Are dropped frames really that noticable?

[nickerous]

Howdy folks.

I just finished capturing the 1st quarter of a college football game. It is from a vcr tape that was recorded nearly 3 years ago. I'm using iuVCR, 720x480, huffyUV, and 44 mhz audio. The quarter (plus about 7 minutes of pregame) was 45 minutes and took up 23.7GB of space. Everything was fine for the first 40 minutes of capture. After that, I start seeing spikes in my computer usage graph (under the info tab of iuVCR) and I drop a few frames here and there. My question is, are these dropped frames going to mess up the mpg file? My total dropped frames was 44 (out of 75,000). I'm capturing at 30 fps, so technically, I only dropped a little over 1 sec of footage, correct? I tried looking and the captured avi file, but every avi I have gotten using iuVCR skips and jumps in Windows Media Player. After I encode it, everything is fine in WMP. I really don't want to re-capture 45 minutes and maybe drop more frames. I have an 80 GB hard drive, so I can't put too many long clips like this one in avi format. I've already set up the encoding (using TMPGEnc, 2-pass VBR, 8000max, 6500avg, 2500min) and it is going to take roughly 20 hours to encode.

Just wondering what you folks thought of this. If the resulting mpg file gets rough towards the end, then I may redo it, but I would rather move on to the second quarter. I did have to pause the capture to edit out commercials (maybe a total of 4 times). I read that iuVCR can get glitchy if you keep pausing and unpausing captures. I can go with Scenalzer, but my max capture rate is about half the lines of resolution of iuVCR (320x200 or something like that). Same thing in Windows Movie maker. Is there a way I can bump that up to 720 res in either program?

[Tommyknocker]

Actually, you were capturing very well to have so few dropped frames. As for them being noticeable, unless all the frames or a large part of the frames were dropped at the same time, you will be hard-pressed to find exactly where they were dropped by looking at your video.

[housepig]

what is your final output format?

I usually drop around 6-8 frames per hour capturing the same way (well, I use 48khz audio as it's all going to dvd-r in the end). I can't see them. The only time I would recapture something is if the audio sync got seriously hosed because of dropped frames.

For example, I just captured a rare Black Sabbath concert - pretty crunchy looking video quality, big noise bars and hiccups in the original signal. I dropped 5 frames in 1 hour.

The first song was a bit out of sync, so I recaptured that. But the rest was perfect, so all I did was encode & join them with TMPGenc.

But if it looks good and you don't see any problems, the clip is fine. Nobody is going to go through it frame by frame and look for a glitch.

[nickerous]

The final output is going to be dvd compliant, mpeg2 audio. I'm going to put 2 quarters on 1 dvd-r and then do the second half on another dvd-r. I have some double-disc cases on order, so I'll have the whole game in 1 case.

Hopefully, 6500avg will give me good enough quality. I'm a quality nut and if it doesn't look good enough, I'll re-encode it. Although, the wizard in tmpgenc estimated the file size at 2GB. Can't do too much more if I want to stay in the 4.38 dvd limit.

Then again, there will be no pregame on the second quarter, so it's bound to be less time............hopefully......

[vhelp]

hi nickerous..

A few dropped frames won't be noticable to "newbies" and those that see
your demo'ing. So, there realy shouldn't be any worry. However..

If you are an "experience-to-detail" type person, then those few drops
will stand out and haunt you forever. Even if you are demo'ing it to others,
someone is bound to see a glitch, and "haunt" you on this.

If you are blind, then don't worry. All is well, but if you have 20/20, you're
in for some haunting times ahead. Just some wisdom.

-vhelp

[nickerous]

Thanks for the info vhelp. I thought that I would notice it anyway. I worked in a movie theater for 6 years and I tend to notice EVERYTHING in a moving picture.

Since this is of a football game, one or two glitches in the first half are acceptable (I'll know for sure when I see the encoded video). I'll just have to make sure that the 4th quarter has no dropped frames. All the good stuff was in that quarter anyway.

[lchiu7]

what is your final output format?

I usually drop around 6-8 frames per hour capturing the same way (well, I use 48khz audio as it's all going to dvd-r in the end). I can't see them. The only time I would recapture something is if the audio sync got seriously hosed because of dropped frames.

For example, I just captured a rare Black Sabbath concert - pretty crunchy looking video quality, big noise bars and hiccups in the original signal. I dropped 5 frames in 1 hour.
...

I have been capturing LD's NTSC at 720x480 48Khz sound using Iuvcr. On an Athlon xp2400+ on a 7200 80G drive as master on secondary IDE channel, I have been able to capture an hour with no frame drops, average CPU running at about 20%. I do turn off previewing but don't turn off virus checking or the LAN card. YMMV

Larry

[vitualis]

Although I haven't captured any video for a while, a few dropped frames here and there are unlikely to cause noticable glitches in the final video -- especially if they were dropped to keep AV sync.

IMHO, if you drop more than 2 consecutive frames, however (i.e., 3 frames in a row or more) you WILL get a noticable glitch in the video.

Regards.

[txpharoah]

Several things.

1. If you captured 40 minutes fine, but the last 10 had problems. Well, then, just recapture the last 12 or so, and do a seamless edit in Premiere to rejoin them at a scene break or less-noticeable moment.

2. Read my post on dropped frames. I think some of that will apply. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=157660

3. You will normally only notice drops if they are in clumps. 1 frame would be fine, but 6 together would be murder.

[nickerous]

I finished the encoding and viewed the results. You can definetly see a difference where the drop frames occur, but, if one did not know they were there, you could shrug it off as cable disturbance or low satellite signal. I get just a bit of slowdown and a pop in my audio. There are 3 instances where this occurs and they are a few minutes apart from each other. Nothing I can't live without....for a football game.