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  1. Member SHS's Avatar
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    List if of Realtime Hardware H264 Encoder just l a few other below just to drive you nuts hehe
    AVerMedia Game Broadcaster HD MTVGBCAST PCI-Express Interface
    AVerMedia AVerTV USB HD DVR Digital Video Capture MTVUHDRFC
    AVerMedia AVerTV Express HD DVR MTVEXHDVR ExpressCard Interface
    AVerMedia Game Capture HD MTVGCAPHD
    AVerMedia Live Gamer HD MTVLIVGHD PCI-Express x1 Interface
    AVerMedia HD EzRecorder Plus C283S-AF
    Diamond USB 2.0 HD 1080 Game Console Video Capture Device GC1000
    elgato Game Capture HD
    elgato EyeTV HD DVR Recorder
    Hauppauge Colossus
    Hauppauge HD PVR
    Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition
    Hauppauge HD PVR2 Gaming Edition
    Roxio Game Capture HD Pro
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  2. Member SHS's Avatar
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    BOMOON I don't what tell you but sound like your just not having any luck with it may you should just return and try a USB model may there something wrong with card it self or maybe it motherboard and PCIe slot that are not getting long I don't.
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Priorities have to do with scheduling, not directly with how much CPU time a process gets. Only when multiple programs are requesting more than 100 percent of CPU time do priorities come into play -- the higher the priority the more CPU time the process gets. Juggling priorities isn't likely to help your problem.

    The issue is how much CPU time was being consumed while capturing at the different resolutions, with and without the display. That would provide hints about where the problem is.
    I'm aware of this, which is why I was adjusting priorities - I could see multiple processes with high CPU usage and knew the total was pushing 100% for WinTV, Happuage TV Server, and Capture Colossus.

    That turned out to be a transient state for SD captures - System Idle Time was getting 40%-50% usage no matter how I adjusted priorities. Changing priorities reduced the number of times slices given to System Idle Time but not
    enough to help with the capturing, evidently. Either way, I had to adjust the priorities so I could see for myself what was happening there.

    HD caps were a different matter. System Idle Time got 0% CPU usage as far as I could observe, and the WinTV and Capture Colossus processes got most of the test. Juggling priorities in that case could have helped, but it didn't.

    Now then, here are some numbers. I recorded them by observation of the Processes tab in Task Manager, so they're a little on the approximate side for now. Video parameters were taken from MediaInfo's analysis of the captured TS files. Priorities were all left in the default state, "Normal". I performed two caps, SD and HD

    Capture File - SD
    • Capture Resolution: 720 X 480
    • fps: 29.97
    • Format: AVC
    • Format Profile: Main@L3.2
    • Scan Mode: MBAFF
    • Overall Bit Rate: 20.9 Mbps
    • Max Overall Bit Rate: 21.8 Mbps
    • Capture Duration: 27m 49s
    • File Size: 4.4GB
    CPU Usage Min-Max % (approx)
    • WinTV 40% - 60%
    • CaptureColossus 4% - 6%
    • Hauppauge TV Server 0% (none observed)
    • System Idle Time 40% - 50%
    • System 0% - 6%
    • Taskmgr 0% - 6%
    • crss 0% - 3%

    Capture File - HD
    • Capture Resolution: 1920 X 1080
    • fps: 29.97
    • Format: AVC
    • Format Profile: High@L4.0
    • Scan Mode: MBAFF
    • Overall Bit Rate: 6.9 Mbps
    • Max Overall Bit Rate: 27.0 Mbps
    • Capture Duration: 6m 58s
    • File Size: 364.2MB
    CPU Usage Min-Max % (approx)
    • WinTV 90% - 98%
    • CaptureColossus 0% - 2%
    • Hauppauge TV Server 0% (none observed)
    • System Idle Time 0% (none observed)
    • System 0% - 3%
    • Taskmgr 0% - 6%
    • crss 0% (none observed)

    A couple of things I noticed aside from the data:

    1. The Registry settings for the two different formats have AnalogBitRateMode set to 1. In other words, both caps should have been done CBR. However it appears as though the 1920 X 1080 cap was done at VBR, based on the Overall Bit Rate and Max Bit Rate values.

    2. For the HD capture, the System Idle Time task was always 0% CPU usage. If it did get any time slices, they were so transient that I didn't see them.

    3. The scan mode in both cases was MBAFF. I have seen MediaInfo report "Progressive" in the past. This time it didn't, and I have no idea why.

    4. As usual, the SD caps look OK whereas the HD caps suffer from the A/V "stutter" problem.


    Any ideas or observations?
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  4. I might be a blow-in and admittedly I haven't read the whole thread but are you displaying the video with WIN TV as you capture? A crappy video decoder could explain the high CPU use.

    The 'system idle' process is not a process per se. 'CPU use' assigned to it indicates that the programs running on your PC are not using all available time slices either due to poor coding, single threading or simply that your CPU is fast enough to do everything they want with time to spare. Tweaking the priority of running processes/threads will make bugger all difference to the 'time' taken by the idle process item.
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    Originally Posted by LightWeightProducer View Post
    I might be a blow-in and admittedly I haven't read the whole thread but are you displaying the video with WIN TV as you capture? A crappy video decoder could explain the high CPU use.

    The 'system idle' process is not a process per se. 'CPU use' assigned to it indicates that the programs running on your PC are not using all available time slices either due to poor coding, single threading or simply that your CPU is fast enough to do everything they want with time to spare. Tweaking the priority of running processes/threads will make bugger all difference to the 'time' taken by the idle process item.
    I understand that about the System Idle Process. As I reported in that post, I left the program priorities in their default values for this experiment.

    However you've reminded me that I forgot to include captures when the WinTV video was paused, which effectively disables the video monitoring. I never saw that make any difference in terms of capture quality, but it's worth doing in order to report the numbers. So here goes.

    Same experiment, but with WinTV video paused. There were big changes in CPU usage and overall Bit Rate for the HD capture. No changes in capture quality, unfortunately.

    Capture File - SD
    • Capture Resolution: 720 X 480
    • fps: 29.97
    • Format: AVC
    • Format Profile: Main@L3.2
    • Scan Mode: MBAFF
    • Overall Bit Rate: 20.9 Mbps
    • Max Overall Bit Rate: 21.8 Mbps
    • Capture Duration: 3m 4s
    • File Size: 482.8MB
    CPU Usage Min-Max % (approx)
    • WinTV 8% - 10%
    • CaptureColossus 0% - 5%
    • Hauppauge TV Server 0% (none observed)
    • System Idle Time 80% - 86%
    • System 2% - 5%
    • Taskmgr 0% - 6%
    • crss 0% - 3%

    Capture File - HD
    • Capture Resolution: 1920 X 1080
    • fps: 29.97
    • Format: AVC
    • Format Profile: High@L4.0
    • Scan Mode: MBAFF
    • Overall Bit Rate: 20.7 Mbps
    • Max Overall Bit Rate: 21.8 Mbps
    • Capture Duration: 4m 52s
    • File Size: 755.7MB
    CPU Usage Min-Max % (approx)
    • WinTV 8% - 10%
    • CaptureColossus 0% - 5%
    • Hauppauge TV Server 0% (none observed)
    • System Idle Time 80% - 86%
    • System 0% - 2% - 5%
    • Taskmgr 0% - 6%
    • crss 0% (none observed)
    As noted above, I didn't see any differences in capture quality. The SD capture looked fine (a few stutters in the first minute but OK after that). The HD capture had a lot of video and audio stuttering.
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  6. And all of that was with the display enabled?

    In any case, 40 to 60 percent CPU usage while capturing SD indicates the CPU was used to decode the video for display. If the GPU was used, or if the display was disabled, you should have seen single digit CPU usage (or at most, low double digits). Check your system to see if DXVA is working. Try DXVA Checker. And try a media player like MPCHC that shows whether DXVA is in use (on the status line at the bottom of the window, View -> Status must be enabled) when playing one of your captured files.

    You definitely will not be able to display HD h.264 on your computer without DXVA, while capturing or just playing a video.
    Last edited by jagabo; 26th Oct 2012 at 21:28.
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    And all of that was with the display enabled?
    From the first few lines of my latest post (bold added),

    "Same experiment, but with WinTV video paused. There were big changes in CPU usage and overall Bit Rate for the HD capture. No changes in capture quality, unfortunately."

    Pausing the WinTV preview effectively disables monitoring during recording, but not the recording itself. I thought we had already established that, but I guess not. I viewed the captured files to verify that pausing the monitoring in this manner did not pause the recording.

    Obviously there was a huge change in CPU usage between the two sets of tests. With monitoring, HD capturing showed 90+% cpu usage for WinTV. Without it, everything else being equal, CPU usuage dropped to below 20%. That change did not affect the quality of the captured files as far as I could see.

    I ran the DVXA checker on the Dimension 8400 and found that DVXA-HD is unsupported - at least, that's what the DVXA-HD tab says. On the Decoder Device tab, all of the resolutions are shown as 720 X 480.

    On the Processor Device tab, "BobDevice" and "Progressive Device" both include 1920 X 1080 resolutions. But this tells me nothing with no explanation of what those "devices" are.

    My graphics card, as referenced on some of the tabs, is

    ATI RADEON 2600 HD PRO 512MB.

    However with monitoring disabled in WinTV 7, I'm not sure why the ATI should make a difference. In addition to playback, I've been determining that the "stutter" is in the capture files using Vegas and other video editors. In that sense I don't see how the ATI card can be a variable here.

    I'm not sure how to proceed here, if I can. The documentation in the "Readme" file for this program is in Chinese or Japanese.


    Even if I can do something about the "unsupported" status of DVXA-HD, how would that help me if the WinTV video is disabled during capturing?
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    Originally Posted by SHS View Post
    BOMOON I don't what tell you but sound like your just not having any luck with it may you should just return and try a USB model may there something wrong with card it self or maybe it motherboard and PCIe slot that are not getting long I don't.
    I'm looking into a new system with a multi-core CPU. There are too many variables here and nothing I do seems to have any effect. The sane approach is to just start over.

    Money is the driving factor now. It will take me some time to assemble a new system. Until then, I think spending more time on a system that keeps defying any attempt to improve it is a waste of time.
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  9. At least the CPU utilisation problem is put away as a possible factor. Still haven't read the whole thread but are you able to upload a sample of the problem video, as saved by win tv, somewhere so I can download and view it?
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  10. Originally Posted by BOMOON View Post
    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    And all of that was with the display enabled?
    From the first few lines of my latest post (bold added),

    "Same experiment, but with WinTV video paused. There were big changes in CPU usage and overall Bit Rate for the HD capture. No changes in capture quality, unfortunately."

    Pausing the WinTV preview effectively disables monitoring during recording, but not the recording itself. I thought we had already established that, but I guess not. I viewed the captured files to verify that pausing the monitoring in this manner did not pause the recording.
    Sorry. I started responding to your earlier post with results only with the display enabled but got distracted for an hour or so. When I got back I submitted the reply and didn't notice you had added another post with display disabled numbers.

    Originally Posted by BOMOON View Post
    Obviously there was a huge change in CPU usage between the two sets of tests. With monitoring, HD capturing showed 90+% cpu usage for WinTV. Without it, everything else being equal, CPU usuage dropped to below 20%. That change did not affect the quality of the captured files as far as I could see.
    That tells me the CPU isn't a problem when the display is disabled -- and obviously the GPU isn't an issue there. If the files are still messed up there is likely something wrong within the Colossus itself. What is the HD source you are trying to capture? Or, as LightWeightProducer suggested, maybe the files are fine but the way you are testing them is a problem (a P4 cannot play 1920x1080 h.264 video smoothly and we don't know how you are verifying there's something wrong with the files).
    Last edited by jagabo; 27th Oct 2012 at 07:43.
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  11. Well thanks to some advice I got here at Videohelp, I have got the Hauppauge HD-PVR 1219 set up. I want to say thank you SHS for his expertise and his invaluable website. I had lost my CD with software and drivers and thanks to his website I have the software to record with. I have the Arcsoft Total Media Extreme software. I have the component cables hooked into it from a satellite receiver to test it. I don't subscribe to any HD Channels, and I am watching the video on a 17 inch monitor. I am finding the CPU Usage to be under 5 percent even when the video is recording and being displayed, when I turn off the display while recording it is under 3 percent. The longest clip I have recorded is about 8 minutes. The lip synch seems to be fine. During a fast scene I get the window blinds effect. The resolution it records at is 1920 x 1280. I have mainly used the middle option of AVCHD to record with. I don't have many options as far as choosing a different resolution, I guess it picks up on the display resolution coming through and works with that.

    Well I do have some options but I don't know what they mean:

    480x576i and you fill in 4:3 or chose 16:9
    480x576p and you fill in 4:3 or chose 16:9
    Both have a mark in the the 4:3, so I guess it figures if I am getting progressive or interlaced. There is an "Auto/Detect Aspect Ratio" but I can't put a mark in that box.

    I have choice of audio either AC3 or AAC. The AC3 is selected.

    I can play the files in the VLC Media Player, but they have a black box all the way around them. I can get it to fill the screen by selecting 4:3 or 16:19 aspect ration than select 4:3 crop in the VLC Media Player video settings.

    Both Freemake Video Converter and AviDemux will accept the files. I can do basic editing with both. AviDemux can spit the file out without re-encoding. Unfortunately I can't afford a LED TV that I can use as to see the full potential of the files yet.
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  12. I have this Hauppauge HD-PVR hooked to our HD PVR Satellite Receiver. I was flipping through the channels and it turns out we have a few HD Channels in our package. When I flipped to those channels the picture clarity was quite a lot better. A lot of the time the picture was wide screen and stretched across the who monitor with the black bars and top and bottom. I did notice as well that on some HD Channels there was the black box all the way around.
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    That tells me the CPU isn't a problem when the display is disabled -- and obviously the GPU isn't an issue there. If the files are still messed up there is likely something wrong within the Colossus itself. What is the HD source you are trying to capture? Or, as LightWeightProducer suggested, maybe the files are fine but the way you are testing them is a problem (a P4 cannot play 1920x1080 h.264 video smoothly and we don't know how you are verifying there's something wrong with the files).
    Back on the 19th I attached a capture file to a post in this thread so you could look at it. You verified that it was indeed " jerky, missing frames, missing audio segments, etc."

    It's back a ways in this thread, so here's a link to the post so you don't have to go searching. I've deleted the file locally since then, so the attached copy here is the only sample from that capture.

    Alan Mintaka - Capture File Sample Post

    So far that's been the only independent verification that the problem is in the files. You're right, I have a problem verifying the issues at this end since I can't play the TS files without knowing if what I'm seeing is the result of faulty playback or not.

    However I have been able to load the TS files into the Nero 11 Platinum video editor, so I can inspect the files on a frame-by-frame basis to see the discontinuities in the form of frozen frames and breaks in the audio timeline.

    The only other thing I can (that I know of) is to use the AVS Video Converter 8 to convert the files to AVI with all resolution, frame rate, bit rate, etc, parameters set as closely as possible to the source video. Unfortunately this introduces another variable since I can't be sure that the AVS Converter isn't adding the artifacts.

    So far I have your verification of the older attached file, and Nero 11 Platinum's verification of dropped/frozen frames and audio dropouts.

    HOWEVER (been using that one a lot lately): I think I should probably do another HD cap with the WinTV monitoring paused, just to make sure I've covered that base. I'll prepare another capture file for attaching here so you can have a look at it.

    Gotta go offline for a bit to attend to real life.

    Thanks once again to all of you for your time and patience in responding to my posts,

    Alan Mintaka
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    Originally Posted by LightWeightProducer View Post
    At least the CPU utilisation problem is put away as a possible factor. Still haven't read the whole thread but are you able to upload a sample of the problem video, as saved by win tv, somewhere so I can download and view it?
    Yes, per what I just said to jagabo, I uploaded one of the files in an earlier post. Here's a link to it:

    Alan Mintaka - capture file sample post

    However I'm going offline to prepare another capture file, just to make sure I've got the WinTV monitor paused while I'm capturing. That's really the one you guys should see. I don't know about that older one but you can look at it anyway.
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    Originally Posted by Tom Saurus View Post
    I did notice as well that on some HD Channels there was the black box all the way around.
    On my system that usually means the resolution of the source video is 720 X 480, embedded in a 1920 X 1080 display.

    Depending on what channel you're watching, the content could be switching back and forth between SD and HD - as in an HD channel that shows commercials, some of which are in SD format.
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  16. Originally Posted by BOMOON View Post
    Back on the 19th I attached a capture file to a post in this thread so you could look at it. You verified that it was indeed " jerky, missing frames, missing audio segments, etc."

    It's back a ways in this thread, so here's a link to the post so you don't have to go searching. I've deleted the file locally since then, so the attached copy here is the only sample from that capture.

    Alan Mintaka - Capture File Sample Post

    So far that's been the only independent verification that the problem is in the files. You're right, I have a problem verifying the issues at this end since I can't play the TS files without knowing if what I'm seeing is the result of faulty playback or not.
    Yes, that file was full of problems. But it was recorded with the display enabled, wasn't it?

    Originally Posted by BOMOON View Post
    However I have been able to load the TS files into the Nero 11 Platinum video editor, so I can inspect the files on a frame-by-frame basis to see the discontinuities in the form of frozen frames and breaks in the audio timeline... I think I should probably do another HD cap with the WinTV monitoring paused, just to make sure I've covered that base.
    Yes, exactly.
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    OK, here's the latest capture file: 1920 X 1080, WinTV video paused. I played a few minutes of the video to verify that the capturing did not pause during recording. It looked bad on my system, but we already know all about that.

    I haven't tried anything else to see if the problems are in the file, as opposed to just the playback.

    35 sec real-time was the most I could capture and still keep the filesize below 100MB.

    Thanks for offering to take a look at it,
    Alan Mintaka
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  18. There was a little jerkiness in the first few seconds but that's not uncommon with TS captures. The rest of the clip was nice and smooth. I'd say the Colossus and software are working properly.
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    There was a little jerkiness in the first few seconds but that's not uncommon with TS captures. The rest of the clip was nice and smooth. I'd say the Colossus and software are working properly.
    Good news! That startup "jerkiness" could have been caused by the fact that I clicked the record button, then clicked the pause button. i.e. for a second or two, the WinTV monitor was enabled. Either way, as long as I allow a few seconds of leader, I should be able to get around that problem.

    Ultimately I would be burning my recordings to BD for playback on BluRay players, which ought to be able to handle them OK. That will be the next test. Now, at least, we're getting into territory I can understand.

    Thanks yet again for taking the time to look at these posts and cap files.

    Of course, I really ought to upgrade this system so I can have HD playback capability. Testing BD authoring by burning discs and playing them on BluRay players is not the cheapest workflow.

    I'm off now to make some 1080i recordings and burn some BDs. I'll report back when I have some kind of results.

    To anyone else reading this having similar problems with P4 CPUs, that option to pause the WinTV monitor appears to be the solution to the problem.

    Alan Mintaka
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  20. BOMOON: I am glad you have had success at last.

    For myself I ended up letting the Hauppauge HD PVR record tonight and got a file that is 2 hours and 43 minutes long. I saw no problem with the lip syncing. The video will play smoothly in VLC as long as I don't start fast forwarding, then I get problems. But when the file is 1920 x 1080 that kind of thing can be expected as they strain most programs. The file size is 11.1 gb. I have edited the file with Freemake Video Converter and decided to export it by reducing the dimensions to 640 x 360 and 1500 kbs as the bit rate and chose .mkv as the container. I also chose two pass. I know BluRay is all the rage these days, but I can't keep up with all that. Actually I think I will stick with the Hauppauge 150 mpeg2 recordings I get with my other capture card. I hope I haven't stolen the thread and I gather this HD-PVR is quite similar to the Colossus other than it is USB and doesn't have the option of HDMI recording and lacks the TBC.
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    Originally Posted by Tom Saurus View Post
    For myself I ended up letting the Hauppauge HD PVR record tonight and got a file that is 2 hours and 43 minutes long. I saw no problem with the lip syncing. The video will play smoothly in VLC as long as I don't start fast forwarding, then I get problems. But when the file is 1920 x 1080 that kind of thing can be expected as they strain most programs. The file size is 11.1 gb. I have edited the file with Freemake Video Converter and decided to export it by reducing the dimensions to 640 x 360 and 1500 kbs as the bit rate and chose .mkv as the container. I also chose two pass. I know BluRay is all the rage these days, but I can't keep up with all that. Actually I think I will stick with the Hauppauge 150 mpeg2 recordings I get with my other capture card. I hope I haven't stolen the thread and I gather this HD-PVR is quite similar to the Colossus other than it is USB and doesn't have the option of HDMI recording and lacks the TBC.
    No no, any input is good. Besides, I'm the one who stole the thread.

    What I'm curious about is your PC. Does it have a multi-core CPU? If so, which one?

    Maybe more to the point in my situation: did you build your own, or buy a stock PC?

    Nothing wrong with either way, it's just that for my needs I'm going to require a motherboard that has a lot of expansion slots, all flavors of PCI, PCIe X16, and PCIe X1.

    If I have to build my own to get that, then my work is really cut out for me since I'm dealing with an IQ handicap. If yours is a stock PC that has a variety of expansion slots, that's info I could really use.

    You're right RE Blu-Ray authoring: it takes a lot of investment in terms of both time and money. There are a lot of authoring programs that can do the job, but they have all kinds of quirks and rules of thumb that need to be learned in order to get the job done. There's also the complication of what kinds of video you can capture that's worth burning to Blu-Ray. It;s tough to do HDMI captures without running into HDCP protection.

    That leaves you with Component Video, with an "upper limit" of 1080i resolution. If your eyeballs and brain are as old as mine, the difference between 1080i and 1080p is not an issue. However the young folks and the purists can see the difference.

    In your case you don't have to worry about that if the USB hardware can't do HDMI. Personally, I can easily do without it.

    BUT - one thing you can't take away from authoring, whether it's DVD or BluRay: it's a lot of fun, especially when you finally make it work and you can watch your own recordings on your home theater system.

    Just some random thoughts. BTW 1500 Kbps is a little short, even for a 640 X 360 video. If you want to create something watchable on a TV, you might want to shoot for a bit rate of 8000 Kbps. That bit rate is kind of a high end for home-grown DVD recordings and provides results that don't suffer from pixelation or motion artifacts.

    Later,
    Alan Mintaka
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    Originally Posted by BOMOON View Post
    Nothing wrong with either way, it's just that for my needs I'm going to require a motherboard that has a lot of expansion slots, all flavors of PCI, PCIe X16, and PCIe X1.

    If I have to build my own to get that, then my work is really cut out for me since I'm dealing with an IQ handicap. If yours is a stock PC that has a variety of expansion slots, that's info I could really use.
    I commend you for recognizing your limitations. To be honest with you, unless you have a lot of experience doing this kind of thing (ie. you work in IT and have built PCs before), trying to do this for the first time is daunting. To give you an idea of the kind of problems you can have, I built my first PC for home use (I had done some building at work prior to this) around 2000. I bought an off the shelf HP PC in 2005 because I found one that met my needs at the time so I didn't have to build it. So in early 2011 I assembled all the parts and I did my first complete PC build in about 10 years. I had replaced various parts on various PCs over that decade since the 2000 build, but I had not built any more PCs from scratch. Anyway, to get to the point, I had a LOT of problems with my motherboard. I even hired a young guy I work with whose job is building PCs to come over and do a sanity check on my work. He couldn't find any problems, but the system would not start up. Finally after some time searching I found a website that listed about 30 things that can cause a motherboard to not POST (this is an initial startup state) and one of them was failing to put spacers between the case and motherboard. This was my problem. NOBODY I talked to, not even the guy I hired, told me about that one. I was a little pissed. If you look at the websites that tell you how to do your own builds, almost none of them mention this. Even the damn instructions that came with my case and motherboard did not mention this at all. This is an example of the kind of problems you can have on a first build. Also note that installing a CPU can be a little tricky to a first timer and if you don't get it right, you'll have to eat the cost and buy a new one. That really sucks.

    There are companies that build PCs to spec, but I don't remember the names of any. If you search for something like
    custom game PCs
    or maybe
    PCs built to spec
    you can maybe find some companies that can do this for you. One of the reasons I built my PC last year was to have a motherboard that would give me a lot of options like you propose.
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  23. BOMOON: I usually have a computer custom made, but this one I just went to Future Shop after getting some advice decided on an i5 computer. Here is a link to the specifications for my computer and the price has dropped since I bought, so much so if I can scratch some money together I wouldn't mind buying another. The i5 chip is quite powerful. I didn't buy extra Ram or put in any PCI cards. If I could afford a second i5 I would have the Collusus put in, purely for the fact of the TBC which might be able to deal with some jerky VHS tapes I taped at EP speed. Here is the link to the specs:

    http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BV662AAR

    I don't even own a BluRay player. I am thinking of buying one, and what is attracting me is the possibility of having the option of having my files on a portable hard drive, plugging that into the BluRay player and then watching them on a LED television I want to buy. I don't have the room or the desire for a really large TV set, so under 36 inches is way big enough for my liking. I want to use the LED TV as my computer monitor and also my television, so I know from advice received here to go with a television with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080.

    I rarely make DVDs anymore, it is nice to have all the menus and such, but it is kind of like icing on the cake and the individual files have quite a lot of appeal in the space they save and stretching the money a bit further. I have come to the conclusion as well, since hard drive prices are coming down again that it is cheaper to buy a 2 TB hard drive than to buy the spindles of DVD-Rs that is would take to allow you store the same amount of data; though if the 2 TB was to fail you would loose a lot of data and that would be quite a blow; so I suppose have at least 2 copies of everything. My mind boggles at the price of blank BluRay discs and all the work involved.

    I think the i5 or if you can track one down at a cheap price and i7 could be your workhorse computer and you could have your other to finness your files into BluRays.

    The file I edited with Freemake Video Converter at the specs I mentioned earlier, looks pretty good on my 17 inch monitor and I can skip ahead without running into the distortions I would get with a larger file. I think in my case I think a 32" or even a 26" LED TV will best, My files might look pretty bad on a bigger screen, but as long as I was content with the way look on the size of screens I mentioned that is enough for me. Now I probably have stolen the thread.
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  24. BOMOON: I checked around on that same website and found an i7 computer that might be to your liking. I noticed though that the burner says BD-Rom which means you could play the BluRay discs but not burn your own. It is an HP i7 computer and thus should have a really powerful chip. It does have 1 PCI Express x16 slot and 3 PCI Express x1 slots. I noticed it has no HDMI output; really in this day and age they should all come with that. One cable to export both your video and sound on. Here is the link:

    http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=QW723AAR&cat=SYS

    There may be the perfect computer out there for you somewhere that is already prebuilt. I am pleased with my i5 computer. Maybe an i7 isn't even necessary for what you need. Well you have options. All this being said there is probably some new chip coming along that will make the i5 and i7 chips look like dinosaurs. I rooting for some big advance in hard drives that makes 50 TB the common size with hardware and software that handle what that would entail.
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  25. Member SHS's Avatar
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    When come to OEM PC "HP, Dell and etc" and Standerd PCI good luck they are hard come by now days with any PCI on board if going for later stuff, your better off building your own and most of the time it cost about the same or less that depend on weather not you all ready own a retail full/upgrade copy of the windows os.
    If do build your own rule one never ever buy cheap Power Supply alway put more cash in to good one like Corsair, SeaSonic, Silverstone, Antec. and alway try bump the wattage up more then call for like let say it call for 400watts go 500watts or more.

    AMD A10-5800K Trinity 3.8GHz APU has integrated HD 7660D graphics (this best bang for money with everthing around $600 for good hardware brands with no montor or keyboard or mouse or windows os)
    The other below you spend about $300 or more becuases you want good or better graphics card
    AMD FX-8320 Vishera 3.5GHz or bigger brother FX-8350 no integrated graphics
    Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz has integrated graphics (Poor graphics card)
    Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz has integrated graphics (Poor graphics card)
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  26. Member SHS's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    There was a little jerkiness in the first few seconds but that's not uncommon with TS captures. The rest of the clip was nice and smooth. I'd say the Colossus and software are working properly.
    Yup that not uncommon with little jerkiness at start of video
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  27. Generally, building a computer yourself will cost more than buying a prebuilt one. Especially if you include the price of a Windows license. But when you build your own you can get exactly the parts you want. Prebuilt computers will often have a power supply just barely big enough to power what's already included. Look at the computer Tom Saurus linked to. It only has a 250 watt PSU. You won't be adding much to that without upgrading the PSU.

    I agree with SHS -- don't skimp on the PSU. The cheap ones can barely put out half the power they're rated at. And they will fail within a year or so, possibly taking out other components. On the other hand, there's no reason to go overboard. You don't need at 1000 watt PSU to run a computer that can't use more than 200 watts. Most of the better PSU manufactures have calculators that will show you how much you need. (They may purposely suggest a bit more than you really need to be sure you have some headroom.)

    NewEgg is a good place to do some research. Look for component with good ratings -- and lots of them. A product that rates 4+ stars with hundreds or thousands of votes is probably a decent part. Also look at their combo deals as a guide for what parts work together. With the proliferation of CPUs and chipsets it's sometimes confusing.
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    Originally Posted by jman98 View Post
    I commend you for recognizing your limitations. To be honest with you, unless you have a lot of experience doing this kind of thing (ie. you work in IT and have built PCs before), trying to do this for the first time is daunting.
    ...
    Finally after some time searching I found a website that listed about 30 things that can cause a motherboard to not POST (this is an initial startup state) and one of them was failing to put spacers between the case and motherboard. This was my problem. NOBODY I talked to, not even the guy I hired, told me about that one. I was a little pissed. If you look at the websites that tell you how to do your own builds, almost none of them mention this. Even the damn instructions that came with my case and motherboard did not mention this at all. This is an example of the kind of problems you can have on a first build. Also note that installing a CPU can be a little tricky to a first timer and if you don't get it right, you'll have to eat the cost and buy a new one. That really sucks.
    ...
    There are companies that build PCs to spec, but I don't remember the names of any. If you search for something like
    custom game PCsor maybe PCs built to spec you can maybe find some companies that can do this for you. One of the reasons I built my PC last year was to have a motherboard that would give me a lot of options like you propose.
    I did "put one together" once, but I phrase it that way because the motherboard was already mounted in a tower case with power supply, and populated with a CPU and RAM. It was an old BioStar MB with a Pentium-II, I think.

    But as you've described your experiences, I coincidentally avoided the POST and CPU installation problems. It wasn't planning or foreknowledge of those issues on my part, fer shure. It was just an easy grab at the time, provided by a guy at work who built his own PCs and pre-assembled them to that stage before selling them.

    The rest of the assembly amounted to just populating the card slots. It was kind of a no-brainer once those other things were done. Hence, "put one together".

    Based on that experience, the simple ease of doing it that way, and now verified by what you've said about obscure POST problems with spacers and installing the CPU, one of the first setups I'll try to find is an MB with a processor (and maybe RAM) installed. If I can get one in a case with a PS, so much the better. However as you and a few others have pointed out, it may be best these days to buy the PS separately in order to ensure getting a decent one.

    Over time in the course of fixing PCs I have done all of those steps piecemeal, except for attaching an MB to a case. I've upgrade RAM, BIOS (the ones that were socketed), and did a few CPU upgrades (so I had the hair-raising experience of socketing the chip with a special tool, while screaming dollar bills with gnashing teeth flew at me from the corners of my vision). Fortunately I didn't hose the CPUs.

    Getting back to that POST problem you solved: what was the likely cause of the failure to POST before you added the spacers? I was thinking that it couldn't have been direct electrical contact between the solder nibs and the case, because you would have had much worse problems with dead shorts all over the place. If the physical separation was required in addition to insulation, was it because there were some kind of induction problems if the MB was too close to the case? Or was it something less exotic, like physical vibration in the case from the PS?

    I have a feeling I'm going to need answers to those questions. That specific problem aside, it reminds me that another reason I'd prefer an MB with an installed CPU is that you can get them tested to verify POST before the purchase. As you added in your description, there are a lot of other obscure reasons why POST doesn't happen in an MB with a newly installed CPU, and in my case they'd be far out of my league to solve.

    Thanks for that info, it's going into my PC project folder.

    Alan Mintaka

    PS: in pre-retirement I was actually an embedded systems software engineer, working on military navigation and targeting systems. Despite the words "software engineer", the work had nothing to do with Windows PC platforms. What it did do was put me close to the IT guys who worked at the same company, giving me second-hand experience at some of this stuff. But the video was all RS170 and CCIR, in applications totally unrelated to HD, or even SD TV. Yeah, I Know. SD is really color-embedded broadcast RS170a, or NTSC. Correspondingly, PAL is color-embedded broadcast CCIR. But our imagery was all Infra-Red, and both the RS170 and CCIR specs were dummied a lot to fit custom sized displays. Trust me, it ain't the same.

    And that's where I got short-sheeted in terms of video. The software I developed was used for hardware control, real-time scheduling (yeah, you wouldn't know it, would you? But I did), and alphameric overlays in the video (targeting reticles, nav info, etc). The composite video waveforms were generated in XILINX-based firmware developed by hardware engineers who really understood video signal engineering. For this reason I didn't learn much about the basics, other than what I gleaned from working with them to debug problems. Too bad. I could have used the background.

    So here I am: an amateur's knowledge of video, and experience in OS platforms wholly unrelated to Windows PC platforms, both hardware and software. Every project was a different custom processor board, different CPU (Motorollas on the high end, 8/16-bit Intels on the low end), different OS kernel, different assembly code. C was the compiled language of choice, but on two occasions I had to use Ada.

    Don't do Ada development. It will turn you into an old, embittered, alcoholic ex-software engineer who now has trouble with Windows OS in video applications, of all things.

    Sorry for the rant. I digressed a little.

    Alan Mintaka
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  29. Member
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Generally, building a computer yourself will cost more than buying a prebuilt one. Especially if you include the price of a Windows license. But when you build your own you can get exactly the parts you want. Prebuilt computers will often have a power supply just barely big enough to power what's already included. Look at the computer Tom Saurus linked to. It only has a 250 watt PSU. You won't be adding much to that without upgrading the PSU.
    ...
    I agree with SHS -- don't skimp on the PSU.
    ...
    NewEgg is a good place to do some research. Look for component with good ratings -- and lots of them. A product that rates 4+ stars with hundreds or thousands of votes is probably a decent part. Also look at their combo deals as a guide for what parts work together. With the proliferation of CPUs and chipsets it's sometimes confusing.
    Yes, point well taken on the PSUs. As I suggested in my post to jman, I'm going to be looking for an MB with an installed CPU that's already been tested to verify POST. That may be a naive approach, but at one time I was able to do that. It was back in the 90's, though, so I imagine things are totally different now.

    "With the proliferation of CPUs and chipsets it's sometimes confusing."

    Tell me about it. I was confused before I started searching on Newegg. I'm very tempted to do what I did with those video hardware engineers at work (see my long rant to jman) and ask some of you to spec out your systems and just do whatever you did, plus or minus details to accommodate my existing card set.

    Although, the more I look into this, the more I begin to think that the only card I'll be using from the old system will be the Hauppauge. The HT Omega Striker 7.1 sound card is a possibility, but some of these MBs come with onboard 5.1 and 7.1 audio that reviewers say work OK for a PC system.

    So, to rush the point a little: is there any chance you could PM me with the specs for the PC you're using for HD capture? I know that can involve a lot of detail, but obviously I don't need a great deal to go on: MB brand, chipset, RAM, CPU, card set for starters.

    Thanks for your time again,
    Alan Mintaka
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  30. Regarding the stand-offs, without them the solder side of the motherboard will be in contact with the bare metal of the case. That leads to shorts circuits all over the back of the board. I think installation guides never mention this because it's too obvious to the people that wrote them. Eg, they don't mention you shouldn't fill your computer case with salt water to have it do double duty as a fish tank either. But I've heard of enough people doing this that it should be mentioned in installation guides.

    Mounting the motherboard is pretty easy. Installing the CPU can be more difficult -- or more precisely, the CPU cooler. Because there are so many different designs and some of them are hard to figure out.
    Last edited by jagabo; 28th Oct 2012 at 19:36.
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