MJPEG file type

[kurbads]

I capture VHS tapes with Miro DC30 Plus capture card with WDM drivers and Pinnacle patch beacause it is the only way to get sync between sound and video under XP. When computer crashes during capture the captured files do not open in VirtualDub(Mod) because it "Cannot detect file type!" Is there a way to "tell" VirtualDub that the file is MJPEG or write a header into file. Pinnacle itself also do not play these files. I cann't understand why f...ing Pinnacle doesn't write MJPEG header at the start of capture, any ideas?

[edDV]

These people may have the answer

http://www.mirosupport.de/video/dc30/mirodc30_xp_driver_eng.html
http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/read_threads.asp?WebboardID=4&ForumID=36&lng=1&SectionID=
http://www.postforum.com/forums/read.php?f=65&i=665&t=665
http://www.davisr.com/forum/5.shtml
http://www.dmnforums.com/cgi-bin/displaywwugindex.fcgi?forum=pinnacle-miro&endday=5000...=0&openclose=1

Let us know what you find. I've still got an old DC-30plus still running on a Win98se machine.

[The_Pioneer]

I capture VHS tapes with Miro DC30 Plus capture card with WDM drivers and Pinnacle patch beacause it is the only way to get sync between sound and video under XP. When computer crashes during capture the captured files do not open in VirtualDub(Mod) because it "Cannot detect file type!" Is there a way to "tell" VirtualDub that the file is MJPEG or write a header into file. Pinnacle itself also do not play these files. I cann't understand why f...ing Pinnacle doesn't write MJPEG header at the start of capture, any ideas?

What's the situation with the DC30plus and XP? I have fond memories regarding picture quality but these are blighted by crashing, with such unforgivable frequency.

[edDV]

3rd party WDM driver
http://www.mirosupport.de/video/dc30/mirodc30_xp_driver_eng.html

[kurbads]

I use Miro DC30 Plus under XP quite successfuly. The picture quality is outstanding. There was a little hassle before geting sync between audio and video but with drivers from mirosupport.de and their Pinnacle patch things go well. The CPU workload is some 2-5% @ 3GHz HT PIV. So you can encode Mpeg2 or DivX while capuring almost at full speed.

Problems start when tape has many lost frames. In this case at the moment when their number reaches critical level like hundreds in a row Pinnacle stops capturing sound. It can be tracked by watching the sound level bar - it stops jumping wihich means you have to stop recording, rewind and continue. But few days ago I captured 3h30min tape without a single lost frame with matching sound all along. But second tape from a 3 tape set is much worser and it is already a second time when it reboots my computer and it has 1-2 lost frames about every 10 seconds. It is suprising because the tapes are new - just brought from store. So again I have 20 Gb file without header. I left my computer last night and saw it has restarted this morning.

I capture sound at 48khz pcm and convert it to Ac3 or MPA for DVD. I am not sure but it seems like the sound has to be extracted then by using DirectShowFilters (at least since then I have no problems with sound). DirectShow filters are used by CoolEdit (extract audio from video function) or AvySynth. Demuxing or Saving Wav with VirtualDub leads (???) to desync. I assume it is because of miliseconds accumulated from number of lost video frames which is somehow corrected with information from the captured videofile by DirectShow filters but discarded by VirtualDub.

I use CoolEdit because I can normalize sound right away. Cooledit also can extract audio from avisynth scripts which I use to join captured parts and convert into mpv. I look for beginning and ending frame values in VirtualDub then add them to script or use several scripts to create mpv and mpa pieces which can be joined using TmpegAuthor.

When caputuring PAL with this card the video usually is interlanced. I do not resize or crop it verticaly before encoding into DVD or DivX. I have not tryed but if I do I should resize each field separately. When encoding in DVD with CCE 2.7 also in one case I checked the Deinterlance chekbox in Preprocess group otherwise I got a jerky video with wrong sequence of fields. I do not have expirience with NTSC because I do not have NTSC videoplayer.

[kurbads]

Huray, i did not notice that although the computer has restarted the 20 GB file has a header and has complete sound.

I do not understand the people who are talking about incompatible motherboards with DC30 - I have tryed at least 3 and they all are compatible. My card is quite old because I found it inside a 333 Mhz G3 Macintosh which I bought for 50$. I could not make it work on Mac, but it works under XP.