Dropping Frames all of a sudden.

[Mohammed Vorajee]

I have an Athlon Xp 1800+, 640mb ram, Windows XP PRO and a Haugepauge 878 capture card. (I am using Virtual Dub as my capture software)

Up till yesterday, I was capturing (Video with Huffyuv, uncompressed Audio at 48k) with minimum frameloss (about 4 every 40 minutes).

Now I am getting frameloss reguarly. (The Cpu Usage indicator stays around 0 and 25, but then all of a sudden a 100% blip occurs for a second or so and I lose 16 frames) This happens all the time now, resulting in about 700 dropped frames in 35 minutes.

At first I thought it might have been the video source as I was capturing of VHS tape, but the same result occurs when I'm capturing directly of tv.

The drive I'm capturing to is empty, network and antivirus software has been disabled.

Is my processor dying?

Any Help would be appreciated

[FOO]

You probably have some process running you don't know about
look in task manager
and try Run msconfig

[andkiich]

Is there anything new that you installed on that system lately? Even though it might seem insignificant, there might have been some background process or TSR that has been activated that it didn't explicitly tell you about or is not listed in the taskbar.

[lordsmurf]

Is my processor dying?

Has your system been on a lot recently? May be a heat issue.

[Mohammed Vorajee]

I am beginning to think, that my original diagnosis regarding the CPU was correct. I took the cover of the machine and whilst capturing I blew cold air from a stand up fan directly onto the cpu / mother board. Not only did the temperature stay at around 37C but the number of frames dropped in a 120minute period was 6. The general temperature of my machine used to be around 50-58C.

However, this level of temperature didn't cause any problems in the past!!
So why now?

[lordsmurf]

I know I'll hear a lot of dissent, but this problem has been well-documented by many people...

It's very likely to be an AMD issue, as they have been known to melt or otherwise die when used for video encoding, or when left on for long periods of time, or with heavy use.

You many want to let the thing cool down for a day or two, then remove it, be sure all the proper heating compounds/gels are applied as needed, that the fans are good strong ones, that the heat sync is properly attached, and that the case has enough fans. You may want to consider a high-cool case for about $75 or so.

The issue has been argued as either being the CPU itself, or a lack or motherboards properly using the AMD cooling features if they exist. In either case, the outcome is the same: the cooling is not happening properly. I personally don't know which one it is, and I'm thankful I'm on all-Intel setups.

Another issue related to dropped frames is overheated hard drives. Maybe you sent some of that cold air to the HD? In either case, you may want to look at a better-cooled case before something dies on you.

[FOO]

You might check your bios settings also. Mine was cutting the clock in half
when it got above a certain temp. Made everything very slow.

[Mohammed Vorajee]

Additional question:

I have just replaced Virtualdub with VirtualVCR (Removed the VFW Drivers and replaced them with the WDM - I heard the VFW-WDM wrapper uses a lot of cpu time) and tried re-encoding with the settings I used in VirtualDub with no luck...

Whats the difference between the Huffyuv codec and the Picvideo MJPEG one?

With the Huffyuv codec I get a lot of dropped frames (Every 24-40 seconds). With the PicVideo MJPEG codec at compression 20 I get the same results, but If I change it to compression level 19 then no frame drops whatsoever..

I have checked background processes and there doesn't seem to be any taking CPU load whatsoever.

[Sartori]

Additional question:

I have just replaced Virtualdub with VirtualVCR
With the Huffyuv codec I get a lot of dropped frames (Every 24-40 seconds). With the PicVideo MJPEG codec at compression 20 I get the same results, but If I change it to compression level 19 then no frame drops whatsoever..

I have checked background processes and there doesn't seem to be any taking CPU load whatsoever.

Thats usually a Hard Drive problem , either its just not quick enough to stream all the data to it (not this probably), or as others have stated - its getting to hot when its writing a lot of data fast and just has a bit of a "rest" while its doing its work .
Or you might have turned off DMA on the HD .

[FOO]

#19 is good enough. I think #20 is 3 times as much stuff as #19
Mine didnt't make it at 20 either when I had a 1600 Mhz CPU
I have 2000MHz now but I havent changed to #20 because the files
were too big and I can't tell the difference anyway.