MyHD MDP-120 mangles frames on analog captures

[WannaB]

Hi,

I know this question is about analog video but since it relates specifically to an HDTV tuner card I thought this would be the best place to ask. I'm using the MyHD v1.63 software and driver. On all of my analog captures with a vertical resolution of 480, I end up with a few jumbled frames per minute. They look kind of like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces all mixed up and the colors shifted. It doesn't matter if the source is the S-Video connection, the composite video connection, or just plain analog broadcasts. I've tried several codecs and every display and overlay setting and I always end up with the same thing (except for the odd scenario described below). I also get kind of jerky video and brief freezes during high motion scenes. Audio always stays in sync, though. I think the software is trying to deinterlace the video on the fly but it's just struggling to do so and somehow screwing it up in the process.

The only exception is if I set the display setting to 720x480i, in which case I end up with split screen video, one on top of the other. I think what's happening in this case is that the software is splitting up the frame and placing the first field of the video on top and the second field right below it instead of actually interlacing it. There are no mangled frames in this scenario or jerky video, but the image is a little bit choppy (like when you use SeparateFields in AVISynth).

All caps at 288 or 240 vertical resolution come out just fine and all transport stream captures come out perfect.

So, has anyone had a similar problem or know how to resolve it? Is it possible to use different software (i.e. VirtualDub) with this card? I've tried but failed. Or is there some way to interlace that split screen video after the fact using AVISynth or some other method so that I end up with a complete 720x480 frame?

By the way, here are my system's specs. I'm running XP Pro, 3.2GHz processor with HyperThreading, 2GB RAM, 2 250GB hard drives configured for RAID 0, and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 128MB DDR RAM. I also close all applications and antivirus software before capping anything to make sure the cap has plenty of resources available to it. I do not have any free PCI slots, so buying a cheap card just for analog caps isn't an option.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

[minolta]

I have the same problems with the MyHD as well. I've tried improving analog support, but speed and picture quality is worse than my $50 bt8x8 card, so I stopped using MyHD for analog. With that said, my experience has been:

1. Dropped/Mangled Frames
The MyHD in analog is terribly slow. The deinterlace is sometimes incomplete which results in 'torn' frames (i'm guessing). Also, my 2GHz machine can barely cap 640x480 w/o many dropped frames. Using Huffyuv or PicVideo results in dropping every other frame! Don't remember any color shifting problems, however.

2. Interlace Support
As you stated, the MyHD does an automatic deinterlace (hardware) of video. Nice for watching, but terrible for capping. Indeed, capping w/ 720x480i "seems" to stack fields, and video can be un-stacked and weaved by:

v=AviSource("cap.avi")
b=Crop(v, 0, 0, 720, 240)
t=Crop(v, 0, 240, 720, 240)
f=Interleave(t, b).AssumeFieldBased()
w=Weave(f)
return w

However, upon closer inspection these can't be the original fields. Looking at separated fields you see each field is different, but has a slow-then-fast motion (not a tff vs. bff problem...).

3. Other Software
I have used other programs such as VirtualVcr for capping, but the MyHD drivers still slow and deinterlace. Only thing you might gain is the ability to cap w/ YUY2, but all the same problems still exist.


I now use my cheap and VERY fast ATI_Wonder_VE for capping analog (cable) using VirtualVCR and DScalar, and my MyHD card for HD only (antenna). I think if you're serious about analog you might need to do the same.
-Minolta

[WannaB]

:scared: I was afraid of that. Thanks for confirming the problem and the advice. I'm going to have to think about what I can possibly pull out of that box to free up a PCI slot. I may be stuck with no options, though. I am really happy with my HD caps so I'm definitely keeping this card, but it's a shame it's not a real all-in-one solution.

Thanks again.

[Zep]

Originally posted by minolta
I have the same problems with the MyHD as well. I've tried improving analog support, but speed and picture quality is worse than my $50 bt8x8 card, so I stopped using MyHD for analog. With that said, my experience has been:

1. Dropped/Mangled Frames
The MyHD in analog is terribly slow. The deinterlace is sometimes incomplete which results in 'torn' frames (i'm guessing). Also, my 2GHz machine can barely cap 640x480 w/o many dropped frames. Using Huffyuv or PicVideo results in dropping every other frame! Don't remember any color shifting problems, however.

2. Interlace Support
As you stated, the MyHD does an automatic deinterlace (hardware) of video. Nice for watching, but terrible for capping. Indeed, capping w/ 720x480i "seems" to stack fields, and video can be un-stacked and weaved by:


strange i see none of that here. No drops and no need to interlace.
are you using the 1.6.3 final release drivers? (dated april 29 If IIRC)

you may need a bios update or video card driver update as well.

[WannaB]

Yes, I'm using ver. 1.63 of the driver and the software (dated April 23), and my BIOS and video drivers are up to date. I've seen other complaints about capturing analog with this card, but Minolta is the first to confirm the exact same problem I'm having. And then I've seen a couple of people say that it works perfectly for them. So there must be some system specific conflict somewhere.

If I may ask, does your CPU use HyperThreading?

[minolta]

@Zep, your captured analog content is interlaced?? I thought everybody had this problem. My captures are definitely progressive w/ new computer, new drivers, v1.63 MyHD, etc... That is, my 720x480 caps look like upscaled 720x240. Please verify and respond; I must find fix if true. Anyone else?

@WannaB, I don't have hyperthreading (Anthlon XP).

-Minolta

[Zep]

Originally posted by WannaB
Yes, I'm using ver. 1.63 of the driver and the software (dated April 23), and my BIOS and video drivers are up to date. I've seen other complaints about capturing analog with this card, but Minolta is the first to confirm the exact same problem I'm having. And then I've seen a couple of people say that it works perfectly for them. So there must be some system specific conflict somewhere.

If I may ask, does your CPU use HyperThreading?

i say it is a software conflict. The reason i say that
it this PC is ONLY used for capping and has nothing else
installed beyound XP.

A clean XP with only VDUB and avisynth and 1 third party codec
that being Xvid. i did notice that I needed the latest ATI
drivers or i had problems with weird garbage on screen if
i used the older one from the XP install on start up but
the latest drivers fixed that.

as for hyperthreading no. This is a 2+ year old 2.4Ghz northwood.


Now the thing is even in the forums not many are saying
thay are having problems like you two. ( I mean the
macro image tech site) and I do not see any of that so
yeah something is goofy somehwere.

[Zep]

Originally posted by minolta
@Zep, your captured analog content is interlaced?? I thought everybody had this problem. My captures are definitely progressive w/ new computer, new drivers, v1.63 MyHD, etc... That is, my 720x480 caps look like upscaled 720x240. Please verify and respond; I must find fix if true. Anyone else?

-Minolta

no mine are progressive and perfect.


you said

Nice for watching, but terrible for capping. Indeed, capping w/ 720x480i "seems" to stack fields, and video can be un-stacked and weaved by:

so i was responding to that as in i see no weird interlacing where
i would need to do what you did in your posted script. For me
it is Nice for watching and nice for capping.

make sure overlay mode is set to VOP 30 frames a second.
display type RGB.

[minolta]

Okay, thanks Zep. I too apreciate the progressive when my target is divx/vcd, but sometimes desire the 'original' interlaced frames when my target is dvd and source is truely-interlaced like "reality tv" or sports. For some reason, the MyHD doesn't give the option to turn off its deinterlace function (perhaps it is hardware level and can't be turned off). Thanks.
-Minolta

[minolta]

well, easier to explain problem with a picture. source is a truely-interlaced tv commercial i just recorded.

http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~chadspen/ex.jpg

Top image is MyHD @ 640x480. Middle image is bt878 (ATI Wonder VE) @ 640x480. Bottom image is MyHD with display video resolution set to 720x480i (which stacks image as WanaB explained) and recorded @ 640x480.

Top image is progressive (even though source is interlaced). Middle image is correctly interlaced by my bt878 card (notice his hand) and 'Dan Nelson' logo appears less jagged than top image. Bottom image is just plain crazy, and is what the aforementioned avisynth script fixes.

Judging by the jaggy logo, I'd say the MyHD does a bob-like deinterlace. Not so good... You just as well cap at 720x240. This should explain our interlaced troubles (we WANT interlaced middle image from MyHD card!). As far as MyHD capping speed, I only have problems capping bottom image type or at resolution 720x480. At 640x480 my computer drops few frames (even with MJPEG compression).
-Minolta

[WannaB]

Zep,

So you can cap directly to xvid at 720x480? I tried several codecs and HuffyUV gave the best results, typically with only about 2 or 3 mangled frames per minute. But those mangled frames are still too distracting to make the caps acceptable. Oddly, 720x480 seemed to work better than 640x480. But xvid and divx codecs resulted in mangled frames every couple of seconds as did most other codecs.

I don't doubt there's some kind of software conflict which is causing this but it's going to be tough to pin down. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of having a dedicated capping box. This one has to be good for work and play, so everything is going to have to coexist on here.

I'm thinking about rolling back the video card's driver to see if that helps. If you can get it to work, hopefully I'll be able to get it work, too, but I foresee needing to do a lot of tweaking and testing to get things right.

Thanks for your input, guys.

[Zep]

Originally posted by WannaB
Zep,

So you can cap directly to xvid at 720x480? I tried several codecs and HuffyUV gave the best results, typically with only about 2 or 3 mangled frames per minute. But those mangled frames are still too distracting to make the caps acceptable. Oddly, 720x480 seemed to work better than 640x480. But xvid and divx codecs resulted in mangled frames every couple of seconds as did most other codecs.

I don't doubt there's some kind of software conflict which is causing this but it's going to be tough to pin down. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of having a dedicated capping box. This one has to be good for work and play, so everything is going to have to coexist on here.

I'm thinking about rolling back the video card's driver to see if that helps. If you can get it to work, hopefully I'll be able to get it work, too, but I foresee needing to do a lot of tweaking and testing to get things right.

Thanks for your input, guys.


use VBLE it is the best lossless codec IMHO (huffy makes bigger files and thus slower to
read/write to HD etc... and since it is YV12 already no conversion needed.

[Zep]

Originally posted by minolta
well, easier to explain problem with a picture. source is a truely-interlaced tv commercial i just recorded.

http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~chadspen/ex.jpg

Top image is MyHD @ 640x480. Middle image is bt878 (ATI Wonder VE) @ 640x480. Bottom image is MyHD with display video resolution set to 720x480i (which stacks image as WanaB explained) and recorded @ 640x480.

Top image is progressive (even though source is interlaced). Middle image is correctly interlaced by my bt878 card (notice his hand) and 'Dan Nelson' logo appears less jagged than top image. Bottom image is just plain crazy, and is what the aforementioned avisynth script fixes.

Judging by the jaggy logo, I'd say the MyHD does a bob-like deinterlace. Not so good... You just as well cap at 720x240. This should explain our interlaced troubles (we WANT interlaced middle image from MyHD card!). As far as MyHD capping speed, I only have problems capping bottom image type or at resolution 720x480. At 640x480 my computer drops few frames (even with MJPEG compression).
-Minolta


wow they all look bad. i see jaggies everywhere and the flattened frames
I have never seen before. yeah something is messed up there.

I'm not sure what to tell you. If you have the latest drivers and myHD app
it should be good to go as it is here so it MUST be something else.

I would uninstall and make sure you get all myHD files GONE then re install.

better yet. if you have a second hard drive install a FRESH copy of XP on it
then install ONLY the myHD drivers and see if that helps. If it does then
you know it is some conflict with all the crud that builds up on ones box.

[WannaB]

VBLE doesn't solve the issue for me, but does result in distorted audio at 720x480 or 640x480. Seems to do a pretty good job at 352x240. But now that I've test capped and watched a few longer examples, I find that even at 352x240 I get a lot of "dropped" frames no matter what codec I use. They happen in a pattern of 3 duplicated frames, 2 normal frames, 6 duplicated frames. That 3-2-6 pattern happens every two or three minutes. Audio stays in sync for about the first hour, but caps longer than an hour get further and further out of sync with the audio leading the video.

I'm going to continue fiddling with it if I can think of anything else that might help, but at that moment I'm suspecting I'm SOL in terms of getting good analog caps with this card.

Thanks for the advice, guys.

[Zep]

Originally posted by WannaB
VBLE doesn't solve the issue for me, but does result in distorted audio at 720x480 or 640x480. Seems to do a pretty good job at 352x240. But now that I've test capped and watched a few longer examples, I find that even at 352x240 I get a lot of "dropped" frames no matter what codec I use. They happen in a pattern of 3 duplicated frames, 2 normal frames, 6 duplicated frames. That 3-2-6 pattern happens every two or three minutes. Audio stays in sync for about the first hour, but caps longer than an hour get further and further out of sync with the audio leading the video.

I'm going to continue fiddling with it if I can think of anything else that might help, but at that moment I'm suspecting I'm SOL in terms of getting good analog caps with this card.

Thanks for the advice, guys.

may I asked what PC you have? How much ram? and if you are
capping to a NON BOOT drive? ( which is a must )
simple put if you do NOT have a fast enough system it will drop
frames to keep up.

offset audio and/or drift is easy to fix. Both fixes
can be done in seconds in VDub etc...

I just do not see those problems here so I can't help much I guess.

[WannaB]

It's a 3.2 GHz P4 with Hyperthreading, 2 GB RAM, and 2 250 GB drives configured for RAID 0. Even though it's not an independent drive, the RAID configuration is very fast and I don't think that's the issue because it happens in a fairly regular pattern no matter what resolution I use, no matter what codec I use, how much compression, how big the files end up being, etc.

Yeah, fixing the audio sync is easy and no big deal. I just mention it as a symptom of the dropped frames.