problems capturing without dropped frames (they occur about 2 mins after starting)

[scharfis_brain]

I try to cap something without drops.
My current setup:

AthlonXP 1600+
Geforce GTS pro - latest driver
Hauppauge WinTV - btwincap
Soundblaster PCI 128
2x 80 GB HDD (2nd one is used for capping / primary slave)

I am using win98se & virtualdub for capping. It doesn't matter which version or mod I use, the behaviour is always the same.

everytime I start the capping process, everything looks just fine.
but after some minutes (usually 2 to 4 minutes) the Systems starts to produce a LOT of framedrops.
the resulting AVI mostly has no common dropped frames (marked sa D in Vdub) it only has skipped frames.

so, if anyone knows how to get rid of this weird thing, please let me know.

THanks.

(I am beginning pulling my hair out because of this)

[eb]

Try to set for video Divx 4.12, fastestest and max bitrate {4000) and for audio record as LPCM.
Your problem probably is connected with hard drive capability, it will be easier for it if the amount of data will be smaller /hence Divx4.12 or 3ivx encoding should be used.

eb

[bb]

@eb:
I wonder why you recommend the ancient DivX 4.x for capturing. If you really want to walk the DivX path, you should use the current version 5.12. But I would not recommend this for archiving purposes. scharfis_brain's PC is not powerful enough to capture DivX at full PAL resolution, and I guess he's interested in quality captures.

I don't believe that there's a problem with the HDD speed. With the configuration mentioned you should be able to capture to MJPEG or even Huffyuv without problems.

@scharfis_brain:
Watch the processes in Task Manager to see if there's a CPU eater active when the frame drops occur. An option to save CPU is to swap to a WDM capture program, e.g. VirtualVCR or iuVCR.

bb

[eb]

bb wrote:
I wonder why you recommend the ancient DivX 4.x for capturing. If you really want to walk the DivX path, you should use the current version 5.12. But I would not recommend this for archiving purposes. scharfis_brain's PC is not powerful enough to capture DivX at full PAL resolution, and I guess he's interested in quality captures.

All this are conclusions from my experience.
And Divx 4.12 is used here as simple and quick working codeck to capture video for this intermediate stage. I had problems with 5 verions, not tested with lattest.For archiving /the second stage/ i am using mainly and prefer 3ivx.

bb private question: is bbtool1.9 your child?

greetings

eb

[scharfis_brain]

I've changed to PicVideo @ Q18, which seems to help CPU usage a lot, but the drops aren't gone :(

opening ATM (Another Tak Manager) foer Win9x shows, that kernel32.dll eats up all CPU-time, but when I start capping, vdub takes what is needed...

cpu usage of vdub is always below 30% and datarate is below 4 MB/sec

also I do never compress audio whil capping. it is pure PCM: 44.1khZ 16bit mono

btw. DivX? huh? I do not inverst time in such crap.
I want to capture true interlaced Video in YUY2 colorpsace.

[scharfis_brain]

I have switched to VVCR, which seems to help.

but I have an average frame drop every 40 seconds.

(probably caused due to Video-8 sync issues)

is it possible to use bt-tweaker with VVCR (or how can I call the bt-tweaker dialogue box without running VDub ?)

[BruceL]

@scharfis_brain

Have you tried VDub Sync?
You get audio sync and can use BTTweaker.

Get it here:
http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~dittrich/sync/#download

[scharfis_brain]

@ bruceL:

to qute myself:
It doesn't matter which version or mod I use, the behaviour is always the same.

which means, that I already tried that...

[BruceL]

@scharfis_brain

Is your capturing drive on the same cable as your primary? Could be bandwidth sharing limitations. Have you tried your cap drive on a separate cable from primary?

Do you get dropped frames if you cap without audio? Could be your SB card. Have you tried different slots for your SB card and cap card? Could be IRQ conflicts.

[scharfis_brain]

1) there are no bandwidth problems. (is 4MB/sec taht much ?!?)
the problem is the same, even if i choose the boot hdd.

2) how do I setup a capture without sound in VDub?

3) I have no other SB Card

4) no IRQ sharing or conficts

5) another slot didn't help

[BruceL]

@scharfis_brain

1) Could be an intermittent peak problem such as when Windows uses the hard disk for virtual memory.

2) When in Capture mode go to "Capture" / "Capture Settings" and uncheck "Capture audio". Also, in that same panel, what are your values for the following, Video buffer limit, Audio buffer limit and Audio buffer size?

[Bogalvator]

This could be a Win 98 problem. Have you got access to W2K or XP to test on your machine?

[scharfis_brain]

the weird thing is, that it worked without problems some time ago on win9x, before I reinstalled the system.

so it is not a win9x problem.

@BruceL:
those buffer settings, I left at default values.
(exept the disk I/O buffers is set to more chunks, so the data gets written continuously to the HDD.
(if I set a bigger buffer size with a lesser amount of chunks, the data gets written impulse-wise, which causes more drops)

I'll try capping without audio next time.

[BruceL]

@scharfis_brain

When capturing with VDub Sync (I switched to Virtual VCR a while back) I always used buffer settings as recommended in the Doom9 Capture Guide (Many thanks to Wilbert, fabulous job). Always got good results. Settings are as follows:
Video buffer limit, 150
Audio buffer limit, 10
Audio buffer size, 36000

Hope this helps.

[eb]

sharfis_brain wrote:btw. DivX? huh? I do not inverst time in such crap
I am not so brave as you to call anothers work as crap.
For its time Divx4.12 was ans still is the best product of DIVX, we can name our English language capabilities as a crap.

Going back to to your problem, make sure that DMA of your hard disks is set to on.
Greetings

eb

[bb]

Off topic:
Originally posted by eb
[...]bb private question: is bbtool1.9 your child?[...]


No, it's not. bbtool was made by Brent Beyeler.

bb

[Boulder]

Have you tried disabling ACPI? You'll have to do this first in Windows, then reboot and disable it in BIOS. Be warned though, if you don't do it the right way, you'll probably have to do a reinstall or a repair installation.

[scharfis_brain]

eb: for final compression (after all processing had been done!) of a movie or video I do not judge over DivX.

But for capping Video it is crap.

Boulder: I am using Win98, how to disable ACPI here?


@all: Yesterday I bought a cinergy400 (cause my old hauppauge PCI-FM (bought in 1999 for about 105 Euros) had some problems with chroma and added grainy stripes to the image.

I'll post my results asap.

[Boulder]

It's been a while since I last had a Win98 system, but I think you'll find it via Device Manager. There is the entry 'Computer' which probably shows something with ACPI in it. You'll have to change this to 'Standard PC' to disable ACPI in Win98.

It's recommended to make a backup of your system since IIRC you can't re-enable ACPI without doing a reinstall or a repair installation.

[fellaw]

@scharfis_brain:

I had trouble with USB-Devices, especially Joysticks and Gamepads.
As soon as I plugged them in, I got lots of dropped frames. But in the whole, this was chipset related(KT133). Now I've got a KT266, and the drops are gone.

[vhelp]

Originally posted by scharfis_brain
I try to cap something without drops.
My current setup:

AthlonXP 1600+
Geforce GTS pro - latest driver
Hauppauge WinTV - btwincap
Soundblaster PCI 128
2x 80 GB HDD (2nd one is used for capping / primary slave)

I am using win98se & virtualdub for capping. It doesn't matter which version or mod I use, the behaviour is always the same.

everytime I start the capping process, everything looks just fine.
but after some minutes (usually 2 to 4 minutes) the Systems starts to produce a LOT of framedrops.
the resulting AVI mostly has no common dropped frames (marked sa D in Vdub) it only has skipped frames.

so, if anyone knows how to get rid of this weird thing, please let me know.

THanks.

(I am beginning pulling my hair out because of this)


Sorry.. its ben a while since I last posted here. I've ben lazy and have ben a very
procrastinative person on many FORUMS. Anyways.

@ scharfis..

First, if I may throw out a suggestion or two ??

Is it possible for you to obtain another HD (equivalent in specs) or
buy (and return later, i.e., a 40gig no need for hi capacity for this
test)
.
The test (though pretty simple to me) is just to see if YOUR hd is failing slowly.
If this new hd passes (w/out any frame drops, or your issues you posted above) then
its safe to assume that all you need is to replace your hd.., instead of pulling
your hair out for another month, or end up resulting in $$ spendures that you did
not after all, need. Anyways.

Frame drops has ben my royal pain in the butt for many years, till I figured on an
almost (if not) full-proof "preporation setup" for a given system. I've posted
this somewhere's over at vcdhelp some time last years. Anyways.

My current "perfect frame drop 'less" capture pc setup, before I dismanteled it
(long story) was:

* ESC K7S5A w/ XP 1800+ 128mb pc133/pc2100 ram
* Windows 98 (Gold)
* Capture Cards: Ospray-210; WinTV GO; DC10+ and others..
* hcwclear.exe - - to clear all registry entries.
... Note, go through ALL [ ] boxes or ( ) boxes and run each time.
* VFW driver
* Capture App: AVI_IO
... This is the oly app that would give me zero frame drops. But, if I used
... vdub, I would drop frames like crazy - - No matter what settings I used as
... suggested, even those suggested above!


OT Note..

I have the Winfast TV-2000 XP "Expert" capture card that I bought some many
months ago (for my Laserdisc SW, and others, projects) though WDM driver, and
under the same setup as above, gave me zero frame drops. I installed this
card very cleanly. I used the hcwclear.exe to make sure I had NO other
driver remnants lercking around my registry (during my initial Winfast install)
.
Long story short, I currently have a problem w/ this card, and can't get it
to work anymores - gives me a "windows protection fault error" or something.
Anyways.
.
I have a receipee for "clean driver installation" when installing a new
capture card/driver in my system, and it never fails. I'll try this probably
this evening, since I can't seem to get my Firewire card(s) to work w/ my CAM
and ADVC-100 in this pc, using my older HD setup. It refuses to communicate w/
my CAM anymore.
But, if I swap in my old HD w/ my prev windows 98 gold installation settings,
everything works flawless. Go figure - - Again, long story.


To recap..

* If you can, try out the Hard Drive test first.
* Otherwise, try my last suggestion.

If you have any questions on the 2nd suggestion, please don't hesitate to ask
here. I've ben through this same never-ending nonense for years, and I do
understand your pain.

-vhelp