Trouble Capturing in WinXP

[mikeXP]

Hello All,

I had been using WinMe for a long time, capturing 352x480 with huffy, with very little frame drops. I upgraded 2 WinXP, and now i cant even capture 352x240 with huffyuv w/o dropping 25% of the frames! There has got to be a way to get it working correctly.
My CPU Specs are: 1000Mhz, 40gb (DMA is turned ON), WinXP, WinTV FM.
I cant capture with AVI IO or Vdub anymore b/c of the WDM drivers. I tried Ulead Videostudio 6 and Mediastudio 6.5, and AMCAP, but got the same results (massive frame loss.) I know someone out there can help me, and I thank you!!!

Mike

[Barnabas]

I capture in XP at 640 x 480 to huffy with only about 10 dropped frames per 1 hour. Make sure you DON'T use RGB, or you will drop frames like mad.

[mikeXP]

Hi,

I tried RGB 16 and YUY2, I dropped an unacceptable amount of frames in either mode. I dont understand whats wrong, I went to www. hauppage.com and i followed all of their instructions for using wintv in windows xp. I really dont wanna go back to WinME b/c any1 that uses win2k/xp knows how much more stable it is

mike

[Barnabas]

Did you use the Windows XP "convert" utiility to convert your FAT32 drives to NTFS by chance?

[Dave B]

Try using the third party drivers at btwincap.sourceforge.net instead of the Hauppauge drivers. The btwincap drivers are specially optimized for Windows 2000/XP and you can use them with VirtualDub and AVI_IO through the Microsoft VfW/WDM wrapper (hooray!)

Remove your old drivers first, download the btwincap executable, restart then install the custom drivers.

[mikeXP]

hey guys, thanks 4 the replies!!!! When i loaded XP on my machine, i formatted my 40gb drive as NTFS. dave b, ill try what u say!!! I used hauppage drivers in avi io, it showed up as that wrapper thing, and nothing would capture, is btwincap supposed 2 b diff??

[mikeXP]

hey dave b, i downloaded those drivers (i got both manual and auto install) i used the manual one, audio installed fine XP wont install the video one, it says "could not install this hardware, the data is invalid". im gonna try the auto install.

[troyvcd1]

You have probably done this but make sure you install the latest ulead patches. By the way I went from an occasional frame drop in win me to absolutely no frame drops in win xp using ulead videostudio 6 and I have not even installed the update patches. I use a firewire to capture from my digicam.

[john_630]

mikeXP, I had this same error message when install the adaptec pci firewire card. Looked on their web page and found the fix, seems the permissions on xp were not set for me to install it. Check out the help section of their web page and see if that helps

[mikeXP]

hey,

i got the btwincap stuff installed using the auto installer and i can cap in vdub now perfectly but..... when i try 2 capture from a telecined sorce (like a VHS movie, it doesnt work right, and drops frames.) i capture in preview mode (thats all that works at 352x480, and when i capture, it like flashes green-->regular---->green again and drops like crazy. any1 help?

[ROBO1964]

Barnabas
What is the problem with converting a drive to NTFS?

[Barnabas]

The problem is that when you convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS, you wind up with too small of a cluster size for video captures. 4 K is what you need, but a drive converted from FAT32 will have a 512 byte cluster size, which will probably cause dropped frames on video captures.

[mikeXP]

Hey guys,

Im really impatient im very sorry but i need to capture some vhs movies 2 vcd really soon and theres a problem i described in a previous post. I know I seem like this lol but its really important and im like this hehe. plz help!!!!

MikeXP

[Barnabas]

If you are dropping frames now, you will likely see even more frame drops when you cap from VHS tape. Besides defragging, get rid of the clock in the tray, and turn off everything you don't need when you capture. I reboot fresh each time I cap as well.

[Greyhair]

Barnabas, can you explain how to check/change cluster sizes? I too have had drops and am continuing to explore why. On my drive, Bytes per NTFS sector = 512, Cluster size = 4 K. Is this in-line with your recommendations?

[Barnabas]

Yep. You can check your cluster size by going to disk defragmenter, selecting "analyze" and then "view report" if your cluster size is 4 K you are OK. If you have a lower cluster size, there is no way in Windows XP to change it short of a format or Paragon's Partition Manger.

[ROBO1964]

Well I converted my drive and have a cluster of 512 and tested it tonight. With one program capturing at 640x480 and stereo sound I lost 0 frames in a 7 GB file.

I then capped the same using Virtual Dub and lost 5 frames out of 5400 frames and they were far apart (about 1 per thousand). So there doesn't seem to be any frames being lost as you say there should be.

[mikeXP]

hey,

the vhs capture problem was only related to the tape i was capping from (Star Wars Special Edition.) Everything works great!!! In Virtual Dub, is there a way 2 save my capture settings? its getting annoying, setting it up each time.

MikeXP

[Barnabas]

ROBO1964,

Well, that's great, but all things being equal, you will drop more frames with a lower cluster size than you will with a cluster size of 4 K, as a lower cluster size DOES slow things down. This is WELL known, and a question that should have been asked in the *Newbie* areas. I suggest you try reading more and asking less questions if all you want to do is to argue with people who take the time to try to answer questions that you should have already known, had you taken the time to do some research for yourself.

[Barnabas]

mikeXP,

To save your settings in VirtualDub, go to, capture, preferences, and check all the "save settings" boxes there.

[mikeXP]

thanks everything is saved!!

[ROBO1964]

OK I investigated this more today and spoke to a couple computer techs.

They said "The cluster size could not cause frames to be lost" but they said if you hard drive was heavily fragmented it could increase the number of lost frames.

But with that being said I did reformat my big drive since I only had 3 GB's on it so I could back it up easily to put it back after and made 4K clusters just to be safe.

----

As for your comments. I had just converted my drive and was concerned about what you said. Its obviously not well known when computer techs don't know it and my test also didn't show it. I wasn't arguing but I also know some people post incorrect info sometimes even if unintentional. I was questioning that as it was important for me to know. I had never seen anyone say that could cause frames to be lost. You were the first and my test didn't support your claims.

All I am saying is that maybe it is true but I can't find anything to support this. If you could send me a link posting about this it would be appreciated.

[ROBO1964]

To be fair after searching the web for a few hours I did find this:

"NTFS partitions that are converted from FAT partitions under Windows XP are assigned a cluster size of 512 bytes, which may reduce performance compared to larger cluster sizes that are the default for new NTFS partitions."

[Cloud]

Besides using those http://btwincap.sourceforge.net drivers and XP, I found that increasing the avi_io process priority a notch (to above average) in the taskmanager, eliminated the last framedrops altogether.

[Cloud]

Also, reducing the desktop from 32bit to 16bit color eases the load on the systembus, helping the capture process.

[kayfam]

Another thing you might want to try is get an add-on IDE controller card such as one made by Promise Technologies and attach your capture drive to it. This will relieve your CPU from data I/O handling tasks and more of your processor will be devoted to capturing.

[mikeXP]

hey,

i use virtual dub 2 capture but ill try and raise the priority on it a bit. i bought an 80gb drive 2day (yay!!!) so now i can cap like 2hrs at a time (4 with huffy.)

[Nelson37]

On the cluster size issue - Larger clusters are more efficient for storing large files, smaller for smaller OR randomly accessed files, such as databases. More efficient storage equates to better performance and thus would be less likely to drop frames. The cluster size efficiency concept is so basic and has been around for so long that I would seriously question the depth of experience of any "computer tech" who was not aware of this.