After 3 months of use, now my system drops frames?!

[andkiich]

OK, I've been doing captures for almost 3 months now, even built a dedicated machine just for capturing. I went today to do another capture, and now, the system drops frames like crazy! Just 2 days ago, I completed a capture of over 2 hours of video/audio, no problem. I turn the mahcine on today and nothing but trouble.

So, I scoure the forum.

1. I defragged the drive, again.
2. I disconnected the CAT5 from the NIC(about 2 weeks ago).

I changed nothing, and for some reason the system just drops frames.
I'm capturing @ 720x480 with YUY2 codec and VirtualDub 1.5.1

This is what I've been doing since I started.

Anybody have any suggestions on what might be causing this and some things I can look at to resolve?

[andkiich]

OK, small update.

I ran across another post where someone was discussing the overhead needed to maintain a descktop setting that is relatively high.
Well, my desktop setting was around 1280 with 32-bit color depth. needless to say, I think that it is overkill, so I reduced the resolution and color depth.

I ran a test cap and previously over a 5 minute period I was dropping ~5-6 frames, then a little after that it would start to tick off the dropped frames faster then I could read it.
Modified the desktop settings and after 5 minutes of capture of the same source/same part of the source I have zero dropped frames. Now I realize that I could have had some issues with the desktop, but why would it start causing issues now, anad not 3 months ago. I have done nothing with this machine but do video capture. I installed no games, no virus scan, nothing but the tools that I would need to capture, convert and author a DVD.

Anybody have anything to help me understand this?

[txpharoah]

Aside from reading my post here...
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=157660
...I don't have any further suggestions.

Bad luck maybe? Turn it off and try again later?

Very odd.

The things I've listed on that linked post usually curtail most dropped-frame issues. Using vDUB is known to have issues, but if it worked in the past, no real reason for it to not work now.

[txpharoah]

Anybody have anything to help me understand this?

Ah, yes. I'm aware of this issue too. I need to go add about 3 more issues to that dropped-frames sticky when I find a few moments. This is one of them.

Does your system used an on-board video card? I find that to often be the case when lowering the system res/color relieves the dropped-frames issue.

[MrKGB]

andkiich,
your machine looks good.
what codec are you using?
what is your video source?

[andkiich]

txpharoah,

The first thing I did was look at your sticky anda make sure that I had all those items covered. Actually, i think that it was you who had posted on another thread about the desktop res and color depth. Thanks for posting that.

MrKGB,
I'm using the YUY2 codec that is listed in VDUB as one of the available codecs @ 720x480 video and 384 Stereo audio. I ran the Benchmark in VDUB and it is registering the my capture at 29314KB/s, when in the capture window in VDUB, it is showing that it will capture at 20184KB/s. I figured that I was a decent margin ahead of the game. My CPU usage is normally no lower than 9% and no higher than 30%.

My source is laserdisc from a Pioneer CLD-S201.


I'm wondering if there wasn't/isn't a "ghost in the machine". Have either of you ever had your machines do anything like this?

[MrKGB]

looks like you are doing uncomopressed video, which is very demanding task.

can you maybe try evaluation version of picvideo mjpeg at quality 19?
this codec must work on very slow machines without drops.

can you also try to capture from cable/antenna?
maybe your problem is the source signal

one more thought: afaik if you are capturing with vdub you have to have frames per second exactly as of your source, otherwise you will be getting drops.

[andkiich]

I'll give that other codec a shot. If it works without dropping frames and I continue to get the same quality that I get now, then I've got no problem using it.

Last time I tried capturing from my DirecTV receiver, I had no problems. Didn't drop frames or anything. Then again, up until yesterday, I wasn't dropping frames on Laserdisc, either, but I would drop some frames occassionally with the some pretty sketchy VHS. I still need to get a TBC or similar device for my VHS captures.

Thanks to both you guys for your information. I'll give your suggestions a try and hopefully that will help if not solve my issues. I'll let you know my results.

[andkiich]

OK, update.

I guess it has to be something in virtualdub. I went back to using Ulead VideoStudio and so far 0 frames dropped.

I do like virtul dub and some things that it can do, but I guess I have to go with what works.

Once again, thanks to al that gave me some help on this issue.

[Karina]

Might be worth trying iuVCR (providing your drivers are compatible), its quite a powerful capturing program and has a very low overhead.

Also make sure you have plenty of free space for your swap file to grow (ussually on your c:, try keep 500mb free), check your memory and cpu use with the task manager also (just incase you have a runaway process which is causing problems)

And finally one thing I find helps is to keep a dedicated partition for capture/conversion use and format it regularly, saves having to worry about defragging etc.

[fravel]

Have you checked you IDE channels? Are they in Ultra DMA or DMA, or are they in Pio mode? The hard disk should be in Ultra DMA for fastest performance. Sometimes they get changed without your intervention.
Good Luck!

[MrKGB]

also try virtualvcr, i would say it is even better than vdub, it should work with all wdm drivers

[andkiich]

I'm running a RAID 0, so the UDMA/DMA thing is not an issue.

I let Xp determine what it wants to use for swap, so it can take whatever it needs. I have plenty of space(255GB).

I'm not againast trying anything, and I will most likely give everything suggested here it's day in court, so to speak.

Again, you've all been great, thanks!