VirtualVCR bug fix patch?

TlatoSMD · 18th February 2017, 16:14

I know some of you may laugh, but I'm still using VirtualVCR to capture old VHS tapes to DV in Windows 7, and will probably continue to do so soon in Windows 10.

The reason I'm doing this is because I've never got my external A/D converter to DV with HQ cleaning and restoration features to recognize any audio from my VCR, so I've always had to separately feed the audio directly into my soundcard during the capture, and neither VDub, WinDV, nor Stoik Capturer have ever been able to properly synch up the video from my external A/D converter with the audio going directly into my soundcard. No matter what settings I used (including those supposed synching options in VDub), VirtualVCR has always been the only tool that got the synching right, plus WinDV and Stoik Capturer hardly run stable at all as they crash a lot for no apparent reason.

If I've tried to capture with VDub, WinDV, or Stoik Capturer, the asynchronicity from this setup is so bad that both audio and video will even have different lengths and speeds (yes, the captured audio wobbles in speed in the actual file written to disk, being behind the video at one moment, and too early at the next during the very same capture), so not even using any delay or moving the audio around in other ways in post helps. Even when using VirtualVCR as the only tool able to get it right, my comp is so busy with maintaining the internal VirtualVCR synch as the file is being written to disk that I can't even just open any other windows during the entire capture, or else the A-V will be as badly out of synch as they are on the other tools even when using VirtualVCR.

So that's why I've been happy only with VirtualVCR for years as the only tool that got the job done. However, over the years HDD sizes have increased significantly, and now a bug has emerged: Once an HDD that I wanna capture to has 1 TB or more of free space, VirtualVCR thinks it would be full and refuses to capture to it.

So that's why I'm asking if somebody could someday write a bug-fixing patch for VirtualVCR so that I can also capture to HDDs with a lot of free space, or if any other free DV capture tools may have emerged that are able to give a better synch than VDub does?

Sharc · 19th February 2017, 11:54

Good old VirtualVCR is also my preferred capture SW still, for the reasons you mentioned. I wasn't aware at all of the 1TB issue, however.

For reliable capturing
- don't expect to use the PC for something else during capturing
- capture to an external USB 2.0 or 3.0 drive (<1TB as you mention)
- disable Anti-Virus SW during capture which may interfere with the capturing process
- capture to a lossless format (HUFFYUV or UTVideo) rather than using any encoder which loads the CPU significantly. Do the filtering and encoding of the lossless captured file later in a second step.

If you PC HW is not too outdated (slow), it should work reliably.

TlatoSMD · 19th February 2017, 13:18

It's nice to see another fan of the trusty old classic. I've never encoded my captures by means of my comp's CPU. My external Canopus A/D converter converts the analogue video signal directly to DV in realtime, and I'm only capturing this stream into a DV AVI. I can do twenty other things at the same time without problems if the DV stream is coming from any of my DV cameras with sound inside the DV stream.

But it's this thing when capturing from VHS via my Canopus that's tricky, as I need my Canopus's superior cleaning and re-mastering capabilities for VHS and my Canopus has never made it to recognize any sound, it only gives me silent video. Hence, I have to capture VHS via my Canopus for the video, and via my soundcard for the tape's audio. What's weighing so heavy on the CPU is no compression as I'm just grabbing the raw DV stream into a DV AVI, it's maintaining the sync of audio and video if the comp is getting it via two different devices.

Music Fan · 27th March 2020, 18:02

Hi,

Do you know how to set the recording level in VVCR ? The level can't be changed on my pc.
Or how to use an audio card instead of the audio input of the capture card (PVR-150 in my case) ?
I have a too high audio level, I speak about that in this topic ;
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=181048
Thanks.

18th February 2017, 16:14	#1 \| Link
TlatoSMD Registered User Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 74	VirtualVCR bug fix patch? I know some of you may laugh, but I'm still using VirtualVCR to capture old VHS tapes to DV in Windows 7, and will probably continue to do so soon in Windows 10. The reason I'm doing this is because I've never got my external A/D converter to DV with HQ cleaning and restoration features to recognize any audio from my VCR, so I've always had to separately feed the audio directly into my soundcard during the capture, and neither VDub, WinDV, nor Stoik Capturer have ever been able to properly synch up the video from my external A/D converter with the audio going directly into my soundcard. No matter what settings I used (including those supposed synching options in VDub), VirtualVCR has always been the only tool that got the synching right, plus WinDV and Stoik Capturer hardly run stable at all as they crash a lot for no apparent reason. If I've tried to capture with VDub, WinDV, or Stoik Capturer, the asynchronicity from this setup is so bad that both audio and video will even have different lengths and speeds (yes, the captured audio wobbles in speed in the actual file written to disk, being behind the video at one moment, and too early at the next during the very same capture), so not even using any delay or moving the audio around in other ways in post helps. Even when using VirtualVCR as the only tool able to get it right, my comp is so busy with maintaining the internal VirtualVCR synch as the file is being written to disk that I can't even just open any other windows during the entire capture, or else the A-V will be as badly out of synch as they are on the other tools even when using VirtualVCR. So that's why I've been happy only with VirtualVCR for years as the only tool that got the job done. However, over the years HDD sizes have increased significantly, and now a bug has emerged: Once an HDD that I wanna capture to has 1 TB or more of free space, VirtualVCR thinks it would be full and refuses to capture to it. So that's why I'm asking if somebody could someday write a bug-fixing patch for VirtualVCR so that I can also capture to HDDs with a lot of free space, or if any other free DV capture tools may have emerged that are able to give a better synch than VDub does? Last edited by TlatoSMD; 18th February 2017 at 16:16.

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19th February 2017, 11:54	#2 \| Link
Sharc Registered User Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,997	Good old VirtualVCR is also my preferred capture SW still, for the reasons you mentioned. I wasn't aware at all of the 1TB issue, however. For reliable capturing - don't expect to use the PC for something else during capturing - capture to an external USB 2.0 or 3.0 drive (<1TB as you mention) - disable Anti-Virus SW during capture which may interfere with the capturing process - capture to a lossless format (HUFFYUV or UTVideo) rather than using any encoder which loads the CPU significantly. Do the filtering and encoding of the lossless captured file later in a second step. If you PC HW is not too outdated (slow), it should work reliably.

19th February 2017, 13:18	#3 \| Link
TlatoSMD Registered User Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 74	It's nice to see another fan of the trusty old classic. I've never encoded my captures by means of my comp's CPU. My external Canopus A/D converter converts the analogue video signal directly to DV in realtime, and I'm only capturing this stream into a DV AVI. I can do twenty other things at the same time without problems if the DV stream is coming from any of my DV cameras with sound inside the DV stream. But it's this thing when capturing from VHS via my Canopus that's tricky, as I need my Canopus's superior cleaning and re-mastering capabilities for VHS and my Canopus has never made it to recognize any sound, it only gives me silent video. Hence, I have to capture VHS via my Canopus for the video, and via my soundcard for the tape's audio. What's weighing so heavy on the CPU is no compression as I'm just grabbing the raw DV stream into a DV AVI, it's maintaining the sync of audio and video if the comp is getting it via two different devices.

27th March 2020, 18:02	#4 \| Link
Music Fan Registered User Join Date: May 2009 Location: Belgium Posts: 1,744	Hi, Do you know how to set the recording level in VVCR ? The level can't be changed on my pc. Or how to use an audio card instead of the audio input of the capture card (PVR-150 in my case) ? I have a too high audio level, I speak about that in this topic ; https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=181048 Thanks.