Freezing PC with WinTV PCI FM

[tiki4]

Hi everybody,

that's actually my first post, but I'm
hanging around this place for some time
now...

I'v got quite a problem with my PC. This used to be a very stable setup but since I got myself a Hauppauge WinTV card the system freezes in Win2K with the WinTV software running and any other prog running in the background (like VDub...). Funnily it doesn't make a difference which driver (WDM or VfW) I'm using. In WinME things get even worse, after some minutes of TV the files on the partition get overwritten. Did anyone of you happen to have the same problem? I'm really stuck on that as everything else runs absolutely stable (including 24 hours encoding to DivX).

Of course here you get the full specs:

AMD Athlon XP 1600+
ASUS A7V-266-E Motherboard
Elsa Gladiac MX (Geforce 2 MX)
SB Audigy Player
Adaptec 2904 SCSI PCI card
some noname Ethernet 100 MBit (Realtek chip as far as I remember)
WinTV PCI FM of course

3 harddisks of different sizes
NEC DVD drive and HP burner

OS: Win2K SP2

Any suggestions are really welcome.

I know I shouldn't be impatient but that's a problem that drives me up the walls.

Some update: I'v forgotten to mention I'm running 256 MB of DDR-RAM. Anyway, yesterday I tried to swap the PCI slots. Guess what: No success, still freezing. Up to now I even installed this new VIAPFD driver (1.05) but that didn't help either. Still I'm stuck.

I'm still hoping someone with knowledge reads this post. I'm looking forward for your replies.

Thanks for now

tiki4

[iamsparticuz]

Im having the same problem with my wintv-go pci card. I just bought it an hour ago and it locks up when starting the wintv2000 utility. I followed this (http://www.hauppauge.com/xp/faq.htm#PCIXP) and this. (http://www.hauppauge.com/xp/xpinstall.htm) They have a lockup page here (http://www.hauppauge.com/html/lockups.htm#SYSLOCK) but i still cant figure out why it locks up the pc. Anyone ever had this problem and can enlighten me on how they fixed it?

Specs
------------------

Athlon 1.4 TBIRD
512 DDR RAM
Asus A7A mobo
Geforce 3

[iamsparticuz]

After an hour or so messing with it i figured out how to switch to dib draw, everywhere i went it gave the wrong instructions for non-xp drivers. Works now :)

[tiki4]

Gnn. This took a while till someone found this thread...

O.K., I'd say I got it running somehow more or less. I still run the Windows 2000 VfW driver 3.11 which is somewhat old and still kicks the PC from time to time. With the newer WDM drivers it works quite well and stable. The latest is 3.31 as far as I know. Also you have to install the latest (3.29) WinTV2K application. This made things much more stable for me. So to say: With WDM I don't see any lockups any more (in Overlay mode of course) and with the VfW driver it locks up from time to time, but only if I access the hardware via the TV application. Capturing with VirtualDub was never a problem (so far the quality of a commercial and an open source application).

Cheers,

tiki4

[theReal]

I got a WinTV PCI and it's long since I had any problems with it. Just installed Win2k SP2 some weeks ago and it works without any problems as well. Capture with Vdub got even better than with the VFW drivers in Win98SE.
I think the drivers got better gradually from release to release. When I bought the card some 4 years ago (man, that's old!) the drivers were a catastrophe.
Maybe I know the card so well now that I avoid all common errors without even thinking about it, I dunno :)

My system:
Thunderbird 1400@1500 (10x150)
Epox 8K7A+ (AMD761 with HPT Raid)
2x256MB PC2100 Crucial Micron (2.9V) (8-8-6-2-4-2-2)
ATI Radeon 7500 retail
2 x 60GB Western Digital (5400U/pm) as RAID 0

[tiki4]

Hi there,

just one question, what drivers do you use? If you use the WDM drivers in Windows 2000 you are quite restricted in capturing with VirtualDub. Somehow you don't get more than 320 lines. Is this correct? Or is there any trick to circumvent the problems of the VfW WDM wrapper driver (vfwwdm32.dll)?

The instabilities of my system were due to the WinTV 2000 application, not the drivers. That's what I've learned over the last months. Capturing with the VfW drivers was never a problem for me. Guess my board was just to know then. The newer apps from Hauppauge run quite stable now.

CU,

tiki4

[theReal]

With the WDM drivers, you're limited with resolution in every app. other than VDub, but not in VDub. There's the custom format settings which are great. I can capture in 768x576 YUY2 with Picvideo MJPEG, and it actually works better than in Win98 with the VFW drivers (there, full resolution had always resulted in some visual tearing every few seconds).

However it's really funny: every time you change some drivers (or the OS), you must totally re-invent all your capture settings. Some things suddenly work, others suddenly don't work anymore...

[tiki4]

Actually I am capturing with the Video for Windows drivers in Windows 2000. With the WDM drivers you won't get preview in VirtualDub. With VfW 3.11 drivers I can go to 720x576 (PAL) on my machine (specs above).

For WDM drivers I really like VirtualVCR which works quite good for me. When it comes to capture quality... well, could always be better. Usually I capture in Morgan MJPEG and convert to DivX 5 with pre-processing light and resizing to 640x480. I also switch on b-frames and go up to 1400 kBit/s. I frameserve the MJPEG AVI with Avisynth back to VDub. For deinterlacing I use decomb and the SimpleResize for resizing. This gave me some pretty good results recently.

I'd appreciate any useful tips...

tiki4

[theReal]

With the WDM drivers you won't get preview in VirtualDub. With VfW 3.11 drivers I can go to 720x576 (PAL) on my machine (specs above)I don't get the overlay preview, but the normal preview works fine in VDub. Any other capture program can't seem to get many resolutions with the WDM drivers...

Is it better to capture in real PAL resolution of 720x576, or to capture 768x576 (I mean the tv card displays 768x576 to compensate for square pixels, I thought to capture at this resolution was a little better?).

I found out recently that Simple Resize looks about like Precise Bilinear Resize in VDub, but it compresses only as good as Neutral Bicubic Resize in avisynth! Precise Bilinear, on the other hand, compresses still the best of all good looking resizing filters.

For deinterlacing I use Decomb or Smartdeinterlace, depending on what looks better (it's different from capture to capture). I resize to 512x384 for tv captures mostly, because I don't want to use such high bitrates. Filtering... well, temporalsmoother is a must (best before and after resizing), but apart from that, it differs. The Divx pre-processing is really fast, but it blurs a bit too much.

For a quick encode or for Futurama and Simpsons, I don't deinterlace and only resize to 384x288. Futurama and Simpsons are heavily filtered then: tempsmoother(4), 2DCleaner (strength 15), warpsharp(23,1), tempsmoother(4) again. That makes a compress test of ~50% with a bitrate of ~590 (so each episode is 100MB in the end)

[tiki4]

Thanks for your reply.

I dunno if it is better to capture 720x576 or 768x576. The first has worked for me. When it comes to filtering... hm, I don't know... I'll try some of the things you are using. Actually I think it is a good idea to go down to 512x something to reduce bitrate. But the whole set of filters you are applying seem to me a little bit overkill. I guess it looks good for you, but this would drop encoding speed down to 3-4 frames per second. This is really not what I want. Deinterlacing takes quite a long time and so I don't want to spend too much time with VirtualDub filters. That's also the reason why I use Avisynth for Deinterlacing and resizing.

Anyway I appreciate that you share your experience with me. TemporalSmoother is a good idea to increase compressibility of the capture. As I said I'll try some of the things you mentioned.

tiki4

P.S. normal preview does not work for me in VirtualDub during capturing with WDM drivers, but it works flawlessly with the VfW drivers during capturing.

[theReal]

The filter-chain I mentioned is indeed overkill for anything else than comics with clear contrast, like Simpsons, Futurama (and Anime, which I think is what 2DCleaner and warpsharp were made for).
With only resize to 384x288, I get 10fps with this. With deinterlacing and a higher resolution, it's even slower.
For normal TV captures, I'd also say temporalsmoother(2) and Divx5 light/normal pre-processing might be a good solution.
Too much filtering doesn't look good and is very slow.

[tiki4]

O.K, I got the point now.

I don't capture comics or something like that. Anyway, I think one needs still very high MPEG4 bitrates for capturing compared to DVD conversion. The quality of my cable TV is beyond discussion. Actually I slowly start hating watching TV because of the bad quality.
I think we can meet in the middle now. Some temporal smoother and maybe some other post-processing. As I said, I like the light pre-processing of DivX 5.0.2, it is not too blurry for me and it's comparable fast, what is important to me when capturing complete movies (I do so sometimes to watch them later on).

Again thanks for your input.

tiki4

[iamsparticuz]

I tried using other drivers what than hauppauge recommends for xp users but it would only lead to problems. I ended up just using the ones from http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/. They seemed to solve my resolution problem I had but when trying to capture @ a resolution higher than 640x480, green bars just show up that fill up the resize difference.

For a quick encode or for Futurama and Simpsons, I don't deinterlace and only resize to 384x288. Futurama and Simpsons are heavily filtered then: tempsmoother(4), 2DCleaner (strength 15), warpsharp(23,1), tempsmoother(4) again. That makes a compress test of ~50% with a bitrate of ~590 (so each episode is 100MB in the end)

I followed these settings but when viewing the video @ full screen, the pixels became blocky. That might have something to do with the fact that I did just a first past rather than a 2 pass. But I don't like spending time rencodeing my captures in 2 pass's(too much time :rolleyes: ).Besides that, the original 384x288 resolution looks perfect, probably better than original. With those settings my video render fps was about a 7. This is my first experience in messing around with anime or cartoons. When i would cap other tv shows(i.e. Seinfeld) I would cap @ 640x480 and then run a deinterlace, temp smoother @ 4, and a smoother @ 500. The end file size was about 150-170 megs. Im pretty happy with that file size and quality, but if I could reduce the file size and retain the quality I would do that ;).

[theReal]

depends on many factors... you captured in 384x288 directly and then applied the filters? That is quite a difference, I capture in 768x576 with Picvideo MJPEG (18) and resize to 384x288 with precise bilinear (that is, I don't have to resize in realtime and I use a filter that makes the content very compressible). And, of course, the low bitrate of around 590 is the very limit, even with all those filters (I found the compress test value is around 50% for Futurama only, the Simpsons are more like 38%...). There are quite some "mosquitos" in the final file (rather than blocks because of the low resolution), but it's still ok for the fact that I get 7 episodes on one CD (even good 220MB mpeg1 encodes of the Simpsons are worse, usually)
Forget to do this with one-pass... rather use quality based at a quantizer of 4 to 6 if you want to do a one-pass encode.

The quality of your tv is also very important. The station that broadcasts the Simpsons and Futurama is one of the best on my cable; there are Simpsons episodes on Swiss tv as well, but the quality of the station is so bad I don't even try to encode these...

[theReal]

oh, and not to forget: I'm using Divx 5.02 pro with b-frames and gmc enabled (for encoding in 2 passes, for capture I use MJPEG at strength 18). You didn't say what codec you were using for a)capturing and b)encoding. Without knowing about these factors, every comparison is totally pointless...

[iamsparticuz]

They seemed to solve my resolution problem I had but when trying to capture @ a resolution higher than 640x480, green bars just show up that fill up the resize difference.

I capture @ 640x480 only because I can't capture any higher without the problem I noted above. I capture using mjpeg at a setting of 19.

I am also using divx 5.02 pro with b-frames and gmc enabled.

I just encoded an episode that was 20 minutes & 30 seconds. The end file size was 107 megs. During high motion scenes the pixels are blocky. During low motion, its pretty smooth, almost perfect. Doing a 2 pass would obvious fix that, but it was going to be 2.3 hours(i think?) to do a 2nd pass, as opposed to an hour and a half 1st pass. I was hoping to have it @ around an hour, but 1st pass with all the filters isn't even like that. 2 1/2 hours is alot of time for me being away from my computer @ normal priority. I havn't messed around with the priority setting though, so I don't know what the fps would be like if i was to just use my computer for internet browsing and running a few apps with it set @ idle. I could do that with normal but its very slow and im impatient. What are your specs and how long does it take for you to do a 2 pass? Do you do a 2pass with all your captures? Seems like alot of time to me :rolleyes:


Specs
---------------------------------------------
Athlon TBIRD 1.4 ghz
Asus A7A266 Mobo
512 DDR RAM
Western Digital 60 gig 7200 rpm
Geforce 3

[iamsparticuz]

Another Question for ya.

I resize to 512x384 for tv captures mostly, because I don't want to use such high bitrates

When you resize to 512x384 what bitrate do you usually use and whats the end file size?

[theReal]

A Simpsons Episode (about 21min30sec) resized to 384x288 with Precise bilinear plus the filters described above plus logoaway (forgot that in the description) takes about 58min for the first pass, 54min for the second pass, only the video. Then, I also need to de-mux the audio (about 1 min), encode the audio to 64kbit ABR mono with RazorLame (about 1 min 35 sec).
With the encoding job set to idle or lowest (doesn't matter), the computer is perfectly usable for browsing, email, watching tv, listening to mp3 and so on. These tasks make it take a minute or two longer, but not more (at least this is so in Win2k).

What I worry about more than the encoding time, is the time it takes me to set up all the encoding jobs and adjust the filters. This time is really lost because I can't do anything else. Of course, I also don't use filter settings on (almost) daily encoding jobs that take much longer - I want to be able to go to bed at some point and switch the computer off!


my sys:
Thunderbird 1400@1500 (10x150)
Epox 8K7A+ (AMD761 with HPT Raid)
2x256MB PC2100 Crucial Micron @300Mhz (2.9V) (8-8-6-2-4-2-2)
ATI Radeon 7500 retail
2 x 60GB Western Digital (5400U/pm) as RAID 0
Windows 2000 Pro SP2

[theReal]

When you resize to 512x384 what bitrate do you usually use and whats the end file size?Usually, I try to use 1100 to make it about as big as a VCD file, only with better quality. But, I make a compress test and see how I can change it (depends on what I'm encoding, and usually it's smaller clips like music videos or so. I don't record movies from tv unless I'm totally sure I could never get this movie on DVD or VCD and it must be really, really interesting)

[iamsparticuz]

Well I was more so interested in trying to get the bitrate to have an end file size around 100-140 megs w/good quality, so i could put around 5-7 on disc. I cap'd seinfeld @ 640x480 then did a resize to 512x384 with a temp smoother @ a 4, a deinterlace(blend fields), and a smoother @ 500. I encoded it 2-pass @ 700kb and the end file size was around 131 megs.

With the audio I usually cap it at 44100 khz 16bit stereo and then compress it to 44100 hz 128kbps stereo with lame.

This is my first time hearing about the de-logo filter so I'll have to try that out. The thing thats VERY annoying about my caps on that particular channel is the noise. The quality from that channel isn't the greatest and I have lines that run through the screen.

Noone has really tried to help @ my other thread :(
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26563

BTW : Do you use an svcd guide when capping music vids? I found this guide very helpful.
http://www.daywalk3r.de/tutorial.htm

[theReal]

I just played around with the 50fps "deinterlace" solutions described on www.100fps.com - if you're interested in high quality, high motion video, you should also give this a try. The motion looks really much more fluent with 50fps and there is no need to deinterlace.
You'll have to capture at full resolution, though (which only works for me now as I'm using Win2k and WDM drivers. The VFW drivers would add some strange tearings to any full-res capture...).

A short clip with an ultra-high resolution of 768x416 encoded with quantizer 5 (= 90% quality) at 50fps came out great and "only" had a bitrate of around 2500, even though it was high motion.

So, apart from the 50fps-instead-of-deinterlacing stuff, I have to check out the quality based encoding settings a little more. It seems you can reach quite good results with it if the filesize doesn't have to be exact.

P.S.: I capture the audio at 48kHz, but only because my soundcard keeps to this very closely, while it doesn't keep to 44.1kHz at all. So, with 44.1kHz I get a whole lot of video frame-drops all the time to compensate for the audio.

There's so much to say about encoding... ;)

[tiki4]

Hehe,

this thread has gone totally off-topic, but I like this discussion. There is also so much to learn about encoding...

By the way: I cannot capture above 288 lines with the Hauppauge WDM drivers in Win2K. VDub says something like 'not enough video memory'. Maybe I'm doing something wrong there. I still didn't get WinVCR running with my Audigy although I'd like to test that a little bit by capturing directly to MPEG2. I believe that MJPEG isn't the best format in the first place, Huffy would be much better but the filesize is unbearable for full resolution and 2 hours or so.

By the way I tried something new yesterday: Capturing with 480x576 for SVCD. I put that stuff to TMPGEnc this morning. I'll have a look at that when I come home today. I guess that this is not the best way, but it saves pixels I have to resize away anyway afterwards. Comments are welcome...

tiki4