Why does this happen only with ati capture??

[jezheads]

Ok really weird one here. I have a p4 1.7 ghz computer with 512 megs of ram and
running windows xp. The problem i experience when i'm capping a show with ati
player is when the screen in the background refreshes (all icons disappear for like a
second and a half) the ati player still records with no dropped frames, but when i go
to view the finished product, it stutters at that exact point when the screen refreshed!
It did that exactly every 10 minutes, i then tried with avi_io and had no problems! I
can continue to get around this by just sticking to avi_io but i noticed that when i cap
with ati straight to mpg, the quality is better and takes up less space (of course).
What might the problem be? Please help!
rob@trebnet.com

[edsmith77]

jezheads,
From your description ("..every 10 minutes..") it could possibly be interaction of your screensaver function. If this is the case then you could try turning off your screen saver or open up the interval to like 60 minutes or more.
Personally, I agree with you regarding the quality of the mpg capture with ati/mmc product. I think it does a very good job. But then I can only compare it to the avi capture with vdub and virtualvcr. I think the ati/mmc capture is better, imho.

ed

[jezheads]

edsmith77: if i don't have a screensaver running at the time, would that still be the problem? Could it be anything else?
thanks

[edsmith77]

jezheads,
I have heard of macrovision creating some undesirable problems but not on 10 minute centers. I would look for something else if not your screen saver. There is something that runs every ten minutes that is stealing processing time (CPU cycles) away from your capture. To me the 10 minutes seemed to be logically associated with a screen saver. Maybe there is a timer setting on power saving mode shutting down unused aps or features.

Ed

[jezheads]

Ed: how or where in task manager for winxp would i check what might be happening or running hard on 10 minute intervals? Just a real annoyance this is heh.
thanks

[jezheads]

When in task manager, what processes MUST be run and which can i turn off?
Reason i ask is because something must be taking up a whole ton of resources every
10 minutes to screw up my capping.
thanks

[hwoodwar]

First thing would be to try would be to "see" if you yourself can determine what is causing this: Wait for the problem to occur, immediately do a CTRL-ALT-DEL, go to Task Manager >> Processes and look for something other than the idle process and the capture program, that is taking up the most CPU time.

Some other things to check/change:

1. Power saving features; I suggest you set all power saving features (monitor, hard disks and system standby) to "never".

2. Another thing to disable would be the Windows "Automatic Updates" service.

3. Use msconfig and look through the "startup" tab and uncheck unnecessary items from startup (some of the common ones are: anything Realplayer related, Kazaa, Findfast, Office Startup, nerocheck, videocard related tools and anything Quicken related.)

4. Look and see if there is anything in Windows "Scheduled Tasks." You can get to it through the System Tools folder off of the Start menu.

[mdm]

jezheads,

What is "taking up a whole ton of resources" is explore.exe when it is refreshing on the desktop icons (and possibly the Start Menu links). This *does* slow everything down quite a bit on every system.

There are many things that can cause explorer to do this, but I think edsmith77 is on the right track. You might want to also check the ATI MMC itself to see if you have doing anything extra.

[jezheads]

hwoodwar: so have you ever heard of such a problem before? It wouldn't have anything to do with a refresh rate setting right?

[jezheads]

mdm: so once i set everything screen-saver, power monitor and all that to never, would there be anything else to try also? If any of those are set to 10 mins, would that cause icons to flicker off for like a second and a half? Like i was saying with avi_io it doesn't affect the capping even when it happens, but i prefer ati mmc if i can not have this problem with it heheh.

[mdm]

Try shutting down all background processes (Ctrl-Alt-Del and End Task all items except explorer and systray), plus the screen saver and power saving features mentioned before, and then do another capture. If it doesn still does it, then it could be either a setting in Windows itself or a setting in MMC.

The reason the refresh happens is because some app (or Windows itstelf) has told Windows that the desktop and start menu needed to be refreshed. This means ALL icons on the desktop and start menu are rebuilt by accessing the each EXE or shorcut. This disk access is what is interfering with your capture.

I'm still wondering why it only happens in MMC. It sounds like MMC is set to do something in the background or to interact with the system (other than just capture). Do you have HotWords or TV Magazine enabled? Are you using the One Touch Record or TV-On-Demand to capture (instead of Start Recording button)?

[jezheads]

No, none of them is enabled, it doesn't only happen in mmc but with any cap program i use, it just gets choppy when playing back what i capped thru mmc and nothing else, that's the weird part. I checked with the antivirus program it might have something to do with that. Doing some tests now, might be the anti-virus proggie?

[jezheads]

Nope, still no solution

[mdm]

Hmm...is MMC the only app you're using to capture to MPG? That could be why it's choppy only with that app - encoding to MPG is a lot more work than other codecs. It could be the desktop refresh is enough to interfere with the MPG encoding but not others. Have you tried using MMC and capturing to an AVI with the Huffyuv codec (just to see if it plays choppy also)?

[hwoodwar]

Jezheads:

I have not seen this specific 10 minute interval problem before. I have worked as a PC Tech and a Network Systems Engineer for over two years and all the stuff that I mentioned are "simple" things we checked/changed on systems having similar problems. Much of the stuff I mentioned is not needed, seldom used, provides only a negligable performance boost, can cause intermittent problems (sometimes at a regular interval), or (in particular with a "minimal" system) can cause a drain on the system and result in lost frames during capture.

I know many will not believe me, but I even found one of my own systems "turning itself on every Saturday at 1:00 PM." I was attending an all day class at that time. So, when I began to suspect this behavior I reset the system clock to 12:55 on a Saturday, turned the system off and then watched the system turn itself back on five minutes later. I did everything I could and could not find the problem, so I finally backed up the system, reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled Windows NT and that got rid of the problem.

The symptoms of a "wrong refresh rate" are screen flicker or no screen image at all. For instance if your refresh rate is set to 60hz and you are getting flicker, try 70, 72 or 75hz, this may very well get rid of it. However, if your refresh rate is at 75hz, you change it to 85hz and your monitor does not support 85hz, you will get a blank, black screen.

[mdm]

hwoodwar:

FYI, he's not having a problem with monitor refresh, it is Windows refreshing the desktop icons - a common occurance. When this happens, the system must access each and every EXE (or DLL) that each icon is linked to and rebuild the icon. This occurs for the Start menu links and icons also. The more icons and menu items one has, the longer it takes. It's all this disk activity that is interfering with the capture. The question is what and why this is being requested (of Windows) while he is doing a cap.

[jezheads]

What if i created a new user and signed on as them? You think i would still have this 10 minute refresh thing happening? And would i have to download my cap program again? What would happen?

[boy]

It's happen because 10 minutes AVI produces a 4.1 Gb file long.

On a FAT32 (or normal FAT) partition this is the maximum file size for an avi file.
The only way is to install Win2000 on an NTFS partition table where you have no limitations for avi files

[jezheads]

boy: that's not it, i'm capping directly to mpeg, not avi, and it only happens with the ati player.

[MOVIEGEEK]

jezheads,
Disable S.M.A.R.T. HDD check in your BIOS.
Also disable any utility or anti-virus program from monitoring in the background.
Set your refreshrate to 60hz and screen res. to 800x600.

[jezheads]

moviegeek: so you've heard of this before?
how do i go about that S.M.A.R.T thing you were saying? Can you quickly help me out on that?
thanks