Capturing Video Links,FAQ etc.

[Ookami]

Note:This is only a messy start, I hope it will be much better and easier to read in the next updates.

1.) What capture programs do exist?

A list of freeware programs can be found here:

http://ookami.iwebland.com/elist/capture.html

these freeware programs have to be added to the above list:

A. Dittrich's VirtualDub modification that works without frame drops:

http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~dittrich/sync/

As for SHAREWARE:

AVI_IO: http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io/
iuVCR: http://www.iulab.com/index.shtm?iuvcr/about
ReelCap: http://www.reelcap.com/

2.) What is the best capture program?

Most of the users here use VirtualDub. Take a look at this thread(s):

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17440
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17251
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17373


3.) What is the best TV/capture etc. card?

Of course, there is no definitive answer here also, it all depends what you want, how much time you want to spend etc. A few threads that might help you:

(Someone Suggest a Good TV Tuner Card in PC HARDWARE)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16772

(Card recommandation in CAPTURING VIDEO)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20030

4.) Where can I find some good capture guides?

Luke's (Cart's) capture guide: http://www.geocities.com/lukesvideo/index.html
CK's guide (sadly down): http://go.to/videocapture/

German:

Mattheo's low quality capture guide: http://www.voncancrin.de/Capture/Capture.htm

Hawk's capture guide: http://capture.dvdcopyworlds.de/
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17141

Sneak preview to Hawk's guide 3.0: http://ookami.iwebland.com/Hawk/komm...ub-filter.html

5.) How do I convert my VHS to DVD?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19558
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17616

6.) Where can I find VirtualDub filters?

http://www.virtualdub.org/ The official site
http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/ Donald Graft's (neuron2) site
http://go.to/vdfilters/ fISH's VD filter site

7.) What settings could/should I use?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23633
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19595
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18925
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17310
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16013

8.) What hardware do you recommend?

Here is a great article of Scuba's site:

http://www.highvid.com/hardware_tips...rd_sel_1.shtml

9.) I get dropped frames, what should I do?

Read the posting below.

10.) What capture (or end) format is the best?

It depends. For discussions with many different opinions:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21067
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18143
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16013

11.) How do I use VirtualDub?

http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_docs
http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_faq

and

http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_kb

[Ookami]

As I got tired that every few days there is a "help!Dropped frames!" thread, here something that everyone should read BEFORE posting such a post. Many users before have posted such postings only to recognize that their capture disk was fragmented .

Additional note: Dropped frames are normal if they are inserted by the capture program to maintain the av synch. The below optimisation can only help you with dropped frames that are there because of unoptimized capture systems.

I've posted this in a new posting, because this is only an copy and paste from a mail that I've send to UT CK 22.4.2001 . So it's outdated. It will be updated though (only with the help of other users/mods etc. of course).

"(...) Optimizations of the PC and recommandations about Hardware:

HARDWARE:

1.) CPU ,faster = better ;-) +you could link to your table+
2.) HD , many possibilities .Some guidelines:

-Use a HD that is for capture only (and it should be on a controller on it's own)
-7200 RPM should be standard , 2 MB cache too.
-If you have a SCSI system (HD), then you could try to disable the SCSI parity feature on your controller to improve the performance


Some other things:
If you have much HD in your tower do NOT buy IBM harddisks, as they are making much more heat than other HD's (I have 3 IBM HD in my tower...Uh, hot).

3.) GPU or capture card. After reading many (and I mean many) tests,threads and such stuff is this:

GPU's like ASUS 3800 PRO deluxe have beaten much more expensive capture cards easily (with Huffyuv FULL 704x576 capture).But the usage of such cards for HQ capture is NOT for newbies.

Capture cards like the DC xx 's are quite good,easy to use, but they use lossy codecs for capture (like MJPEG).

Do not use cards that cannot capture the FULL vertical resolution (like 576 for PAL) for HQ capture.

+It would be nice to find some test links (we can try to find that together).+

4.) RAM .Never use a no name RAM!Also be sure that you have a RAM that can be used at 133 MHz 2-2-2 (of course DDRAM is better).Good brands are : Infineon (Siemens) ,Micron ,Samsung to name a few.

5.) other components. My opinion is that you should have a PC that has a balance.Rather use a PC that has all good components , than one that has a very fast CPU and a very slow HD.

OPTIMIZATIONS:

General:

-Always make a restart before capture (Win9x has a very bad memory managment)
-Turn off programs that you don't need (Anti Virus,ICQ,CPU cooling programs ...)
-Make a HD (not partition!) that is for capture only!
-Defrag the System disk and the capture disk before the capture.You can alternatively just quick format the capture disk if you don't have any files on it.
-If you use a other program than VirtualDub , then disable the Write file caching in Windows (VirtualDub is disabling it automaticly by default).To disable it go to: CONTROL PANEL -> SYSTEM -> PERFORMANCE -> FILE SYSTEM -> Troubleshooting and enable the "Disable write behind caching for all drives" .Don't forget to turn it on after you did your capture, because it's a very useful feature (when you don't capture).
-Make a fixed swap file.CONTROL PANEL -> SYSTEM -> PERFORMANCE -> Virtual Memory .Here make a fixed swap file.Fixe means that the minimum and maximum is the same (e.g. 256).The best size depends on some other factors (like how much RAM do you have, what programs do you use...), the best is to do a little testings.A good size to start is 256.If you use program that need very much swap memory (like some audio processing tools) then take a higher max. setting and leave the min. setting 256.
-Try to lower your resolution
-

Additional:

-If all fails (still frame drops): check a capture WITHOUT sound, if you have NO framedrops for a long time, then your soundcard is not giving a sampling frequency that is way of the desired (like 44100).I tried for days to find out why I get framedrops on every resolution with every settings (on a optimized PC) to find out it's the soundcard.Thanks Fish!
-You could also fiddle with the VCache settings in the system.ini .More infos will be available in the next draft. (...)"

Some new notes:

If you have the dropped frames (soundcard) issue you can try the VD modification of A. Dittrich and/or fiddle with the settings in MULTIMEDIA - AUDIO - Recording adv. properties (Sample rate conv. and hardware acceleration). This is also a hint that fish gave me...

Cheers,

Ookie.

[BaronVlad]

Capture FAQ

(last update 07/15/02, English Version 07/25/02 by Sillkotscha and BaronVlad, fine-tuning by Doom9 )

Please note that this is a translation of a German FAQ, therefore
most links go to German pages, if you want to translate the German Guide feel free to contact us.

And now

Q: What is capturing?
· An analogue input source (TV, (S)VHS, Camcorder, etc.) is converted
to digital and stored on a computer.

Q: What do I need to capture?
· All you need is a video input on your PC. You can either use
the video input of your TV- Capture device or the video input
of your Graphics card (e.g. ASUS Deluxe or ATI All in Wonder series).
Using the video in of your GFX card will result in a better signal.

Q: Which TV Capture cards are commonly used?
· The most common video Capture Chip's are produced by Brooktree,
and/or Conexant. The most
frequently used chip variants are the BT848 and 878. There are
also cards which use chips by. Zoran (ZR36125), or Philips (SAA7146).
Some devices even have an FM-Tuner for wireless reception (BT848
or 878). For the BT8x8 chips you can find alternative drivers
(which most likely surpass the original ones) on Sourceforge:
sourceforge.net. The best TV capturing program is Dscaler.
Another good alternative is MoreTV.
Both programs ONLY work if you have a BT8x8 chip!!

Q: At which resolution shall I capture?
· First we have have a detailed look at the input. There are two
different systems which are commonly used (PAL and NTSC). PAL
(Phase Alternate LINE) is used in most European countries (France
and some Eastern Europe countries use SECAM which is closely related
to PAL). On the PC the TV picture can be displayed in various
resolutions, up to the native PAL resolution (768x576). The maximum
resolution you can use to capture depends on your capture card
and most cards support 7**x576 where the horizontal resolution
only depends on your capture device. In order to keep the proper
aspect ratio of the picture you can capture either at full resolution
(768x576) or at 1/4 resolution (384x288). If you intend to put
the video on a VCD use 352x288 pixels, for SVCDs use 480x576 (both
times the picture will be horizontally squeezed a bit and then
unstretched during playback).
· Using 1/4 resolution has a distinctive advantage. The output
will not have any interlacing effects making deinterlacing unnecessary.
For more information about interlacing please refer to
(De)interlacing - Basics (German link). On the other
hand using this resolution you will sacrify quality as you're
not storing all the information of the original signal.
· No matter what resolution you chose
make sure that you use one of the provided horizontal resolutions.

Q: Why does my capture software propose a resolution of 640x480?
· It may be that the drivers for your card or the capturing software
was written for the NTSC market. If your country uses PAL use
one of the resolution suggested above.

Q: OK ! Now how do I capture ?
· there are some good German capture guides available (hopefully
they will be translated one day):
the Capture Guide of BaronVlad and Sillkotscha (many pics & nearly self explaining) .
PDF version of the German guide
· Very good alternatives:
- Mattheo's (low&high) quality Capture Guide
- Hawk's Capture Guide
or here:
- Hawk's Capture Guide v.1.2
- Hawk's Capture Guide v.3.0 (SneakPreview)

A few additional thoughts:
If you absolutely want to capture directly to DivX/Xvid instead
of an uncompressed format:
- It is possible if:
1. The maximum resolution is set to 384x288,
2. You set the codec to 1-Pass mode and
3. GMC and Bi-directional Encoding have been switched off.

Q: But why?
BECAUSE! ... The encoding process is lossy and your source material
will be changed making the later use of filters useless (especially
VHS often has artifacts that you would like to eliminate prior
to encoding to your target format. Plus, capturing is a very demanding
process for your PC. If your PC has to encode to DivX at the same
time it may no longer be able to keep up with all the data and
your DivX file will have dropped frames
Thus, we recommend the lossless Huffyuv codec. If your HD is not large
enough you can still use an MJPEG codec (e.g.: PicVideo Q 19/20)
which is more suited for capturing.

Depending on your TV chips there are some additional details to
keep in mind:

- If you have a BT8x8 chip, the OVERLAY mode has to be switched
off during the capturing session.
- When using a Philips based card, the OVERLAY mode has to be
activated!!
- Capturing on WIN2K/XP using WDM drivers does not necessarily have
to work. If you use VirtualDub you should install one of the following
software if you get an error message like Error 418: NO capture DEVICES installed:
- vfwupd.exe
- dx80bda.exe
- wdm-vfw-wrapper

But there is no guarantee that it will work. And there's a catch:
Using the wrapper the processor load is higher which could result
in more dropped frames.

Q: But I still want to capture in DivX!
Do as you please. But think about
the following first:
- Have you ever tried to match a desired file size (e.g. 700MB)
in 1-Pass mode?
- You can only cut a DivX at a keyframe. What will you do with
the advertising in the middle of a film if it doesn't start with
a keyframe?
- Filters (including cropping) cannot be used during capturing
so you will have to re-encode the movie if you plan to perform
any operations on the input picture. You'll end up encoding the
movie twice and since the source for your 2nd encoding session
will already be compressed the quality will be much lower than
if you were to use Huffyuv and in the end you didn't save any
time at all.

Q: Can I crop the input?
- Yes you can. Use the null transform filter to crop. However,
you will hardly know in advance how many pixels you have to crop.
Imagine watching the news in full screen 4:3 format and the movie
you're going to capture is widescreen. You will only know how
many pixels to crop once the movie has started. In order to save
CPU power you can crop conservatively (about 20 pixels from top
and bottom) which will save some CPU time so you'll get less dropped
frames.

Q: I want to capture using Huffyuv
at full resolution, but my files get huge. What can I do about
it?
- Use an MJPEG codec like PicVideo and set the codec to quality
class 19 (for really long movies use class 18 ). The files you'll
get will be much smaller but the encoding is still almost lossless.

Q: Do I have to register PicVideo?
- Contrary to Huffyuv, PicVideo is not freeware, but you should
think about supporting them since they help you solve your size
problems. However, if you don't want to spend any money you can
simply cut off the logo after capturing (cropping)

Q: Capturing stops after roughly
half an hour. What's wrong?
- Win98/ME (ME is very buggy!) use the FAT32 filesystem, meaning
that files cannot be larger than 4 GB and AVI files are limited
to 2 GB. Windows will remind you with a friendly error message
that you have reached this limit. However, Avery Lee, has a simple
and ingenious solution. It is called "Multi segment Capture".
There's a Guide explaining how to use this feature that you
usually don't even get in commercial programs.

Q: When capturing I always get dropframes
- When TV and sound device are not working at the same clock speed
or the computer is not fast enough, VirtualDub will drop frames
during the capturing session. The captured movie will not contain
such frames. Ideally you will get no such frames. But let's for
a second assume that you do. In PAL we have 25 frames per second.
If 75 frames (corresponds to 3 seconds of video) have been dropped
during a 3h recording session you will not be able to notice the
difference visually but with audio you will notice that the movie
will get asynch. Therefore you should always activate the adjust
video clock option (in Virtual Dub:
Capture -> timing -> activate Adjust video clock) which
ensures that video and audio stay in synch.
If you like to know more about dropframes:
http://www.voncancrin.de/Capture/dropps.htm

Q: What can I do against dropframes?
If you have a lot of dropframes:
- Is DMA (direct memory access) mode activated on your HD ?
- Is overlay activated during the capturing session ? - If it
is, try Preview mode or disable overlay.
- Defragment your HD before capturing
- Try PicVideo (Q18-19) instead of Huffyuv
- Turn any active background processes off
(virus scanners, indexing service, etc.)
- Try this modified version of VirtualDub
http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~dittrich/sync/
- Activate cropping when capturing

Q: I did everything by the book but it simply doesn't work!
Here are some hints. Use them with care!
- Get the latest driver for your capture device or try an alternative
one (like BtWinCap).
- Get the latest drivers for your mainboard.
- Remove every PCI card except your capture device and GFX card.
- If it works with only these two insert your soundcard.
- Use the video input of your GFX card instead of the one of your
capture device
- Try another operating system.
- Deactivate unused HD controller(s).
- Change the screen resolution to 800x600, 256 colors and 85Hz
refresh rate.
- Use the latest DMA drivers for your mainboard.
- Switch PCI/AGP Latency to 32 in your BIOS.
- Use regular 33 pin cables for your UDMA disks.
- Turn off ACPI mode in the BIOS.
- Reinstall your operating system and use the latest drivers.
- Monitor the CPU temperature while you capture. Your CPU may
get too hot.

Q: Do I have to be at home when I'm capturing?
- No! If you use a modified version of VirtualDub you can use
your PC as a VCR. For a how read the following German Guide.
The modified VirtualDub version can be found here.

Q: The guide is nice but do I really have to
configure everything all on my own?
- No! You can get a Vdub-Timer version which has almost all the
settings pre-configured here. Some remarks about the VirtualDub
Timer version can be found here.

Q: How do I calculate the bitrate for the encoding session
after capturing?
- If you didn't sleep during calculus classes you should have
no problem figuring that one out. But just in case you can use
a bitrate calculator like this German Excel Sheet which is explained
in the guide mentioned above.

Q: Where is the official VirtualDub website?
- The official VirtualDub site is http://www.virtualdub.org/, NOT http://www.virtualdub.net/.
The latter is a German VirtualDub 'mod' site, which judging by the abuse I got for asking
for their sources, does not respect the GPL

That's all folks! Please use this forum for feedback.

One last word:
Capturing video is a mix between finding the right settings and
being lucky. Nobody will be able to tell you the best possible
setup for your system. If it doesn't work just keep on trying
the various things mentioned in this FAQ. And don't forget to
share all the nice tricks you find out on your journey with the
rest of the world.

P.S.: this FAQ is by no means complete. There's no word about the peculiarities of individual capture device or about the use of filters. Thanks to Hawk, Mattheo, derKarl and all the other guys from Ultimateboard and Doom9.org, all the tips from the folks at DVDboard.de

and last but not least a special thank you to Ookami.