Need Help capturing at 640x480 w/ ATI All-in-Wonder

[shred]

PIII 800mhz
500 MB RAM
7200 RPM 13GB HD (DMA Enabled)
XP Home SP1
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500
Sound=Sonic Impact S90 (Aureal)

I am dropping tons (> 25%) of frames whenever I attempt to capture at 640 X 480 using VirtualDub.

I have tried compatibility mode and normal mode.
Compatibility mode seems to run fine for a few seconds then starts dropping frames like crazy. Normal mode just starts dropping frames immediately.

I don't have any other apps running, nor do I have any virus protection installed. My CPU never goes higher than 65%, so I don't think it's a processing issue.

I've tried Huffyuv and other codecs with no improvement.

I have tried capturing with no audio, and I get slightly better, but still unacceptable results. (maybe 15% to 20% frame drop)

When I capture at 320x240 I drop about 1 frame every 30 seconds, which I thought was decent until I read some of the other posts in this forum claiming 640x480 for an hour+ with 0 frames dropped. I desperately want to be able to capture at the higher resolution for the best possible quality on my final product (SVCD)

I am attempting to capture at 29.97(06) to be SVCD compliant.
One strange thing that I noticed is that while capturing in VirtualDub the "Average Frame Rate" is hovers around 33 fps. Is this normal, or a sign of some other problem?

One thing I have not tried is to set my desktop settings to 16 bit (recommended on VirtualDub's web site). Will this really make a difference? Probably not, since I get the same results whether I have Overlay/Preview on or off.

I plan to try iuVCR and PowerVCRII, but for obvious reasons, I would prefer to stick with the FreeWare whenever possible.

I've also tried the ATI MMC (currently 7.7), which seems to capture without dropping too many frames(???) but the sound gets WAY out of sync almost immediately.

PLEASE...
Any information would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you,
shred

[Gazorgan]

I've never had any luck capping in VDUB. Try IUVCR, it has a 30 day free trial. It will also let you select any resolution, any codec. PowerVCR only caps in VCD/SVCD, but you can choose your bitrate.

You machine isn't fast enough to cap in huffy at that resolution. I cap in Huffy at a lower resolution and hit 40% on an Athlon 2000. Try Mjpeg at maybe 80%, you will be at the edge of CPU usage.

Are you sure your not filtering, or encoding the audio or anything unusual?

[feh]

I don't have a ton of experience, but from working on my own machine and from reading lots of other posts, I'd say you are pushing the limits of your CPU. 640x480 with an 800 MHz processer is iffy.

[shred]

Thanks for the quick responses guys, but my CPU is not going past 70%
That should be ok right?
http://www.virtualdub.org/docs_capture actually claims that they can capture at 640x480 on a PIII733

I have a feeling something else is going on here.
Also, I forgot to mention my motherboard has the via chipset, and yes, I have installed the latest 4:1 via drivers.

What is this WDM wrapper I have read about. If I can capture at all in virtualDub, I don't need it right?

Thanks

[Smells_Like_Feet]

Hi Shred,

Welcome to the forum. I respectfully disagree with feh and Gazorgan, as I have an AMD 750 MHz processor and ATI Rage Fury Pro capture card and am able to capture at 640x480 (huffy codec) without severe frame drops (1 or 2 frames per 100). As such I think your problem may lie elsewhere (especially since I am able to capture a good source at 352x480 without any frame drops). The only thing that I can suggest is to make sure that no apps are running in the background (you said they weren't, but be sure) and to DEFRAG the capture HD. Also a 13GB HD is not much space using Huffy and 640x480 resolution.

Good luck.

Smells_Like_Feet

[shred]

Thanks again,

I know this question has been asked before (There ought to be an FAQ), but... What are the essential programs that need to be running for XP (Home). I'll test it myself, but I am sure someone else has already gone through the trouble of doing this.

I have another question.
At one point I was able to get a good avi capture at 640x480 for about 10 seconds with no frames dropped. I got this in compatibility mode of VDub(after 10 seconds frames would drop like crazy). Anyway, when I tried to play the file back, it was very jerky, as if my system did not have enough processing power to play back the file. I compressed the file to mpeg-2 480x480(SVCD) using TMPGEnc and the file played fine, so I assume there was no problems with the original avi, it was just that my system could not handle it. If that is the case, then HOW in the HELL can I expect to capture at that res if I can't even playback at that res. OR... is this normal???

[vh5150]

Get a memory boost program that can reclaim any unused memory. I use it to kill all non-essential processes. I also disable my local area connection icon. Get ad-aware since spyware can make your PC sluggish. Things like onflow.exe can be a hard thing to get rid of on your pc.

What I do too is that I put my vcr in manual tracking mode. Most do this by pressing both channel up and down buttons at the same time. Tracking is adjusted with a push of either up or down channel button similar to tuning in a FM radio station. The best way to tweak that would be in virtualdub at the format you want. In your case 640 by 480.

You will see a slight jumping in the capture mode then a loss of Hi-Fi audio sound and then on-screen static. Then it will cycle back. You have to try it to see what I mean. You can actually do a capture for a minute or two to get the right spot. Freeze frame tracking is done the same way. While in pause mode press both channel bottuns and adjust until the bouncing picture no longer bounces.

Try that vcr tracking adjustment first before you give up on the use of that resolution.

I captured using huffy with around 20 dropped frames for a 80 minute capture. I have a 950 Duron. AIW Radeon 7500 and win2k pro. 768MB ram.

[hwoodwar]

You can try going through:

High Quality Capturing with Little Frame Loss in VirtualDub

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/89899.php

and

How to Tune your system for ATI capture cards

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/81808.php


They should help you out some, and hopefully a lot.

[hwoodwar]

One thing I just noticed, a 13gig hard drive, for captuing hi resolution AVI, allowing for the swap file size at any one time you "could" be coming close to filling the drive and this could be causing dropped frames.

[Gazorgan]

I missed that, 13 GB 7200 RPM drive doesn't exist. Do you mean you have 13 GB free? This is a different matter. Definately DEFRAG! A Fragmented HD will drop frames faster than anything. I capture to a dedicated harddrive that usually only has a few captures or VOB's on it (hence usually zero fragmentation).

As far as CPU goes, 2 out of 3 of us think your marginal. That means if everything else is fine you should be OK, but it's not so you aren't. Make you swap file permanent, and 2x your RAM. Then Defrag. Try that. Let us know.

[shred]

OK, its a 13.6Gig (Fujitsu MPE3136AH), and it's the slave drive on the primary controller... NOT the system disk.
I'm capturing home videos in 10 to 15 minute segments, so it's sufficient for now. I wouldn't even attempt anything more than that right now.

Here are some new things I have found.

If I capture at 33.66 fps in vDub with "Adjust video clock dynamically to match audio clock" disabled, I drop only about 1 frame every 30 seconds. Any fps other than 33.66 above 15 fps drops 1 to 5 frames every second. This is the case with or without audio. The only problem is that the audio (when I do capture it) lags WAY behind the video, and it has noticable clicks and pops.

I tried iuVCR but it only goes up to 25 fps. I tried it at 25 fps, but while recording, it showed the average frame rate at just above 20 (20.08 for example). Is there some registry hack that I need to perform? I also was not getting any sound, but that is another issue.

Could it be that my sound card is not compatible with the AIW 7500? I tried capturing with audio compression set at all possible combinations with the same results.

I did a "Test all drive speeds" in Nero, and found that the drive I am capturing to has a speed of 22,291 KB/s. That should be sufficient right?

And as for the CPU, it is not going above 60% utilization with all other apps closed.

I am getting very frustrated with this.
Again, thank everyone for the help so far. Hopefuly someone will be able to shed a little more light on this.

[dcsos]

Have you tried the free microsoft way?There are 2 separate utilities that Microsoft provides namely amcap.exe and vidcap.exe. Vidcap will only recognize VFW drivers. If you have a WDM device, opening vidcap will yield in an error showing cannot locate any devices. This is a good test to figure out whether the card has good VFW drivers.
If ATI software blows with VIA on your system, try
Amcap or Vidcap download from MICROSOFT..dunno where anymore tho'
Good luck

[shred]

I don't currently have c++ or vb installed.
Do you know where I can download an already compiled version of these apps?

Thanks
shred

[MOVIEGEEK]

shred,
With MMC 7.7 have you used the "System Compatibility Check"utility to see if your soundcard is within specs?I have to agree with a previous post that you're pushing your CPU with 640x480.Try capturing at 352x240 and see if you drop frames,if you do it's your soundcard.I have had better luck using VIA onboard sound(they are notorious for PCI problems).

Good luck

[crahak]

Well, I had a rage fury pro on a duron 800 once, and it always dropped at least 1% of the frames no matter what. The thing is, it was a VIA chipset with a SB live, so that never helped, even with PCI latency patches and what not. (win98, defragged, capturing to a separate drive and all). With my new machine (ECS board but still use SB live, and also faster CPU) I basically never drop one. Like it was said, try lower resolutions, if you drop frames, then it might be (VIA if you have that chipset) otherwise the sound card (especially sb lives...)

[kenmo]

I was dropping masssive frames until I changed the settings in VirtualDub below (I got these settings from here).

File->Capture Avi ->under Capture Settings I changed the following settings :

Video Buffer Limit 200
Audio Buffer Limit 10
Audio Buffer Size 4000

After I changed this I had little to NO frame drops and NO A/V synch problems BUT I switched to VirtualDUB as I could not capture with VDub above 640x240. VirtualVCR allows me to capture at 640x480 with no A/V synch probs.

I hope this helps...

[dcsos]

Visual Basic Runtime file?
thats here
http://download.com.com/3000-2070-10023820.html?legacy=cnet

but the sound card thing is also KEY!
I remember in the ISA days, the Sound Card is what made me drop frames with my WIN TV PCI bit also with the earlier AIW Rage pro 32
Now I capture 640x480 in MPEG-2 with C-MEDIA motherboard sound. Its not what I wanted (i wanted the audigy) but It works...

[shred]

kenmo
Thanks for the info.
I tried the setting and had only minimal improvements in normal mode. In compatibility mode I can now capture with very few dropped frames at 480, but ONLY if I uncheck "Adjust video clock dynamically to match audio clock". Then my audio gets WAY out of sync.

MOVIEGEEK
I ran the compatibility test and everything checked out. Well... except that it reported that the WDM driver was not listed in the registry. I later found out that this is a bug in MMC 7.7. The driver is there, but the tool does not see it. Of course, I did not find out that this was a bug until after I uninstalled and then reinstalled ALL of the ATI software and drivers. (Following the instructions on the ATI site of course).

I'm doing some more tests with virtualVCR, and I plan to try Ulead (which came with the ATI card). I am just baffled at these strange capture rates that I am getting 33.66, 20.08, but no 29.97 or even 30. I just hope it's not the VIA chipset. The last thing I want is to have to replace my mobo, processor, memory, etc., etc.

Thanks to everyone so far for your help.

[shred]

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!!!!!

I applied the VIA PCI Latency Patch from
http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/
and it fixed it!

f.y.i.
I have a Tyan Trinity 400 (S1854) which has the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset.

Mine was one of the chipsets listed on the above mentioned site that would benefit from the patch. I loaded it and boom! 640x480 at 29.97.

Just to be sure, I uninstalled the patch, rebooted, and sure enough the problem was back. The board would only capture at 33.66 even if set at 29.97. Reinstalled the patch and everything works.

For those who thought my system was not fast enough... SHAME...SHAME...SHAME on you. I hope you don't work for a help-desk for one of those major software companies. "Oh our software doesn't run right on your system? You need to upgrade..."

Anyway, what a releif.
So now on to testing for the best capture/deinterlace/convert method.

Thanks to EVERYONE who replied to my question. Even those who were a little "off-base".

I just hope someone else can benefit from my experience.