Capturing Problem with Asus V8200

[grer]

Hi,

I bought the V8200, and tried to capture video using Virtual Dub. The card is supposed to be able to capture 704x480 with 30 fps. However, I was only able to get about 5 or 6 fps.
I searched for answers in this forum, and tried everything I could find. I used 3 different programs (Virtual Dub, Avi_io, and Asus Live), tried the different codecs which were recommeneded, and tried pretty much every setting. That increased the fps from 5 to 10, but still is not 30.
I am trying to capture to a maxtor ATA133 harddrive, connected to a controller card which supports ATA133. The harddrive is working at UltraDMA Mode 6, so I don't think that the problem is in the harddrive.
My other computer specs are:
AMD XP 1800+
512 MB DDR
ASUS A7V266 motherboard
and I'm running windows 2000

I would appreciate any help you could give me,

Thank you,

grer

[markdf]

I have an Asus 3800 ultra. I found that the Asus would not capture fullscreen 25fps with 2000. No problem with 98SE or ME.

[grer]

Thanks,

Switching to win98 helped a lot, but there's still a small problem.
It can capture with no problems at 640x480, or smaller resolution, at 29.97 fps, but still doesn't want to capture at 704x480.
Is there some specific settings that I have to pick in order to capture in that resolution?

Thanks,

grer

[markdf]

Thanks,

Switching to win98 helped a lot, but there's still a small problem.
It can capture with no problems at 640x480, or smaller resolution, at 29.97 fps, but still doesn't want to capture at 704x480.
Is there some specific settings that I have to pick in order to capture in that resolution?

Thanks,

grer

Hi.
At least you are almost there . What version of LIVE are you using? You have a later card but they both use the same software for video capture I'm sure. The first few versions of 'Live' would not capture full screen at all. The latest version I have is I think 6.5B. Last time I looked I couldn't find this version on the updated web site.

What is really annoying about 'Live' is it forgets the audio settings. Every time you load the program you have to remember to change the audio settings from the default 11k/sec mono. I emailed Asus some time ago about this and a suggestion to be able to break up the captures into smaller blocks instead of the 2gb limit.

[Triffid]

Hi Grer,

What symptoms do you get? Is it that you drop a lot of frames, or is it that the driver doesn't offer the higher resolution, or does it crash or something else?

I use a V7700 deluxe and I can capture 704x576 at 50fps OK. I'm using the latest ASUS drivers 21.83, which include the vfw capture drivers (but these haven't changed in a while)

Of course, the problem may be an NTSC related bug in the driver (I've never tried NTSC sizes/rates..but I could give it a go)

[markdf]

Hi Grer,

I use a V7700 deluxe and I can capture 704x576 at 50fps OK. I'm using the latest ASUS drivers 21.83, which include the vfw capture drivers (but these haven't changed in a while)

Of course, the problem may be an NTSC related bug in the driver (I've never tried NTSC sizes/rates..but I could give it a go)

50fps? ? Or do you mean 25? Which capture program do you use and which OS?

I've tried 30fps by accident a few times, its easily noticed because of all the dropped frames. I never tried changing the size to ntsc format though to see if it fixes the problem.

I've been doing a lot of experimenting recently, with an analogue input SVCD does look slightly better. But with a dvd as the source, I can't tell the difference between SVCD & VCD. If you are into home video's then SVCD would be the way to go. Besides, who wants to sit through 80 minutes of someone else's home videos!

[Triffid]

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry...

I got carried away a bit. Of course I meant 25fps!!!!!

I capture full frame, then I do two things:

1. Throw one frame away and make MPEG2 at 352x288 at 2300 bps (in TMPGEnc) that I burn in Nero as non compliant SVCD (looks great on my Pioneer 444), that we can watch now.

2. Make an MPEG2 720x256 DVD format for future burning to DVD. I'm doing home movies, so I can split the stuff up and archive it on CDR for now. (I just hope I'm making the DVDs properly compliant...coz otherwise I'm wasting time and CDRs!!!)

Sorry again about the mistake (I wouldn't want to mislead anyone, or make them think I'm full of S..)

[grer]

Thanks guys,

Thing is, was that I wasn't using ASUS Live to capture the video, I tried to capture it with Virtual Dub, which would just crash at 704x480 as soon as I pressed "Capture". After I started using Live, 704x480 worked just fine. (I still have about 1 dropped frame a minute, but better then 80% dropped frames I had in the beginning) :)
Just one more question, how would I go about capturing something more than 2000GB? Will Live create a second file, or will it just stop capturing? Because I would like to be able to capture about 30 mins to 1 hour at a time. Is this possible with Live?

Thanks a lot for all your help,

grer

[markdf]

Just one more question, how would I go about capturing something more than 2000GB? Will Live create a second file, or will it just stop capturing? Because I would like to be able to capture about 30 mins to 1 hour at a time. Is this possible with Live?
grer

Soon as your file hits the 2Gb limit 'live' will automatically create a new file and continue capturing. My suggestion to Asus was to be able to specify the time (or even file size) of each block. This would make it easier to fill cd's with smaller files which may use less cd's. I know you can split the files, but its easier to just drag them onto the nero immediatley after encoding for burning.

[markdf]

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry...

I got carried away a bit. Of course I meant 25fps!!!!!

8)

1. Throw one frame away and make MPEG2 at 352x288 at 2300 bps (in TMPGEnc) that I burn in Nero as non compliant SVCD (looks great on my Pioneer 444), that we can watch now.

2. Make an MPEG2 720x256 DVD format for future burning to DVD. I'm doing home movies, so I can split the stuff up and archive it on CDR for now. (I just hope I'm making the DVDs properly compliant...coz otherwise I'm wasting time and CDRs!!!)

Sorry again about the mistake (I wouldn't want to mislead anyone, or make them think I'm full of S..)

re 1: Haven't tried that...how many minutes can you fit on a disk?

re 2: Good idea, never thought of that. I've been hoping that it will be possible to convert vcd's (etc) easily when I finally get a DVD writer one day. Probably be a while yet as the drives & disks are too expensive for me in OZ.

....vcdhelp already has a resident BS expert, I'm afraid there are no vacancys at the moment.

[grer]

Thanks for all your help. (I almost thought that I got a defective card)
Yeah, I agree, it would be much better to be able to specify your own file size (that's one of the reasons I was thinking of capturing using Virtual Dub- which gives you that option). Hopefully this is going to be put into their next version.

Thanks again,

grer

[Triffid]

Hi Grer,

Glad to see you got something working. I was playing around with ASUS Live myself last night, recording things from my TV, and in the end I went back to VirtualDub, because it seemed to keep the frame rate better (live kept reporting 24.xxx and 25.xxx when I was capturing at 25fps, and no dropped frames....which makes no sense to me, as the stuff is coming in at 25 fps, so if you don't drop anything it should stay that way!! VDUB gets it right all the time). Also, the 2GB limit (which I can't get around either, with Live) is just not acceptable.

I tried out NTSC capture (704x480 29.whatever fps) with my system, and it worked OK as far as I can tell (no actual NTSC source to capture from)..at least VDUB and the ASUS drivers were willing. So I have no new suggestions for you on that front.