Capturing at a resolution above 320 x 240 with avertv.

[SteveBia]

Hi everyone.

I'm hoping this is an easy question to answer.

I'm trying to capture at resolution above 320 x 240. When I try, I get video that has lines in it. When the image is still, the lines deminish, but when there is motion the lines increase. It looks similar to the lines you get when tracking is off only it is throughout the entire video field.

I'm capturing analog video from a camcorder through an S cable.

I bought an inexpensive 1.1 Ghz computer to accompany my HP just for capturing and processing. I thought perhaps it may have a bad graphics card or not enough Ram (96 right now) or....?

Does anyone have any ideas or had any similar problems? Thanks all.

-S

[fmctm1sw]

Hi everyone.

I'm hoping this is an easy question to answer.

I'm trying to capture at resolution above 320 x 240. When I try, I get video that has lines in it. When the image is still, the lines deminish, but when there is motion the lines increase. It looks similar to the lines you get when tracking is off only it is throughout the entire video field.

I will almost bet money (and I don't have any, look at my computer details) that the lines are coming (mainly) from the 240 part of your equasion. Many capture cards will simply leave out one of the fields. I recommend this for starters:

1] capture at 352x480 if you are making VCD
2] capture at 480x480 if you want to make a SVCD.
3] If you current setup won't allow you to cap at those resolutions, try another driver. I use this: btwincap.sourceforge.net

Oh and your RAM. 96 Meg? That's a little short. 128 is OK for me and I have the same "capture computer" idea as you.

[SteveBia]

Thanks-

I'm going to try that as soon as I get home.

I can capture at higher resolutions, as high as 720 x (whatever it is I can't remember) but whatever the DVD resolution is. I just get those darn vertical lines...and only when there is motion around certain parts in the video. I'm thinking now that it may be noise? Bum cable? Not shielded? I have the camera sitting on top of the computer processor under my desk. The cable is like 3 feet long or so. Perhaps that is a problem?

Near the end of this year I'm planning on getting a new camera with firewire abilities and a firewire card for my computer. I hope that this will solve my woes.

but until then...the quest for a clean high resolution capture continues!

-S

[El_Seed]

The white lines that you see are normal for video captured above a resolution of 320 X 240. These are interlacing artifacts. To get rid of them you need to use a deinterlacing filter with what ever software you use to convert the captured video to another format. If you encode your captured video to mpeg 1 or 2, your encoding software should have an option/filter somewhere to deinterlace the video. If you convert your captured video to some other avi format such as divx, etc. The encoding software should also have an option/filter to deinterlace the video.

[SteveBia]

Ok, here is an update (and thanks all for your help so far).

I put in a graphics accelerator into my PCI slot and it seems to have helped. It greatly reduced the number of lines in the image..almost to nothing. This indicates to me that the problem has to do with the computer hardware and speed and stuff...not interlacing...
I noticed also that the desktop doesn't get lines either when I view the video again indicating this to me...

Now my problem is the computer does not have an AGP slot for a new graphics card. When I try to actually capture the video (above 320 x 240) it gets choppy, unlike when I'm just viewing it...which is smooth. I'm guessing that either the HD is not writing fast enough or that I don't have fast enough bussing or something. THe computer is a 1.1 Ghz computer...but it was very inexpensive and I only bought it for processing. I did the DMA setting or whatever it was for the HD but that still doesn't help. Maybe it's jut not up to par for high resolution capture.

Now I'm going to just try to capture at 320 x 480 so I can collect all the frames and see what happens with my final VCD...

Any ideas all?

Again...thanks so much...
-S

[lusid]

Odds are you have a VIA chipset.

The lines are from contention on the bus. Interlacing lines look different, like a comb effect during motion scenes. What you describe is more like tearing in the image.