Capturing with ATI AIW 8500 and Audigy

[marksdad1]

My setup:
P4 1.8 ghz w/ Asus P4T Bios
256 mb SRam
ATI AIW 8500 Radeon Video
Soundblaster Audigy Sound Card
I've tried VDub, Ulead VS 7 & 8, Ulead DMF 2 & 3,
Pinnacle 9 and MMC 9 and get the same audio / video synch problem.
So, I think it could've been some kind of hardware/system setup problem.
So I recently updated my ATI & sound card drivers as well as BIOS to the latest versions and still get the same audio synch problems.
I've followed the recommendations as best as i could in these forums - either with configuring ATI MMC or VDub or trying to do a direct stream copy and have been unsuccessful. - is there something else i should check? SHould i just re-install win XP and all software again?

[Nelson37]

What source are you capturing?

What type of desynch are you experiencing? Variable, constant, gradually increasing?

What playback method are you using to determine synch? Are you aware that many softwares will not playback captured files correctly?

What post-capture processing steps have you performed?

Are you familiar with and have you taken any steps to compensate for the padding stream?

What settings are you capturing with?

Need much more info to provide any constructive analysis.

[hudsonf]

I use to have sync problems capturing to avi. I started capturing directly to mpeg2 with the settings on lordsmurfs site and haven't had a sync problem since. It also helps to turn off all programs and processes you don't need. If your having trouble with mpeg captures download a trial of VideoReDo and see if it will correct your sync problem.

[marksdad1]

Sorry about not giving all the info. Thanks so much for the indepth set of questions

Here is more:
My goal is to transfer Hi-8 video (basically home movies) to DVD. So I use the ATI dongle with S-Video.
I had typically captured to AVI rather than MPeg, but I tried to capture to MPeg following the other posters' suggestion and still had a problem

I experience constant de-synch - i can see minor desynch before i capture, and significant de-synch after authoring

As I stated, in playback - usually through the ATI video player, i've noticed some desynch, but I've also noticed it after i've gone all the way through to author, the desynch is awful.

As for post-capture processing steps, i've used a few different packages and in different methods -
for example, when i capture in VDub, i would use Tmpgenc to encode to mpg, and DVD Movie Factory to author the video - i have simple requirements - i'm just trying to move the video from tape to dvd - i hadn't gotten elaborate in the processing.

regarding the padding stream = i'm not familiar with that term.
What settings i'm capturing with?:
720x480 uising Huffy UV compression, 48000 stereo, what other detail should i provide there?

Thanks so much

[Nelson37]

You see de-synch BEFORE capturing??? Then something is very wrong.

When capping AVI with Vdub, I never had any significant de-synch issues except when using a very bad tape. Have you tried stripping the audio as a WAV, and encoding audio and video seperately? How about using a different tape, and also testing with a completely different source, such as cable TV or DVD? Can you capture in short segments successfully?

I do real-time MPG almost exclusively. ATI and other cards include a padding stream which is used somehow to correct AV synch. Simple rule of thumb - If you demux the padding stream and it has any significant size, then you may have issues. Run the file thru TMPGenc Merge and Cut, this will Demux/Remux the file, taking the padding stream into account, but producing a file without the padding stream. Most other processes eliminate the stream without using it for correction, resulting in a synch problem.

Also, WinDVD is one of the few players, including ATI's own, which seems to play most captured files correctly. I wasted a lot of time chasing phantom synch issues on files which burnt and played fine.