Volume and jumpy video

[Karovaldas]

I am capturing cable TV using AverMedia's Ultra TV 550 card. I capture in MPEG2 custom mode, but the details, I don't think, are important.

No problems when the material is watched originally. However, when I try to watch the recording: two problems.

Volume. It records way too loud and cuts off the peaks of the soundtrack. When I view the soundwave on a program, it looks much like a flat brick with barely any texture on top and bottom.

Second, the video jumps. I could not notice any regular pattern, but it appears that anywhere from 1 to 5 secons the frame freezes for a fraction of a second and then catches up with the program.

I called the tech support and they recommended Moonlight decoder. I installed it and it fixed the recorded video playback issue. However, it displays a small company logo in the top righ corner and today the logo started jumping around and asking me to register. Annoying!

What codecs should I use and how to configure them? I have ffdshow installed and a whole bunch of others, but I don't knwo how to control what codecs are used when. The playback issue seems to occur in all MS Media player as well as in other players I have. I tried to access the FFDSHOW codec configuration module, but I cannot even start that progarm--I double-click and nothing happens.

Please help me figure this out.

THanks in advance.

[rfmmars]

The sound problem is common...........I put a analog EQ in series with the audio source and set the levels low.

When you say you are watching the picture when recording, on what are you watching, TV or CPU monitor.

Have you set your contrast color, and color in levels in your capture software?

richard
www.photorecall.net

[Karovaldas]

Thanks for your reply. Do you mean to say that you hook-up an equalizer in between the cable box and the computer?

"I put a analog EQ in series with the audio source and set the levels low"

When I said I was watching while recording, I meant the computer monitor. Later, even watching the recorded material in the originating program the skipping takes place. As mentioned, Moonlight decoder took care of things...

I left all the recording functions at their defaults. Never got to find tweaking because the skipping happened.

Any replies appreciated.

[rfmmars]

Yes that's correct, the EQ goes between what ever source and your sound card, a must.

To doing video work you must have a calabrated analog video monitor connected to some device such as the video out of the graphics card.

I use two, one connected directly to the source and another to my ATI 9000 S-Video out so they can be matched. Only then can you adjust your recording levels.

richard