Thousands of dropped frames!! :O

[ChibiBoi]

I don't know why it just started up again, I thought I had fixed the problem, but I'm getting thousands of dropped frames after capturing my video for a while. As far as I know, I haven't changed any settings or installed anything. I've defragmented my hard drive and everything and I have plenty of room on my hard drive. I'm using Virtual VCR and HuffYUV

[DB83]

Insufficient information.

What is your capture device ? Internal, External, Usb ????

Only one HDD ? Chances are that the drive is accessed by the OS (if nothing else) during capture. Head-seeks during the capture process will guarantee dropped frames.

[jagabo]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/104098-Why-does-your-system-drop-frames

[ChibiBoi]

It's a USB capture device and I've been using it for a while now. For he past 3 weeks or so, I thought I had fixed the problem with 0 dropped frames. But three days ago for whatever reason, my computer started acting up giving me thousands of dropped frames. I defragmented my drive frequently, it's usually anywhere between 0% to 2% fragmented. I've tried using the task manager to close background programs, someone's even using msconfig to do a selective startup before capturing. I have my Internet disabled and even changed my graphics options, making it look like Windows 97, in hopes of improving performance! Everything was working well a few weeks ago so I don't know what changed. I'm capturing onto the default drive on my laptop, I have plans to purchase an external usb hard drive for capturing but I don't have the funds yet. The thing is, these dropped frames are only a recent problem, and as far as I know, I haven't changed anything or installed anything

[DB83]

Ah Windows 97. That was the OS I did not get. Came after Windows 96 but before Windows 99.

Problems do not suddenly happen. You possibly (without your knowledge) installed something that is draining your resources - check the task manger for anything suspicious. Hard enough to capture on one drive and a laptop in the first place.

[ChibiBoi]

Apparently AVI_IO has the ability to prevent dropped frames because of the internal buffer, but I guess I had previously installed the program because now when I try to use it, it says the trial has expired so I can't actually test it out

[jagabo]

Did you remember to use a video compression codec? Are you trying to use different codec? Different settings in that codec?

[ChibiBoi]

Did you remember to use a video compression codec? Are you trying to use different codec? Different settings in that codec?

I had used HuffYUV because when I first tried using Lagarith, after a while, it would start giving me tons of dropped frames, and I didn't experience it once I switched to HuffYUV. In fact, I was able to capture 2 hours of footage with HuffYUV with 0 dropped frames until recently I had the settings at YUY2 Predict median (best) but maybe I should try Predict gradient then?
This morning I tried capturing with Lagarith again, and it worked fine when I captured my tapes 1 episode at a time. But when I did more than one episode, I kept on getting the thousands of dropped frames again I had its settings at the default (no boxes checked) and YUY2 mode

[Tom Saurus]

ChibiBoi: I am assuming you are capturing some VHS tapes via your USB device. Do your tapes have any tracking issues? I remember when I had AIW Pro and I would get dropped frames. There were various reasons, some background program using more resources than usual, the list goes on. These tapes are they all recorded in SP mode instead of EP? I could be wrong but is there a chance that there are problem spots in the VHS tapes and the capture device is indicating this by dropped frames?

Is there a way to test your USB device on some other source device like a satellite receiver or a cable box to see if you get the same problem? I could be wrong in my assumption about there being an instability in the tapes themselves.

[ChibiBoi]

ChibiBoi: I am assuming you are capturing some VHS tapes via your USB device. Do your tapes have any tracking issues? I remember when I had AIW Pro and I would get dropped frames. There were various reasons, some background program using more resources than usual, the list goes on. These tapes are they all recorded in SP mode instead of EP? I could be wrong but is there a chance that there are problem spots in the VHS tapes and the capture device is indicating this by dropped frames?

Is there a way to test your USB device on some other source device like a satellite receiver or a cable box to see if you get the same problem? I could be wrong in my assumption about there being an instability in the tapes themselves.

Some of my tapes do have tracking errors, but the tracking errors only cause one or two dropped frames at a time. Virtual VCR gives me a list of dropped frames and when I go to the spots where there are thousands of dropped frames, it seems like it's just normal footage, but my computer just froze or something.

When I used to cap with VirtualDub, whenever tons of dropped frames would occur, I'd look over at my status bar and under "CPU" it would go down from 70% all the way to 2%!! So something on my computer must be hogging up my CPU or something, I'm assuming that's the case now.

EDIT: I just tested out the capture process using HuffYUV at Predict left (Fastest) and it seemed to have worked for 40 minutes, and then it started getting all messed up again. So while the frames were being dropped a million times per second, I checked my system status and it seemed that the only things that are taking up my laptop's processing are VirtualVCR and "system" unless I am reading the dialogue wrong?

[jagabo]

Bad blocks on the hard drive? Run a full surface scan.

[ChibiBoi]

Bad blocks on the hard drive? Run a full surface scan.

I scanned my drive with the option "scan for and attempt recovery for bad sectors" but I had "automatically fix file system errors" unchecked. It didn't help very much, but would having both options checked help?

[mgh]

When I used to capture with my windows xp P IV desktop, I had that problem off and on till I realised cpu spikes and HD speed were the problem.
For me capture parameters such that cpu usage remained below 30% worked flawlessly, also I used MJPEG codec at min compression to bring down file size. Look for the free picvideo codec, you might still be able to find it if you search hard enough. Huff always gave me dropped frames.

edit:reduce the capture resolution gradually and check. Afaik many on this board have felt that half D1 is optimum resolution for capturing sd broadcasts. With MJPEG I used to capture at 720x576 (PAL)

[ChibiBoi]

When I used to capture with my windows xp P IV desktop, I had that problem off and on till I realised cpu spikes and HD speed were the problem.
For me capture parameters such that cpu usage remained below 30% worked flawlessly, also I used MJPEG codec at min compression to bring down file size. Look for the free picvideo codec, you might still be able to find it if you search hard enough. Huff always gave me dropped frames.

edit:reduce the capture resolution gradually and check. Afaik many on this board have felt that half D1 is optimum resolution for capturing sd broadcasts. With MJPEG I used to capture at 720x576 (PAL)

OK, I'll try MJPEG. The reason I avoided it for now is because I read MJPEG wasn't as good as HuffYUV, especially if you're planning on editing the video later. Is that the only way you were able to keep the CPU usage low?

[jagabo]

MJPEG is lossy and introduces some artifacts. But it will allow more compression so if disk I/O is a bottleneck it may help.

[ChibiBoi]

I just tried using MJPEG, and it worked pretty well for about 40 minutes with now dropped frames. But when I left for 10 minutes, and came back with 2000 dropped frames. So I ended up deleting the file, and tried capturing again with a new tool I found called Process Explorer. While watching the graph, I noticed that the dropped frames actually occur when my software dropped to around 2% CPU usage. There's also something called "interrupts" that was taking up a little of the CPU, I don't know if that's unrelated to my issue though. So I guess the question is: what's causing the CPU drop while capping?

BTW I am running on Intel Core i3-2310M CPU @ 2.10GHz

[jagabo]

I noticed that the dropped frames actually occur when my software dropped to around 2% CPU usage.

That indicates disk I/O problems. The capture process is doing nothing while waiting for disk I/O to complete.

[ChibiBoi]

I noticed that the dropped frames actually occur when my software dropped to around 2% CPU usage.

That indicates disk I/O problems. The capture process is doing nothing while waiting for disk I/O to complete.

Ahh, I see. And how do I fix this?

[jagabo]

That indicates disk I/O problems. The capture process is doing nothing while waiting for disk I/O to complete.

Ahh, I see. And how do I fix this?

You need to figure out why the disk I/O is delayed. Another process performing disk I/O? Windows' Indexer? Antivirus? Bad blocks (though it looks like you've already scanned for that*)? Low on disk space (note that as the drive fills up the inner portion of the drive is the last used and the slowest)? Get the drive manufacturer's SMART utility and see if it reports any problems.

* You indicated that when you ran the scan you didn't elect to check the file system. I'm not sure what happens when you do that. A full surface scan can take a few, even several, hours. If the scan didn't take that long you should run it again with the both options enabled.

[ChibiBoi]

You need to figure out why the disk I/O is delayed. Another process performing disk I/O? Windows' Indexer? Antivirus? Bad blocks (though it looks like you've already scanned for that*)? Low on disk space (note that as the drive fills up the inner portion of the drive is the last used and the slowest)? Get the drive manufacturer's SMART utility and see if it reports any problems.

* You indicated that when you ran the scan you didn't elect to check the file system. I'm not sure what happens when you do that. A full surface scan can take a few, even several, hours. If the scan didn't take that long you should run it again with the both options enabled.

Actually yeah I just ran a complete system scan a few days ago, took FOREVER. I'm scanning to see if I have any programs that need to be updated right now, in case they're checking for updates in the background. I don't have low disk space since I have around 70GB left for capping and usually the frames start dropping before it even reaches 10GB. And I've set my disk to not index any files, and I use task manager to close my antivirus software.

[mgh]

Defrag your capture drive before you start capturing,
You could try free
defraggler

defrag and then run a defrag of free space (Action-Advanced).

increase compression/decrease resolution with MJPEG codec.

Advantage of MJPEG codecs is that they use so little cpu, that if you are getting dropped frames- it can only be because of disk i/o- which in turn means that either your bitrate is too high or your HD is badly fragmented.

When i was capturing i found that I could go from Q17 (Picvideo) using a P III 800 to Q20 (Picvideo) using a P IV 2.4 GHz with a better HD. Q20 is highest quality available with Picvideo.

If possible use a separate HD, or at least separate partition for capture, and keep emptying it. That will give you fastest i/o with existing disks.

[DB83]

Defrag your capture drive before you start capturing,
You could try free
defraggler

defrag and then run a defrag of free space (Action-Advanced)..........

If you bothered to read the OP you would see that this has already been done.

It has also been established that the choice of compression is not making the difference.

Capturing to another drive or at partion on an existing drive (since the OP only has one) is the only sensible thing you have stated.

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My curiousity is why these problems only appear some 40 minutes in to a capture (unless that is an exaggeration). I am sure you do not capture at the same time each day so that could not be a timed process and you (The OP) said that you had turned the internet off. of course an update process coould still attempt to run and use vital resources but the timing makes that unlikely.

Not familiar with that process explorer but can that be configured to show what process is actually being run rather than report the program that is affected. Wouldn't Task Manager do that anyway. Not the easist of utilities to manage but it could still give some indication of the issue.

You did state that there were initially no capture issues ? So something has clearly changed in the meantime.

Drastic as it may sound it may be worth doing a full re-install of the OS and only essential software - you could do that drive partition at the same time although that can be done without a reinstall

[mgh]

Defrag your capture drive before you start capturing,
You could try free
defraggler

defrag and then run a defrag of free space (Action-Advanced)..........

If you bothered to read the OP you would see that this has already been done.


It has also been established that the choice of compression is not making the difference.

Capturing to another drive or at partion on an existing drive (since the OP only has one) is the only sensible thing you have stated.

---------------------------------------------

Defragging free space is a facility available with the free tool i quoted, i have not seen it on any other defrag program.

There has been no statement from the OP that he has established compression does not make a difference with MJPEG codec or changed resolution of video. I have suggested both as a means of reducing file size to improve i/o.

Maybe my english wasn't good enough

[jagabo]

My curiousity is why these problems only appear some 40 minutes in to a capture

I suspect some background process starts running after some period of user inactivity.

[DB83]

My curiousity is why these problems only appear some 40 minutes in to a capture

I suspect some background process starts running after some period of user inactivity.

True. Which is why I suggested that the processes are monitored and not the running program.

@mgh Read reply #16 about the use of mjpeg comression.

Out of interest, I have not defragged my capture drive in ages. In fact when I did so it caused more issues than it solved. I do not drop any frames.

[DB83]

My 'thought of the day'

Are you running 'Norton Internet Security' by any chance ?

That will invoke background processes (PC scan) if it considers the computer is idle. You can turn on 'Silent Mode' to prevent this from invoking.

[ChibiBoi]

My 'thought of the day'

Are you running 'Norton Internet Security' by any chance ?

That will invoke background processes (PC scan) if it considers the computer is idle. You can turn on 'Silent Mode' to prevent this from invoking.

No, I don't have that installed. But interestingly, I cleared up some more of my harddrive, now I have 80GB of free space. I then tried capturing again and I didn't get any dropped frames and was able to capture two episodes this time. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test it out to see if I could capture the whole 2 hours of the tape. This time, I was using Lagarith Lossless codec using multithreading, as well as doing a selective boot.

I'll see if defragmenting my free space does anything to help out my problem. For my purposes, I didn't want to add too much compression using MJPEG's settings and I didn't want to decrease the resolution. But maybe if I cleared up to 100GB of free space, that'll help even more.

[DB83]

My guess it is the 'selective boot' that is helping rather than the free disk space. That has probably killed the process that is doing the damage

What you now need to do is introduce the other processes one at a time to see if a pattern emerges.

[themaster1]

Assuming you're capturing on an external hard drive which has been defrag'd there is no reason.
The best solution imo is to open the enclosure and connect this drive with a sata cable to your mobo (assuming it's a sata drive.., most are)

I had problems with 2 seagate hdd in the past and once connected with sata (+ proper cooling) would give acceptable results. The problem was overheating which lead to I/O errors (corrupted data).
You can read this page that'll give you an idea.

[DB83]

@themaster1

From reply#3 "I'm capturing onto the default drive on my laptop, I have plans to purchase an external usb hard drive for capturing but I don't have the funds yet. "