

Ok - I give up.

I can't record VHS video from my VCR to my capture card - even without audio it can't even sync to itself so what is to blame is beyond me.

I guess it'll have to be a standalone or the "via DV Camcorder" trick.

[rfmmars]

It's really a mix of VHS & S-VHS ranging from as far back as 1977. Some from cable,off air, and a lot of 4 gig satellite. My own camcorder footage dates bach to the 80', two piece system, full size VHS & C-VHS, and a number of 8mm analog. I do use Procsumer decks like JVC-9990, broadcast JVC, & Panasonic studio models.

These decks give better playback than a home VHS unit. They all have TBC and dropout compensation.

I do at some times use a customer's unit on loan when the tape was recorded at EP and SLP speed. Since there was no standards for these modes, using their decks give a better playback.

Richard

[sarahjh69]

my source materials are
satellite via rgb scart input
vhs via rgb scart video stableizer lead
dv camera via firewire input

[maa]

So the bottom line is this:
ATI Rage Theater on the Rage 128 Pro ViVo can capture perfect quality from a perfect source with no dropped frames.
If the source is VHS and from an older VCR then frames are dropped.

Answer ?

1. I captured the above mentioned offending tape to the Cannon DV camcorder and then captured its analog output to the ATI card.
Result: PERFECT
It became obvious that the DV Camcorder is far more advanced at coping with a dirty signal.

2. Better still:
Connect the VCR to the DV camcoder and capture the "passed through" DV signal to firewire (no need to run the tape).
This is the best solution because the audio is automatically in SYNC.

Thanks to rfmmars and mustardman for keeping me going.

[Arachnotron]

Small question: did you check the capture for duplicate frames?

That a certain capping solution does not report dropped frames does not neccesarily mean they are not there. It may simply not tell you about it.

this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=65093&highlight=duplicate+count) thread is about counting duplicate frames using avisynth. Have not tried to do this myself yet. There may be easier methods to find dropped frames.

[mustardman]

I agree with Arachnotron. Because external DV devices don't (or can't) report dropped frames, there may be some lurking. Run the AVS script over your capture to check it. It can report duplicate frames, but unfortunately, it won't report missing frames (I don't think anything can in a post-process step) [NB: I'm talking external DV here, nothing else]

How is your contrast/brightness with the Canon DV. My JVC (now diched) was absolutely shocking!

[rfmmars]

Most happy to have been some help to you. By try things on your own you moved forward to a solution.

Richard

[maa]

If anyone is interested, I borrowed a TV card sold by Medion (AldiMarkt) here in Gemany. The card has a Phillips Tuner and can also capture.

I tested my Rage 128 ViVo card against the Phillips and the direct capture to the Canon Camcorder.
To see the result as a finished product I made a 2 sec clip of each capture and authored a non stop sequence to DVD.

The two cards captured to uncompressed PAL AVI, the Cannon to full resolution DV AVI. The three files were then batch converted at 3Pass VBR high resolution DVD compliant output via CCE and authored with DVDLab. The last file in the series is the orginal uncompressed VOB which is wide screen and thus higher resolution.
So theres four clips here running in a loop.

ATI
Phillips
Cannon Camcorder
Original

Two of the candidates did pretty well - what do you think ?

Why didn't you just post some screen shots ?
Well I was more interested in the final product as viewed on the PC monitor and TV. So this example covers the whole product at the best settings I could use.

Download the test DVD here - its 5.7 mb
CapTest (http://www.photosyndikat.de/guides/more/CapTest.zip)

cheers

maa

[rfmmars]

maa..... I downloaded your cap test and I agree the ATI Rage 128 looks terrable but something has to be wrong here.

I took your uncompressed file and compressed with the Ligos mpeg2 encoder (the same one that ATI uses) at 8000 bps CBR and the file is so good I tell any difference at all.

You said the your card used the Rage Theather Chip, and thats what my three ATI AIW used, so I am a lost to say whats going on here. My capture software from ATI does allow me to capture audio at 48kz.

However I want to say that this is the kind of testing that should always be done.

Richard

[maa]

Ah - glad you like the test - I think I forgot to mention that the recording was done from my Standalone DVDPlayer into the Capture cards or Canon Camcorder respectively.
The capture cards were set to YUY2 and everything else on standard.

I took your uncompressed file and compressed with the Ligos mpeg2 encoder (the same one that ATI uses) at 8000 bps CBR and the file is so good I tell any difference at all What does that prove ? I captured this using each device to AVI.

The only ATI software for my card is MMC 7.2 which is fixed at 44.1khz audio. So I have to avoid mpeg as PowerVCR is the same.

"This software only captures audio to non DVD Spec 44.1khz "
Applies to Magix VideoDeluxe too which is an excellent editor.
B*****ds don't tell you that when you buy.....

[rfmmars]

What I was trying to convey was that MPEG2 is a good format, and it has taken a bum rap in the NLE comunity, but a whole lot depends on the mpeg2 codec used. I can't see why if you captured uncompressed .avi from the ATI card why it is so crappy looking. I have done it without any problem.

Ati's hardware MPEG2 emcoder produces as good of a capture as DV.avi if everything is set correctly. It is possible the card may have a defect. The bottom line is you have found what works for you and in the end that's what matters.

Richard

[maa]

Ah - I see what you mean!
Well I was going to buy a Radeon 9200 twin monitor ViVo next and now I'm worried. This Rage card IS performing badly, watching the AVI it would appear to be suffering from electronic interference as there is a constant "Hum" in the picture (If you know what I mean).
Not so the Phillips which is clear and detailed.

Anyone else compared cards under exactly the same conditions?