Audio suddenly out of sync with video capture!!!

[Matteo693]

Man, I need a new hobby...

All of a sudden, when I capture VHS my audio is like 1 whole second ahead of the video. It never used to be. My only change was to download & start using VirtualVCR instead of VirtualDub. (Except I successfully captured 2 whole movies with this before it went out of sync!?)

Should I totally uninstall VirtualDub or something? Or uninstall/reinstall VirtualVCR???

Man, I'm seriously going nuts with this shit. Just when I think I've cracked it (ie no more dropped frames) something else pummels me in the face.

Because this is so specialist area I don't wanna call in a technician & waste my precious dole-money. They prob'ly don't know shit. I need serious help here before I kill somebody.

FYI, I have the latest drivers/BIOS updates/chipset drivers/blah blah...you can check my specs...I have a nvidia-based Winfast Leadtek A280 GeForce Ti4200 128MB VIVO blah blah graphics card.

[offline]

defrag?

[Capmaster]

Are you using a TBC to cap those VHS clips?

[Matteo693]

Defragged - yes!

TBC - no, but the source tapes are OK and I'm not dropping frames. Like I said, this wasn't happening until just recently. I've never had AV sync troubles before! This is real maddening!!

Now (sheesh) I'm finding that sometimes the VirtualVCR (or any other cap program, for that matter) preview screen will "black" out & not capture anything! If I reboot, I get my preview back!

Definitely bugginess here...How do I fix this stuff??? Reformat & reinstall Windows from scratch...? Man, I really don't wanna go down that path...!!

Cheers.

[SatStorm]

Driver issues. Latest isn't always the best for any card. Search about your card on forums and on the card list section of dvdrhelp for more infos on this. Also report later there your results, so to help later others

Also, de-activate some of your winXP services which running on the background. Keep a "clean" tray. Don't run other applications while capturing.

Defrag you HDs, or - much better - get a second one, expecially for capturing. If this isn't possible, at least partition your HD (OS partition - capture / encode partition)

All nvidia cards needs signal to start showing picture. If a signal doesn't exist, you get error messages, which also remains on the set up of your applications for capturing.
When you use the built in audio of your motherboard to capture, be sure to install the latest ac97 drivers and when you use virtualvcr for capture, to deactivate the "resample" feature for audio. My tests shows me that this feature works with external audio cards, not the built in ones (exceptions exist, but for the older mobos...)
Use virtualdub if possible to capture. Virtualvcr is the second choice when you capture, if virtualdub fails. Sometimes, with nvidia cards, you need to open first another application for capturing, close it and then run virtualdub. It has to do with the vfm2wdm wrapper...

The best way to get rid of this crap once and for all, is to unistall for ever win xp and install win 2k with service pack 4...

[Matteo693]

Thanks a lot, SatStorm!! I'll follow up on your advice right away & post back my results.

I switched to VirtualVCR because it was wdm-based, also because I was dropping a few frames here & there with VirtualDub (not many), but with VirtualVCR I was dropping zero!

I'm currently running a single unpartitioned HD. I'll look into partitioning it. I have all my XP services tweaked as far as I know, with all irrevelant stuff disabled.

Don't worry, if I can crack this nvidia nightmare once & for all, I'll post up my drivers etc up on the capture card remarks so others can avoid this hell!!!

Cheers for the help.

[Capmaster]

Matteo,
You also might want to check to be sure the capture card IRQ is not being shared. This usually isn't an issue with XP, but .....we're talking about Windows here

Satstorm's advice about Win2K has some merit too. I run only Win2K on both of my capture machines and they're bulletproof. There don't seem to be as many bugs as XP, and you won't be supporting Microsoft's "subscription software" feature like you are with XP. The downside: no hyperthreading with Win2K ...you have to use dual CPUs to get that function. Just my opinion, FWIW.

[Matteo693]

Interesting advice, people. I'll seriously look into this W2K bizzo. Looks like one big headache, but might very well be worth it if you think it's truly bullet-proof, considering I'm using my computer primarily for capturing/editing/DVD authoring etc. (I moved from Win98 to XP, and to be honest something buggy is always popping up in XP).

Can I ask a dumb question, how do I check the IRQ stuff? I'm sure I've checked this before & was no problem, but I've forgotten how to do it! Thanks a lot.

[Capmaster]

Interesting advice, people. I'll seriously look into this W2K bizzo. Looks like one big headache, but might very well be worth it if you think it's truly bullet-proof, considering I'm using my computer primarily for capturing/editing/DVD authoring etc. (I moved from Win98 to XP, and to be honest something buggy is always popping up in XP).

Can I ask a dumb question, how do I check the IRQ stuff? I'm sure I've checked this before & was no problem, but I've forgotten how to do it! Thanks a lot.

Go here: Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/click on the computer on the top line in the list and go to the menu and select "View", then "Resources By Type". Select "Interrupt Request" and you'll see a list of how all the IRQs are assigned. Your capture card ought to be in sole possession of an IRQ.

Also: the higher the IRQ number, the lower the priority for the CPU to service it. If it does have its own, you might want to experiment with reassigning the IRQs by uninstalling the driver for your capture card, powering down, removing a non-vital device that has a lower IRQ #, restart and let Windows reassign the lower IRQ to the capture card. Then power down and replace the non-essential device you had removed, and restart, letting it get the higher IRQ #.

[SatStorm]

Just to add that Win2K supports hyperthreading, but unlike XP, w2k can't see the difference between a physical processor and a logical processor. So, when you install a HT CPU, w2k detects it as 2 CPUs.

Since my english is not fair enough for this, here is a copy / paste from another forum for this subject:
"Hyperthreading in Win2K provides very significant benefit when running multiple instances of the same program or when running multiple CPU-intensive programs"

Also, W2K works better with AMD CPUs and that might explains why we - the AMD users - are still using this OS so much.

[Matteo693]

Thanks. No, there's no conflicts here. My card has its own IRQ:
(PCI)16 NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8X
The IRQ list reads from (ISA)0 to (ISA)15, then starts (PCI)16 onwards. Don't ask me what it means, thanks. (ISA)0 is system timer, I imagine I can't uninstall that. What about (ISA)1 keyboard? Or (ISA)6 standard floppy disk controller (I don't have a floppy disk)? Should I move the NVIDIA card up to one of those slots?

By the way, my P4 doesn't support hyperthreading, and I never run multiple programs. Does frameserving count as multiple programs?

Excuse me if these are dumb questions. I'm wondering if replacing XP with W2K is really worth the trouble? Or should I just try to iron out these bugs & stick to XP?

[Capmaster]

Just to add that Win2K supports hyperthreading, but unlike XP, w2k can't see the difference between a physical processor and a logical processor. So, when you install a HT CPU, w2k detects it as 2 CPUs.

Since my english is not fair enough for this, here is a copy / paste from another forum for this subject:
"Hyperthreading in Win2K provides very significant benefit when running multiple instances of the same program or when running multiple CPU-intensive programs"

Also, W2K works better with AMD CPUs and that might explains why we - the AMD users - are still using this OS so much.

Thanks. I knew there was a problem with HT and Win2K and just assumed it didn't support it since HT is so new. We never stop learning ....

[aurgathor]

Also: the higher the IRQ number, the lower the priority for the CPU to service it.

In general, this is not correct. Because the second 8259 is cascaded to IRQ2 on the first one, the interrupt priority goes like this:
0, 1, (2), 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

If it does have its own, you might want to experiment with reassigning the IRQs by uninstalling the driver for your capture card, powering down, removing a non-vital device that has a lower IRQ #, restart and let Windows reassign the lower IRQ to the capture card. Then power down and replace the non-essential device you had removed, and restart, letting it get the higher IRQ #.

The IRQ assignent is done by the PnP BIOS, so once the old device is back, the IRQ assignment will most likely go back to what it was before. Unless, of course, the cards are moved to different slots.