Analogue capture

[killer_jaime11]

Hello to everyone in the forum!! This is my first message. I just have a card to watch tv in my pc, I think it's not even called a capture card. It's AVerMedia AVerTV 203. I have to say I'm a newbie at captures, I have done many but not in good quality... I have read through the analogue capture guide several times and forum but I still have questions.

First of all, I'm running a Pentium4 with 512SDRAM Windows XP SP2 and at first I captured using the latest drivers provided by the manufacture of my card (AVerMedia), I achieved captures from TV with a resolution of 512x384 using iuVCR:
Muxer: AVI mux (default)
Interleave: None
AVI Compatibility Index
Master Stream Video

and PICVideo MJPEG Compressor from Pegasus:
Quality 20
Luminance Quality 10 (No idea what this means... xD)
Chrominance Quality 10 (No idea either)
Subsampling 4/2/2

I couldn't achieve higher resolutions with this codec without immediate drop of frames.
My next attemp was using the same driver, but [VFW] Huffyuv v2.1.1 -CCESP Patch 0.2.5 capturing at 640x480:
best method for YUY2 and RGB, field threshold 288 lines, rest of options unmarked.

It's strange: I start my capture and for the first few minutes I don't drop any frames, but after the first 10 minutes or so, I drop so many frames that instead of capturing 25fps I get an average of 19fps, the predicted file size with this quality is 40Gb/h or so.

I have thought this problem could be the fact that the video file gets very big and it makes more difficult to store information after few minutes have passed since it doesn't drop frames for the first minutes. Is the answer in breaking down the file to 2Gb segments???

Also, I think my capture card is WDM and not VFW, but some people on other forums told me to install WDM universal drivers (http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/) and that's what I did. My card is not in the Supported Cards list, and I had to make a custom driver using btspy. Having all that done, the programs I usually watch the TV with don't work, not even the one my manufacture makes, it says it doesn't find a capture card. I open VirtualDub and I get image and I'm able to capture with Huffyuv v2.1.1 -CCESP Patch 0.2.5 aparently. But is it better to capture with this driver or with my manufacture's one?
I think my capture card only captures mono sound, how can I know for sure?
I capture in Spain, which is PAL, what resolution is the best to capture with the coaxial cable from TV?
What codec should I then compress my captures to??? (I've read that DivX Pro has problems compressing noise...)
Thanks very much for reading all this stuff, I promess I won't bore you all this much again... ;)
Thanks

[Sergei_Esenin]

Try using VirtualVCR and its Resample Audio Dynamically feature to eliminate frame drops. As for resolution, always capture a vertical res of 576 for PAL/SECAM and 480 for NTSC. Less and you seriously diminish quality. Horizontal res is more debatable for analog capture, and depends on your drivers.

[leonid_makarovsky]

Are you capturing in RGB or in YUV colorspace? You should use YUY2 with Huffyuv codec. Also do you have a dedicated harddrive for your capture? Is it fast? I am pretty sure that AVER Media provides WDM drivers. I used to have AverMedia card and they were supplying WDM capture. Capture at lower resolution like 352x288 and see if you drop frames.

--Leonid

[Sir BDD]

Please tell us more about your hardware configuration (CPU speed, MB (i saw that you have a SDRAM module :rolleyes: ), HDD (rpm), etc). It is posible that your system cannot suport capturing at full PAL/NTSC.
512x384 is not the best choice. Try capturing at half PAL (384x288) or half NTSC (360x240) and see the result. Another solution is to use CPU a little more by encoding directly with XviD (1-pass quality based at min 90% quality) but you're gonna lose some quality...ur choice.

PS: if i were you i would reconsider the OS and the drivers already instaled (in case there are any conflicts, overflow buffers, etc).
Good luck!

[Boulder]

Also set the PICVideo MJPEG quality to 19 and don't touch luminance and chrominance quality. They should be 4 and 5 respectively when you set the overall quality to 19.

[killer_jaime11]

Hi everyone again, first of all I'd like to thank all the people who have answer or read this, sorry for the long delay in answering... I've been having exams recently and left my captures a bit aside... :p

I'm currently capturing with my AVerMedia AVerTV 203 at 640x480 resolution with iuVCR and using Huffyuv CEE patch 0.2.5 at 25 fps with only 1 frame drop per 2 minutes or so, I split the files in 1GB, is this dropping frames rate normal??? I've observed that if I try capturing all the video in a single (50GB file or so) the first 10 minutes or so I don't get any dropped frames, but afterwards I drop so many frames that my average capturing is 20fps or so.

The rest is the same settings as said, by the way, the processor speed is 2GHz and I have an independent drive to capture I think it's speed is 10000rpm SCSI with about 135GB free.

Currently I'm using the drivers provided by AVerMedia since I downloaded the universal WDM drivers, they didn't support my card and I had to create specific drivers using the instructions on the page. With these drivers I could only "watch" TV on VirtualDub (I say "watch" since it was the only TV program that didn't crash when I started it and I don't know how to tune channels in VDub). Do you recommend me trying WDM drivers this way or continuing with my AVerMedia drivers???

As maybe all of you are guessing, my target is to capture from TV at somethingx576 and I have tried with iuVCR at different resolutions:
720x576, 704x576... At the beginning I capture at 25fps (my region is PAL) but then I start to drop frames like mad... What can I do? Do you recommend me trying with VirtualVCR?

I'm currently a bit excited with Linux in particular with the Knoppix distribution :p , and I've read in the AVerMedia site that the card is currently sopported. However I don't know about any programs to capture video in Linux like VirtualDub, does anyone know any???

One last question, I'm need to make backups of some films that are being aired on some channels with Nagravision, I don't know of any programs that capture the decoded picture. Can anyone help me???
Thanks to all

See you soon

[Boulder]

I strongly recommend VirtualVCR over iuVCR. Enable dynamic audio resampling to keep the a/v sync without any extra dropped frames.

Always capture at n x 576 since you are a PAL user.

[killer_jaime11]

Thanks for your help Boulder, I installed VirtualVCR and after sometime configuring it I started capturing. I'm using YuY2 and audio resampling dinamically and "sync using stream offset" and I tried capturing with Huffyuv at 704 x 576 x 25 fps getting about one lost frame per second. When I captured at 720 x 576 I got more frames lost. I'm using AVerMedia drivers, should I try with the universal WDM drivers again? I haven't seen an option in the program to segment the capture into 1GB or 2GB pieces... Anyone know where it is???
Just as an anecdote, I tried capturing at 640 x 576 and I got no frames lost, but is not a good resolution, is it??

Thanks again for your help

Jaime

[Boulder]

VirtualVCR doesn't have the segmented file option, so you'd better have an NTFS drive for capturing.

Uncheck "sync using stream offset", it's only meant for situations where the a/v sync error is always the same.

Try capturing with PicVideo MJPEG at Q19, see if it fixes the dropped frames. You could also try the BTWinCap drivers, they are often better than any specific manufacturer's drivers. Their problem is that sometimes you just get mono sound no matter what.

[killer_jaime11]

Hi again, thank you all for your pacience and helping, specially you: Boulder. As my old science teacher used to say, a picture is worth 1000 words... I made a capture with VirtualVCR, as Boulder told me, I unchecked "sync using stream offset" so I have to check "offset audio by 0 ms". Now here's my problem: dropped frames as always, here is the stats from the capture:


http://gipa20.webcindario.com/virtualvcr.jpg


As you can see on the image, it puts 138 dropped and 137 dropped 2. I don't know what the difference is between "dropped" and "dropped 2"
Then I went to GSpot, a program which gives you information about the .avi file and see what it gives:



http://gipa20.webcindario.com/gspot.jpg


25fps and 3018 frames captured!! But I don't understand: why does VirtualVCR say it dropped frames and GSpot gives me 25fps???!!!
Then, to make sure of what was going on, I loaded the captured .avi on virtualdubMod to check how many frames it had and make some calculus :sly:

http://gipa20.webcindario.com/virtualdubmod.jpg

3018 frames and 2 minutes 0 seconds 720 miliseconds. This is 120.720 seconds.

120.720 seconds x 25 frames/s = 3018 frames!!!!
Does this mean that I have captured at 720x576x25fps without dropping frames???!!!!
I'll invite you all to a drink if it were so... :D
Thanks for the reading and help

Jaime

[jggimi]

Dropped frames are replaced with a duplicate of the preceeding frame.

(We don't see your images, btw.)

[zilog jones]

Technically your PC should be able to capture without dropping frames - I'm using a PIII 933MHz with a normal 7200RPM IDE hdd and don't get any dropped frames using similar recording settings. Though I don't know much about your capture card (mine is CX881 based).

Maybe the problem is your video source - what is it? A bad signal could lead to dropped frames - especially if it's from a VHS tape. I've discovered if the picture's really bad the encoding needs a lot more CPU time - with a certain VHS recording of a really snowy reception of mine, I get loads of dropped frames when using Huffyuv. MJPEG is OK, but only when I go down to 18 or lower quality. Good VHS tapes usually give no or very few dropped frames with Huffyuv.

[Boulder]

And now that you mentioned VHS and drops, I remembered that LP/EP recorded tapes give loads of dropped frames unless you use a very good TBC.

[killer_jaime11]

Hi jggimi, zilog jones and Boulder. I'm using an AVerMedia sintonizing card (yes it's so cheap it's not even a proper capture card). :D
I think it uses the BT8x8 chip and my capture source is the TV antenna (antenna, not cable). I don't see hardly any noise on the channels I capture from and although I don't know much about graphical quality I would say the quality is OK.
zilog jones , before I used to capture with the Pegasus MJPEG codec at quality = 20. I left it because over 512 x 384 (for example capturing at 640 x 480) I dropped frames. So I tried Huffyuv and I could capture at 640 x 480 without nearly dropping frames. Maybe I can try switching back to Pegasus MJPEG at quality 18 or so and see... will I lose too much quality???
Thanks

[Boulder]

PicVideo at Q19 is probably transparent to Q20 so you could try that one. Q18 might start introducing visible loss.

You should still capture all 576 lines.

[killer_jaime11]

Following your advice Boulder, I tried capturing with Pegasus PICVideo MJPEG Compresor 2.10.0.29 again, using uiVCR and VirtualVCR.
The resolution I tried was 768 x 576 x 25 fps, at Q20 I dropped frames as always with both programs, but guess what? At Q19 I don't drop any frames with iuVCR or VirtualVCR. My stats from VirtualVCR are as follows:
Video Compression = 4.659
Time capturing = 5 mins 17 seconds
No dropped frames
No dropped 2 frames
A/V Rate matching:
Video: 24.998870
Audio: 44098.730130

;) Thanks Boulder and the rest for your effort to help me!!

Now the two questions that arise are:
1) What program should I use? VirtualVCR or iuVCR, of what I know VirtualVCR helps with A/V sync but iuVCR can split files while VirtualVCR can't, and I would like to have both of them on my program.
2) I thought my best option was Huffyuv CCE patch but I can get better with PICVideo MJPEG Compressor. Is Q19 losing much quality from the image? I think that 4.659 video compression may be too much compression, and I don't have problems of hard disk space...

See you soon

[Boulder]

If you have excessive HD space, use HuffYUV. That way you'll get exactly what's coming in with no loss. PicVideo at Q19 shouldn't result in a visible loss but mathematically it's there.

I'd use VirtualVCR because of the a/v sync thingie. Why do you need split files?

By the way, VirtualDub 1.6.4 supports WDM capture cards and also has a splitting option and a/v syncing by resampling;)

[zilog jones]

Does that actually work for you? I don't seem to get anything at all with the new VDub.

[Boulder]

I can't say for sure because I have a PVR-250 which only captures in MPEG2. The program has been extensively tested so maybe you should head over to the official forum and report there.

[killer_jaime11]

Hi again!! I'm in the process of encoding some video, since I'm running out of space for captures. I know I have to deinterlace de video and remove some clicks from the video, here are some images of the captured video:

http://gipa20.webcindario.com/noise.bmp

Containing clicks
And

http://gipa20.webcindario.com/interlace.bmp

With interlacing...


Should I use VirtualDub alone or Avisynth? What filters do you recommend me to use and in what order?

Thanks

[Boulder]

If you have a DVD burner and a standalone player, keep it interlaced and encode to MPEG2. If you go to MPEG4, I recommend XviD instead of DivX.

Avisynth filters give you better quality than VDub ones and you also avoid at least two colorspace conversions as VDub filters work in RGB.

If you want to deinterlace, I recommend either LeakKernelDeint or TDeint. The latter is motion compensated but unfortunately much slower.

For removing those scratches, there's Fizick's DeScratch plugin for Avisynth.

There's plenty of this and other stuff in the Doom9 capture guide;)

[zilog jones]

That "click" you showed looks like a bandwidth problem somewhere in your PC. I used to get that too (though I have a rather crappy old VIA PIII board - some similar old VIA chipsets are also prone to doing this). I had to fix it with some weird patch.

Where you doing anything else while capturing that particular video? Does it occur a lot? Are there any other PCI devices that require a lot of bandwidth that you were also using at the same time (some good sound card like an SB Audigy, maybe an IDE controller card, anything else?). If the probelm persists, try moving your PCI cards to different slots.

This is a PCI capture card, isn't it?

[killer_jaime11]

Hi Boulder and zilog jones!
Boulder
I downloaded TDeint and and Fizick's DeScratch filter, two questions.
How do you use avisynth? I know it's using scripts but I don't know how to use this particular filters (what parameters to enter) plus the fact that Fizick's DeScratch only removes vertical noise and you have to rotate the image before applying the filter and after, so that it removes horizontal lines (my case). Also, there is a line colour parameter but still I don't know how to use it... :confused:

zilog jones
I wasn't using anything else apart from the kernel and essential parts from the O.S. (XP in my case). I use a program called "EndItAll" that ends all the tasks in the system. So aparently I don't see any more uses from PCI. My capture card is PCI, and I have a Network PCI, USB PCI, Firewires and wasn't using any peripherical, so no idea. I have an ASUS P4B motherboard and a P4 2GHz with the sound card integrated in the motherboard.

I will try to encode today, however I need to know how to load all the splited files from my capture in virtualdub. Because I have files named:
capture00.avi
capture01.avi
capture02.avi
etc
And when I open VDub and select "Automatically load linked segments" but it doesn't work. I have 42 video files, and I don't want to append an avi file 41 times!!!
Help please!!

[killer_jaime11]

Hi again, sorry to have asked about Fizick's DeScratch and Avisynth, they are both explained in the guide. I don't know if I've said but I'm trying to encode the material with XViD.
I haven't tried TDeint yet, only been concentrated on the DeScratch. I've looked for information on Fizick's web and tried the following configuration, it's the same as said on the web but I added asym=1 since the filter marked thicker lines that what I expected.
However, I'm still worried about the quantity of "noise" marked by the filter since I don't see any horizontal lines where nearly all marks are present...
Sincerely, I don't know where to start tweaking the parameters since I've read them all but have no idea. As a start I would like the filter not to detect as many horizontal scratches as it does now...
What values should I change??? Here I leave you a copy of my script

AviSource("C:\Ripeos\Cruz y raya\capture00.avi")
Trim(0,38467) ++ Trim(47733,66002)

#Fizick's DeSpot
loadplugin("C:\Archivos de programa\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\descratch.dll")
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
crop(0,0,-0,288) # select top part of frame to save screen space
input=last
assumetff()

separatefields() # for analog interlaced source
turnleft()
descratch(asym=1,mindif=4,maxgap=20,minlen=300,blurlen=50,keep=100,border=0,maxangle=0.0, mark=true, modeU=1, modeV=1)
turnright()
weave() # restore fields
# Compare source frame and frame after scratch removing
StackVertical(input,last)

And here a photograph with an example of what I mean by the filter marking too much:

http://gipa20.webcindario.com/1intento.bmp

[ppera2]

Originally posted by killer_jaime11

Now the two questions that arise are:
1) What program should I use? VirtualVCR or iuVCR, of what I know VirtualVCR helps with A/V sync but iuVCR can split files while VirtualVCR can't, and I would like to have both of them on my program.
2) I thought my best option was Huffyuv CCE patch but I can get better with PICVideo MJPEG Compressor. Is Q19 losing much quality from the image? I think that 4.659 video compression may be too much compression, and I don't have problems of hard disk space...

See you soon

I can only say that forget programs which contain VCR in name, and use programs with Dub in name :)
I had sync problems with Virtual Vcr on very well set machine and Win sometimes, while V Dub and couple Mpeg2 captured programs worked flawless. So, I consider it not reliable. IuVCR is even not free.

So, try new Virtual Dub 1.6.4 . It has really most features from all capture programs. If you want capture to Mpeg2, then WinDVR is still the best solution, especially that you didn't get such proggy with your card (I think). There are good programs with some brand cards, but they not work with other cards.

And... when capture with V Dub you will not have problems to load multisegmented cap. files. Even can spread capture on more partitions.

[BloodySword]

If you want to deinterlace, I recommend either LeakKernelDeint or TDeint. The latter is motion compensated but unfortunately much slower.


The best deinterlacing technique is "Bob" (in VLC-Player Called BOB and Linear).
You can test BOB-Deinterlacing with my Testprogram (programmed with VB6, but with help of bitblt gdi-api and Native-Code ASM optim. fast enough).
Here is a link for testing: http://www.plsplayer.de/bob.rar