Dropped frames mystery with VirtalDub??

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Hi everyone. I recently bought a new Pinnacle system PCTV Pro card to do some video capture from my VCR to ultimately an mpeg1/VCD format. After some intial tests the first day I installed it, I was reasonably happy with some capturing/rendering attempts,though looking to improve on others.

However, going back to trying some more test captures today, I've had nothing but trouble. Where as the other day I could happily capture from my VCR to virtual Dub in 640x480 with virtually no frame drops, I now cannot capture any video/VCR footage without massive frame drops.
The crazy thing is, this is occurring regardless of the compression/codecs eg:uncompressed,Huffy etc., or the resolution,(Even at 352x288 to convert to a PAL VCD format using TMPGenc).

Although capturing actual VCR footage is now causing these massive frame drops, stopping the tape on some attempts & instead capturing whatever was on my real TV (& being played thru to VirtualDub via my composite video input), I was able to capture as well as I did the other day.
The CPU usage is only about 25-30%.

My Specs are for capturing;

Pinnacle Systems PCTV pro. Although supplied with V5 WDM drivers,I downloaded & am using Pinnacle' older Version 4.02a VFW compatible drivers,(To use the card in Virtual Dub). BT878 chipset.

Celeron 900 CPU w/ Asus TUSL2-C M/B using Intel 815EP chipset
128Mb SDRAM
Single 20GB 5400rpm HDD FAT32 formatted
SoundBlaster Live DE5.1 for audio capture
Geforce 3 Ti200 using DirectX 8.1
Windows 98 First Edition installed single partition
With Intel Inf chipset drivers & Intel ATA100 drivers Version 6.2 so no DMA option available on HDD box.

I realise its no Pentium 4 or Athlon, but like I said, to suddenly go from reasonablely satisfying results for VCD standard, to suddenly not capturing any video footage without massive frame drops is extremely annoying.

If I installed the WDM drivers, that would rule out capturing with VirtualDub & rendering with TMPGenc, would it?
Although a second HDD might sound good,I'd rather not until I can work out why I'm getting a massive frame drop problem in the first place.
Given I was doing raw uncompressed capture at 640x480 without any drops,I really don't get why I can't now.

I've also tried defragging with no changes.

[holistic]

Greetings H K P

I have switched to DV / 1394 and have removed my old AverMedia capture card so i cannot test this theory for you BUT :


I remember having a problem similar to yours - captured fine one day / dropped frames the next

Cure (for me anyway) I set desktop to 800*600*16 color when capturing. Fine after that . Go figure ! Try it .

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Unfortunately,that IS my standard desktop setting!

[monsoon01]

holistic,
i have a setup very close to yours. if you are getting lots of frames dropped from a VHS tape but not from broadcast t.v. its the tapes fault.....the tape is going bad. Also remember to defrag and i don't think WDM drivers will work on a win98 system. i just upgraded to win2k so my resopnses will be a little delayed while i work out the kinks. if you really wanna capture with great quality and little or no dropped frames i suggest you check out my guide: High Quality Capturing in VirtualDub with Little Frame Loss

[holistic]

holistic,
i have a setup very close to yours. if you are getting lots of frames dropped from a VHS tape but not from broadcast t.v. its the tapes fault.....the tape is going bad. Also remember to defrag and i don't think WDM drivers will work on a win98 system. i just upgraded to win2k so my resopnses will be a little delayed while i work out the kinks. if you really wanna capture with great quality and little or no dropped frames i suggest you check out my guide: High Quality Capturing in VirtualDub with Little Frame Loss

Huh ??

no you don't..........

[monsoon01]

sorry holistic, i was looking at the wrong name, that comment was directed towards hong long phooey, lol. thats what i get for reading the forums real quick at school huh(damn teachers trying to suspend me).

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Okay,I've done some further test runs with the card again,& still getting varied results.
1) As the moment it seems just about any forms of uncompressed capture are producing massive framedrops. The same also applies to Huffy, regardless of it being 640x480 or 352x288.

2) However, trying preview off & overlay ON,(Limiting to PAL 352x288), AND using the miroVIDEO-XL 32bit compression, 16bit CD-quality sound,(which are native to this pinnacle V4.2a VFW driver,I managed to get back to some acceptable results,(eg:16-17 dropped frames out of 3500), which converted okay in TPMGenc.

3) If I tried to use the exact same 352x288 capture format with overlay OFF & Preview ON in VDub,(Version 1.4r8),& the same compression as above the massive framedrop issue returns.
However,turn the resolution up to 640x480,25 F.P.S.,MiroVideoXL etc.,& once again,the frame drops are vastly reduced again.

Apart from the vastly larger space taken by the 640x480 capture, when I render it down to 352x288 in TMPGEnc,(Using the PAL VCD wizard/template),I get annoying horizontal "bands" in the mpeg picture. Any thoughts anyone?

[monsoon01]

hong kong phooey,
make sure you turn both preview and overlay OFF else you will get tons of dropped frames. I can capture at 352x480 yuy2 color with picvideo(quality 20) and not drop a single frame while i fill up my 30 gig capture drive. Huffy is great for being free but its pretty cpu intensive (from my experince). Also, how fast is the drive you are capturing to, is it your system drive or is it just an extra spare drive. Also, if you have sum spare cash lying around you can get AVI_IO and regierstar it and capture at 720x576 for hours without frame loss...........its a fantastic program for VFW capturing. Capture in AVI_IO, edit in VDUB and frameserve to TMPGenc and there ya go, a vcd or whatever you want in a few hours. If you are still having problems trying switching your audio to mono instead of stereo. and do not use the miro compression codec, its horrible you'd be better off captuing a low bit rate divx then using that. Private message me or email if your still having frame drops.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Picvideo,is that a professional/paid codec? I'm looking to convert the footage to VCD/Mpeg1 VCD format so I'd need something TmpGenc would recognise as a AVI rendered/codec format to convert over,& be compatible for DVD players.

[monsoon01]

hong kong phooey,
u do have to pay for it, its only about $30 USD i think, well worth it if your serious about capturing. i capture my avi's in vdub, edit them in vdub(filters, cuting, etc.) then i frameserve to tmpgenc to make beautiful xvcd

[Hong Kong Phooey]

I'm d/l the demo version,(with the watermark),to have a try of now. Are there any resolution limitations,(other than the watermark)? More importantly, does it uninstall easily,if I don't like it?

[offline]

Umm.. this might be a little bit "..left of field" but I notice you
have a SoundBlaster Live. Did u try changing your audio rate/
compression. The SoundBlaster Live can develop an ill humour
if the audio is sampled under 44.1Hkz.[/quote]

[offline]

<s

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Umm.. this might be a little bit "..left of field" but I notice you
have a SoundBlaster Live. Did u try changing your audio rate/
compression. The SoundBlaster Live can develop an ill humour
if the audio is sampled under 44.1Hkz.

[/quote]
Yep, it's set at 16bit Stereo PCM 172kb/s. I have tried 16bit mono ,but still end up with the same results.

Gave the PicVideo a trial,(albeit with the watermark). Still experienced the same problems of massive framedrops with Vdub & AVI-IO trial version.
PicVideo,Huffy,DivX,& uncompressed formats all seem to tend to give similar hassles.
The only program which worked with PicVideo was Ulead VideoStudio4SE

Uncompressed & MiroVideoXL particulary, seem to be the 2 codecs that are giving the least rendering/capturing issues. Uncompressed seems to vary according to what VHS tape's I'm trying to capture from but tend to work in either 352x288,(with overlay on),or failing that 640x480 @25fps with preview on instead.

Sorry to say the mirovideoXL codec seems to be the least troublesome. I'll agree it's not that great,but most of the time it seems happy to work in Vdub at either the 352x288 Overlay,or 640x480 preview settings.
Its a shame the huffy codec hasn't worked either, for a "lossless" format.
But I'd assume its more intended for P4 & Athlon users.

I would ask though,would an extra 128MB ram,or a dedicated 7200rpm Hard disk really make that much difference. If I'm struggling to encode test captures of 2/3mins I'm wary of blowing any further money.

[homerpez]

Questions that may lead to help...

1) ...what would you consider "massive" frame drops?

2) ...Are you capturing NTSC 29.97 frames, but telling V-Dub that you only want to do 23.976 frames (You're capturing a movie, in other words)

As for added RAM or a faster HD... the RAM is totally irrelevant to capturing (in fact, I wish it DID make a difference). It would definitely help to not capture to the same drive as your OS, but so long as this drive is dedicated (not shared) it doesn't really matter if it's 5400, 7200 or SCSI speed, any HD should get 10MBS bandwidth. If it's shared, though, it can interrupt and this causes frame drops.

Most important to you is CPU speed. If you say that it never exceeds 30% usage, then your problem lies somewhere above.

I'm interested in your answers to #1 and #2, this could mean different problems still...

[Nelson37]

VHS tapes can vary dramatically in how they affect capture. As above, if you can capture TV, then you're OK. Have you tried the same tape as initially worked? ALL settings and connections the same? ANY new software installed or activated? Perhaps machine was moved and card became loose? SOMETHING has changed. Check FPS settings in VDUB.

After initial install and before first test, did you reboot? More than once? Was the first failure AFTER the first reboot following install? If so, try uninstall software, physically remove card, reboot, scanreg /fix, install card, load software, test, reboot, test, reboot, test. I have several times had software or drivers that worked until the first reboot (that's the first reboot AFTER COMPLETING THE INSTALL, which often requires a reboot before finishing).

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Sorry for the delay in replying,but I couldn't access the site yesterday at all...
Since getting a dedicated 2nd Hard Disk, Seagate 7200rpm 40Gig, I've noticed a dramatic improvement in capturing from the VCR.
For one thing I can now capture in Huffy easily, although with my Celeron 900 CPU,(& Pinnacle PCTV pro), it's about at it's limits at 640x480 huffy compression,(With VDub reporting 80-100% usage).

But ended up tearing my hair out at frustrations with trying AVI-IO trial &/or Virtual Dub with editiing,frameserving & trying to load into TMPGEnc.
Finally discovered that besides installing the handler in VDub,I had to click REg on in the AVI proxy folder. Why they couldn't have made that more obvious in the help file,(Like setup/install info for dummies like me!),I'll never know.

But two further VDub questions with your capture file loaded. If You've got your VDub,(or AVI_IO),segmented files & want to save your newly filtered files,Do you choose the segemented AVI save option? (Being a Win98/FAT32 user).
Secondly,as I've captured the file in huffy compression & usually just adding filters,but intending to save as a huffy AVI file again to put into TMPGEnc, is there any way to speed up the save? I read something aabout a direct stream option, but I wasn't sure if this applied to saving the file or not

[homerpez]

...isn't there a utility that allows for NTFS use on Windows 98? (Basically expands the limits to FAT32 to accomedate larger files)?

I forget the name... but it's a godsend with Huffy captures... I use WinXP Pro so not a problem for me, but I do remember there's a utility out there (I just forgot the name)...

[Hong Kong Phooey]

After getting all this stuff,(older Pinnacle 4.02A VFW drivers),huffy & a couple of pinnacle codecs,VDub & its filters etc,AVI_IO TMPGEnc & everything, I'm highly reluctant to ever want to upgrade O/S's again!
Had enough "fun" trying to make sense of things & get it all working on Win98. The WDM drivers might be more modern but haven't a clue if VDub,the codecs etc. & the PCTV pro hardware would work properly in XP.
You should see the Pinnacle boards for XP related issues with this card!