Is WinXP Movie Maker reliable for capturing DV via digicam?

[Iceblade]

Hi guys,

Well, I've tried to capture several different VHS tapes through my Canon Optura 20 in passthrough mode and each resultant AVI file has alot of choppiness in audio and video at some point when I play the captured data back with WMP.

Here's my current setup.
WinXP SP1 using WinXP Movie Maker to do tha capture
Used both firewire PCI card that came with my mobo and also tried Soundblaster Audigy Firewire port... both show same issue.
Connected VHS to Canon via the A/V miniplug to RCA cable
Canon connected to firewire slots mentioned above OR to external HDD enclosure with 400GB Seagate Barracuda drive inside
My processor is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz
I have my OS on a 120GB WD HDD
I have tried to capture to my other 120GB HDD that is about 80% full.
I have tried to capture to all 3 partitions of the 400GB drive which are partially full.

I constantly run DiskKeeper 9.0 which does offline defragmentation when the computer is in downtime.

I haven't tried formatting my whole D drive (120GB via IDE) and capturing a single 1 HR of VHS to that yet. I wanted to make sure that WinXP Movie Maker is not part of the problem. Are there other capture apps that are better?

Thanks,
Jeff

[garrisonkw]

I would turn off DiskKeeper while you're working. It can cause issues.

[BJ_M]

no -- it (moviemaker) works fine ..

your problem is in the playback

[bugster]

I have used WMM to capture without problems, just make sure you set it to capture as DV, not to encode to some WMV format on the fly.

However, I mostly use WinDV these days. Its free too

[Iceblade]

I do have WMM to capture to DV, not some encoded format. I will use the Canopus Procoder to encode the AVI eventually... but I need a good clean capture before I get to that point. GRRR.

I'll try to kill disk-keeper on the trials tonight. I'll also clean as much off the disk I capture to as possible.


I'm confused why you would say that the problem was in Playback?

For the record, I also see stuttering/choppiness at points in the "preview" window of WMM while doing the captures themselves. I note what the time stamp for those stutters are, but they don't really seem to coincide with stutters I see on playback. I've also verified that the stutters occur that the same points in the file.. not just randomly like WMP playback is causing them.

Thanks,
Jeff

[thecoalman]

I'm confused why you would say that the problem was in Playback?

It's possible your sytem is not up to the task of playing DV-AVI..... Easiest way to find out is note a place where the playback is choppy, cut out that particular section in your editor and convert it to something like a WMV file. See if it's still choppy, if it plays fine there's nothing wrong with your file you just don't have enough resources to play the full DV-AVI or something is interfering with it's playback.

[Iceblade]

I see. Would watching the task manager while playing the file back not show the same thing, without the added conversion steps?

Also, is it a content related thing that would cause playback of one scene to differ in quality to another? I mean, the VHS I am capturing is a guitar instructional video... so it's mostly a closeup of a guitar and a guy's hands. The pic content is pretty much the same throughout. I've capture like 40+ minutes with no dropouts, then dropouts start and don't stop until the end of the tape. The tape has only been played about 5 times in it's life... so it should be in fairly good shape.

Thanks again,
Jeff

[thecoalman]

, then dropouts start and don't stop until the end of the tape. The tape has only been played about 5 times in it's life... so it should be in fairly good shape.

Thanks again,
Jeff

Tha could possibly be the same type problem, if your capping 40 minutes fine and all of sudden it starts dropping frames your HD is probably fragmented, It's probably running out of defragmented space to write too. Asi t seeks unused space the frames get dropped....

It may just be you need to defragment....

[Iceblade]

One other thing. Have any of you disabled write caching on the hard drive that you are capturing to? Is that something I should look at doing?

Regs,
Jeff

[Iceblade]

Just an update...

SUCCESS!!!

OK, here's everything I did to finally get a capture that worked.

1.) Perform defrag on every drive in system with Disk Keeper 9.0
2.) Set Disk Keeper to perform boot time defrag with CHKDSK... also optimize/set size of MFT based on DK recommendation
3.) Reboot and watch as boot time defrag happens
4.) Reboot one more time
5.) Disconnect ethernet
6.) Kill practically all services that are known to be unneeded for capturing vid (i.e. itunes, soundcard, video driver toolbar, anti-virus
7.) Pull up taskbar and make it small enough to see while WMM runs
8.) Set WMM to capture to 120GB IDE drive and not external firewire drive
9.) Kick off a capture with WMM

I watched the taskman for the WMM task for about 15 minutes and it never got above 32%. WMM and the Idle task were the only things that appeared to run

I took a peek at the AVI generated this morning and it looked perfect. The Taskman never showed the WMP task that I was playing the AVI in to be above around 30%.

Thank you very much for all your help!

I will be trying to do a capture to the firewire drive using the same method as above later tonight... just for a comparison to see if it works.

Regs,
Jeff