Setup for analogue capture at DVD resolution

[rca29]

I want to use the PC as a ‘digital VCR’, so I tried to buy the Hauppauge WinTv PVR-150, as it has a hardware mpeg-2 encoder, which would help me to decrease the load of the CPU, but I couldn’t find it where i live.
So I bought a AverTv Go capture card after previous awful experiences with the Pinnacle PCTV Pro and the newest range.

While I’m happy with the quality of the reception of the card, it uses WDM drivers, and the only software that worked with it is the AverTv (supplied with the card – which isn’t too great) and Intervideo WinDVR3 (which leads to better results).
I can't make other software (like virtualdub, etc) to work properly with it, and AverTv with PicVideo's codec also needs more processor power than i have.

Now, here’s where I could use some help:

I have 2 pc’s (1 Athlon XP 1800, 512 MB RAM and 1 Celeron 1200, 512 MB RAM), but the best resolution that I can get with WinDVR 3 is SVCD, with a CPU usage of about 95%. The Athlon isn’t faster at this task as it has a lot of programs installed, and sometimes the CPU reaches de 100% mark, and I get dropped frames.
In addition, I also found that the Athlon introduces a lot of noise in the image (i’ve read in the past that these processor speeds had that problem).

So I was thinking about upgrading the Celerom 1200 to something like a Celerom 3.06 Ghz 533 Mhz and my question is if someone has experience with a successful setup like this to capture in DVD resolution (720x576) with WinDVR 3 or something similar.

Thank you for your help

[mg262]

You could try another codec to see if the processor power requirements are lower? What about HuffYUV? Also, have you tried VirtualVCR as a capturing application?

Doesn't matter how many programs you have installed, it matters how many have running while you capture. I close down absolutely everything non-essential, in some cases using Task Manager to terminate processes. Also try running msconfig, which will enable you to see exactly what is loaded up when you start the computer; some programs (from well-known companies!) will load the part of themselves up on start up without asking -- a deeply offensive way to make it seem like the program actually loads faster. msconfig will also let you disable particular applications from auto-starting. I should probably tell you to be reasonably careful when playing with this stuff.

[CirTap]

Hi,
WinDVD3 came with my analog USB2 capture card, and I found it eats up a lot of CPU itself, and I always had bad video/audio sync, no matter what bitrate. I finally never managed to get a reasonable MPEG filesize to fit on DVD *and* have a good picture/sound quality, so I abandonned this app.
Even on my Laptop (WinXP, Celeron 1400, 512MB) I can capture happily with VirtualDub 1.6x using the WDM driver that came with my card. The "drawback" is that I get huge AVIs (PicVideo MJPEG or Huffyuv) which I have to transcode for DVD usage, but this usually happens during the night :D

Have fun,
CirTap

[rca29]

WinDVD3 came with my analog USB2 capture card, and I found it eats up a lot of CPU itself, and I always had bad video/audio sync

Strange. In my system, WinDVR 3 doesn't load the cpu that much, and no audio sync problems here.
In captures of TV programs, i get a good quality around 6000 kb mark, the only problem is that the deinterlace is real bad, and when i see it on tv (on a burned dvd+rw) the image isn't smooth in panning scenes. This software is really bad at deinterlacing.

I can capture happily with VirtualDub 1.6x using the WDM driver that came with my card.

I will try that specific version of virtualdub. I had problems with the newer ones.
HD space is not an issue ;)

[CirTap]

just is case you should consider removing the old registry entries of VirtualDub and start from scratch. Make a backup (File > Export) of this key in regedit if you're concerned or just rename "VirtualDub" to something else.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freeware\VirtualDub\
There's a free tool called [href=http://www.asvzzz.com/download.htm]VideoWDMControl[/url] which you may wish to run *prior* using VDub for the first time. It allows you to configure the "core" (or default) settings of your capture card's driver, like TV system, frame size, color space, default contrast, smoothing etc. most applications "pick up" parts as initial settings when they access the device for the first time (like VDub, Premiere). The driver's initial settings were presets to NTSC, and as I also live in PAL land I had to configure it for each app. Using VideoWDMControl I set this to PAL/720x567/YUY2 and every "new" programm started with my defaults.
I also found several apps provide their own "custom" and light-weight capture setups which usually offer much less options (video size only) than the native WDM controls you get access to with "VideoWDMControl". It may help to "fine tune" your card.
Once you have the PAL settings straight you should be able to use VirtualDub for capturing. However, try to avoid any audio compression. If you capture from analog sources, 44.1 PCM is fine (even 32k will be enough in most cases), and you can upsample and transcode this to 48k MPA/AC3 with BeSweet or whatever if you go for a DVD.

Hope this helps.

Have fun,
CirTap

[rca29]

Thanks for your help.
Now i can get video on virtualdub, but when i try to capture, it gives me a error message saying "Unable to open file '''' for write"

Under "Capture drives menu i put in the path "C:\capture" as stated in doom9 guide, but it doesn't work for me.

What am i missing ??

[rca29]

Sorry, i've missed it.

i forgot to use the "Set capture file"... :(

[rca29]

I finally captured with virtualdub (thanks for your help, guys), but when i set the
"Set custom format" to anything above 720x288 the image disapears.
I can get 320x288 to 720x288 (768 is not supported), but i can't get image with anything above 288.

Any suggestions ?

[CirTap]

:-) yep, it's kind of irritating.
I don't have capture drives configured at all, and you don't need to. AFAIK, if you do setup "spill drives", VDub will always capture AVI chunks of the given size (max 2GB!) on these drives instead of capturing any size to the file you set initially.
At least on my machine, the AVI chunks where not always seamless, missing frames and sync probs at each "cut", and "allocate disk space" didn't work out the way I expected. However, I didn't elaborate all this in details and you may find more qualified answers in the manual and the VirtualDub forum :-)

CirTap

[CirTap]

have you tested other color spaces? Under "Video - Capture pin" I can select YUY2 and I420, but only YUY2 gives me 720x576 and only if I set PAL_x first.
Try VideoWDMControl (close VDub before) and find if there are any other settings available.

Good luck,
CirTap

[rca29]

I solved this problem.

I had to turn off overlay and turn on Preview (with acceleration).

I can now capture in 720x576. This is a big improvement...

...but now i have a audio sync problem...

[CirTap]

...but now i have a audio sync problem... do youuhave dropped frames?
try a different (less demanding) video codec or lower compressin ratio AND use uncompressed PCM. on the 1.2G Celeron, compressing audio may have a bad impact on sync, drop frames etc.
check if there's any "filtering" active in the audio settings. It may happen you audio device works best (less CPU) on certain sample rates. you may need to play with the values.
If the problem persists, try updating your audio driver.
get rid of any needless background tasks, set your virus scanner (if you won't disable it) ignore the capture drive etc. pp.- the usualy stuff to free your CPU.

CirTap

[rca29]

I have 8 dropped frames at the start of the capture, but it doesn't increase over time (at least in a 3 minutes cap).

I'm capturing in uncompressed PCM (48000 khz), and i don't have any anti-virus or something similar.

This is running in a Athlon 64 3000+ and cpu is always below 30 %

[mg262]

Synchronisation problems can happen for a good number of reasons other than CPU usage. But I think that many of them can be solved if you persevere. I believe there's some amount on this in the analog capture guide, and beyond that, you need to try lots of programs with different settings. The settings that "should" result in better synchronisation don't always do so (for example dynamic resampling). I myself found that the only application which would give me good synchronisation was iuVCR.

[AVIL]

Hi:

I use VirtualVCR with good results. No A/V sync problems. No dropped frames. No excesive CPU usage.

[CirTap]

I also do have a few dropped frames at the very beginning of each capture, I'd consider this normal and the number (+/- a few frames) depending on the sync settings.
apparently, there seems to be no application available working for everyone and every setup, like I never managed to get flawless captures from VirtualVCR :)
In VirtualDub I had to go to "Capture - Timing" and make some adjustments, actually all checkboxes are set, frame burst value is 10 (the default I think), resync audio/video by resampling. These values have the most impact on the AVI, however some sync problems may only become audiable after 30+ minutes of recording, to 3mins is not a valuable test.
The worst results I had with "do not resync" and "sync video to audio" - both always resulted in way off timing on any of my PCs (with different hardware).
In "Capture - Settings" you'll find another place to set the frame rate (despite in the WDM driver), either 25.000 or 29.970 should be set. And maybe, you have to check the correct TV system of you do TV tuner captures: http://www.4p8.com/lounge/ntsc.htm at the very end contains a list for each country and the different PAL/NTSC incarnations in VHF/UHF transmissions.

But as mg262 pointed out - sadly to say -, it *must* not be a working solution for your particular combination of hardware and drivers.

Good luck,
CirTap

[rca29]

I think i must have tried (almost) every single piece of software with this card, and found out the following problems:

VirtualDub 1.6: I can capture at dvd resolution, but without any success with audio sync.

Iu_VCR: The program will freeze after the first capture. I can’t remove it from the screen even in task manager. The only way is to reboot the pc.

VirtualVCR: I can capture at 720x576, but no success with audio sync.

Cyberlink PowerVCR II: Can’t capture at all

Intervideo WinDVR: Sucessful capture with good audio sync, but I can’t hear any sound during the capture process and it deinterlaces the signal, leading to poor results when watched on a regular tv. In panning scenes (horizontal or vertical) it’s unpleasant to see one hour of a tv show. But this is (IMHO) the best capturing software in my setup.

AverTv (Supplied with the card): It has a good audio sync, but mpeg-2 is a little worse than WinDVR (some macroblock noise) and it uses a lot more CPU power. It has the same problem as WinDVR with interlaced material.

Now here are my conclusions:

VirtualDub is a great tool for many proposes, but capturing it’s not one of them. While there are reports of successful captures with it, it’s a matter of luck and hours trying to tweak everything possible (drivers, setting, etc.), without any assurance that you’ll make in the end.

Iu_VCR, VirtualVCR: These are capture oriented pieces of software, but they end up having almost the same problems as VirtualDub (and some even worse).

Despite my results, I have to thank the authors of these programs (as they’re freeware – with the exception of Iu_VCR) and the effort in it’s development, but the audio sync issue is solved in Intervideo WinDVR. It seems to have some kind of internal routine which checks to sync every few seconds.
As an example, when I start a capture in WinDVR, the first 5 seconds of the capture are way of sync, but then the audio drops for half a second and returns in sync, and keeps it until the end of the recording.
But in slower systems (where the cpu is closer to 90%), I can hear some slight and quick pitch changes in the sound, meaning that the software is trying to keep the sync. This happens every 5 seconds or so, but in faster systems you won’t notice it.

I feel that if this could be implemented in Virtualdub, Virtual VCR, etc it would be the ultimate improvement for successful capturing. But as I’m not a coder, I could be saying something stupid.

In the meantime, i found a bullet-proof (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=100855) way to solve this problems.

Cheers

[Revgen]

What chipset does the Aver card use?

If it uses the BT8x8 or a Conexent CX2388x chipset I'd recommend using Dscaler (http://www.dscaler.org) instead. Dscaler accesses the hardware directly bypassing Win XP and WDM resulting in better quality.

[Boulder]

If you have problems capturing with VDub, I suggest you post at the official VirtualDub forum.