ATI AIW 128 16mg - P3 550 - Using Huffyuv 2.1.1 - LOTS of dr

[mushroom_95]

Ok... I've got an ATI AIW 128 - 16mg AGP Card, and using a P3 550, 330mg RAM. I'm trying to get a decent capture from cable tv using Virtual Dub and the Huffyuv 2.1.1 codecs. And i'm getting LOTS of dropped frames. Is this normal ? Should I be getting a better capture with less dropped frames? Should i be using a different codec?

I want to get the best quality capture i can with no frame drops of course.

Could really use some help on this one.
Thanks.

[mushroom_95]

By the way... I'm trying to capture at 352x240. 29.97fps.
and using a 5400 rpm hard drive.


(Maybe a different TV Tuner card would be better ?? )

[supercrew]

Make sure:

1. You defrag your hard drive
2. Increase video buffer in Vdub to
at least 12.

3. You are using Vdub's internal cap mode.

Huffyuv is really disk intensive and that is probably
when you drop most of your frames.

You might want to try the PicVideo codec which
will provide about a 11:1 ratio on quality 18,
versus a 2.5:1 ratio for Huffyuv.

Hope this helps.

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-20 08:17:57, mushroom_95 wrote:
By the way... I'm trying to capture at 352x240. 29.97fps.
and using a 5400 rpm hard drive.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

somethin's wrong - my amd k6-3 350mhz machine can do 352x480, 29.97fps huffyuv captures to my 60gb 5400rpm disk drive with minimal frames dropped (6-8 per half hour).

what's "lots of frames"?

as super suggested, picvideo's mjpeg codec will get you better compression with really decent quality and lighten the load on your disk.

other things that might cause excessive dropped frames is a low quality/noisy source (bad connection, faulty audio cable, faulty video cable, faulty capture card, improperly seated capture card, etc.), background tasks running (virus protection, screen saver)...

[hitechjunkie]

another thing, what other cards are there in your machine? is your ATI AIW in the top most slot? i'm told moving your capture card to the top most slot in your system could also improve its capture capability (re-assignment of IRQ)...

[mushroom_95]

Ok... Thanks !

Got it working alot better now... I find going out of capture mode in Vdub then going right back in when i'm losing every other frame helps (read in another post). Helped to increase the video buffer at 12 and above instead of the default (thanks!!). And the Defrag (thanks for that one too !!)

Got that one worked out... now can't capture audio using the coaxial cable for input... guess I need to use an audio out (RCA/Composite) from the source to audio input in my video (or) sound card (?)

BTW... Kinda off topic, but which mpeg decoder do you guys like better... the panasonic, or TMPGenc ? Anyways...

Thanks for all the input... Getting there slowly but surely...

[mushroom_95]

sorry... meant "encoder" not "decoder" in the BTW...

(also to answer the "which slot" question I'm using an AGP Card so it's going into my AGP slot)

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-22 02:22:26, mushroom_95 wrote:
Ok... Thanks !

Got it working alot better now... I find going out of capture mode in Vdub then going right back in when i'm losing every other frame helps (read in another post). Helped to increase the video buffer at 12 and above instead of the default (thanks!!). And the Defrag (thanks for that one too !!)</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

yeah, i've gotta do that sometimes too - restart the capture if frames begin dropping right away. something about which field it happens to start capturing on.

sometimes i'll even reboot the machine fresh just before a capture, then turn off virus detection, and/or screen saver and i'm set to go.

using picvideo mjpeg quality 16/17, i can safely cap 640x480 29.97fps, which i think outputs about 500mb of data per 5 minutes, so 60 minutes ~ 6GB of disk space.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>

Got that one worked out... now can't capture audio using the coaxial cable for input... guess I need to use an audio out (RCA/Composite) from the source to audio input in my video (or) sound card (?) </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

is there an audio out on your capture card? a connection from there to your sound card would do the trick...