Droppinng frames in vdub with Marvel G400TV!

[Silvije]

I’ve had the ATI AIW card for some time now, and since there were a number of different issues with it, I’ve decided to try with a Matrox Marvel G400TV card. The capture quality seems to be better and the output to TV works perfect with the dual-head, the ATI solution sucks! With this card I’m closer to the goal; making my computer a digital VCR!

Now I’m trying to capture in vdub. The image quality is fine, but I get 5 dropped frames per minute in average. No matter what I change. The CPU usage is at aprox. 30%. I’ve defragmented the HD. I’ve increased the video buffer to the maximum (20), and I’m capturing with no preview and no overlay.
When I increase the resolution I get more dropped frames, even though the CPU isn’t working to hard. Even if I decrease the resolution I cant get rid of dropping frames!
Another thing, I just can’t capture at higher resolution than VCD-res. When I increase the resolution the output video becomes jerky, with huffyuv the image is split in vertical lines, it just don’t work.

I don’t think there is a problem with the HD, memory or that the CPU is to slow. In the vdub-help he says that because vdub has to sync the audio and video, it drops frames to make the sync work, so it has to drop frames every few hundred frames, and sometimes you just have to live with it…

Is it possible to capture without losing frames in vdub? Should I replace my soundcard? I didn’t have this problem with the AIW software. I newer lost a frame.

System:
PIII 1Ghz
256Mb memory
40Gb HD DMA-100 7200rpm IDE
SoundBlaster Live Player
Win2k SP2


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Silvije on 2001-09-25 04:04:35 ]</font>

[Robert]

Hi,

Even with my Hauppauge Wintv card,Virtualdub drops frames.
I use the software that came with the card and i never get a drop frame.I think Virtualdub isn't working quiet well.

[TIbrO]

Wow, that's nuts. Since you own the G400-TV card I assume you know that the hardware MJPEG acceleration only works in Windows 98 for that card, and only if you select that as the capture format, and not that huffyuv stuff. If you insist on using an MJPEG codec, try PICVideo 2.0... it's what I use now since the hardware accelerator has been disabled. Plus, I bought (yes folks, I actually bought a program I thought was great!) AVI_IO and it captures without losing frames at full 704x480 resolution and framrate. Plus if you're not on NTFS it divides the AVI's for you automatically into 2GB chunks... Since AVI_IO is only for capturing and nothing else, it's expected that it works the best at it, since that's all it does.

So try out the demo of AVI_IO for thirty days, and I can send you PICVideo MJPEG 2.0 and stuff through ICQ, AIM, or IRC. If you still drop frames, all any of us can do is repeat to you to "make sure you have DMA enabled, get a seperate capture drive without Windows virtual memory pagefile on it... blah blah" which I am sure you would try on your own later on anyway. Good luck!

[hibatos]

I use a Matrox RR card, and there are no dropped frames when capturing to MJPEG format with the Matrox capture program. But there are many dropped frames when using VirtualDub. However, if I first do a capture, say for a few seconds, with VirtualDub to RGB and then switch back to MJPEG, no frames are dropped. May be this workaround applies to the G400 also.

[Silvije]

<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 2001-09-25 11:11:01, TIbrO wrote:
Wow, that's nuts. Since you own the G400-TV card I assume you know that the hardware MJPEG acceleration only works in Windows 98 for that card, and only if you select that as the capture format, and not that huffyuv stuff.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

No, I didn't know. You mean that there are no Win2k drivers for it in the latest release? I noticed though that I couldn’t use the MJPEG codec in vdub. I thought that was a bug, but now I think I understand why.
I'll try the AVI_IO. Capturing at high res without loosing frames sounds very interesting!

I just mentioned huffyuv because that’s what I thought should be faster then the Microsoft MPEG-4 that am actually using.

[Silvije]

Now I've downloaded the AVI_IO. It looks well no frames dropped, but, the result isn't so good. The video is jerky, and even more so when increasing the resolution.
TIbrO; Do you have this card as well? Are you running on W2k? Do you know if the AVI_IO can capture with the MPEG-4 or divX codec?

I've noticed that I'm dropping frames after a while, in vdub. When that happens I can se that the frame rate is unstable and drops. So I've tried to decrease the frame rate all the way to 10fps, and still the frame rate drops and consequently frames are lost!

I just don't get it!