Capturing Artifacts

I have been capturing some anime and have noticed something rather bothersome, but first, these are my specs:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
384mb Ram
HD that software is on: Western Digital 40gb 5400rpm
HD that file is saved to: Western Digital 40gb 7200rpm
Capture Card: AverTV Stereo
Software: WinDVD Recorder.
Quality: DVD

I am getting the following in my captures. Since I am capturing to DVD (mpeg2) I'm not quite sure if this is due to dropped frames or something else.

Ok, This is a "Good" picture:


Here is a"Bad" picture:


The capture starts out excellent but a little further into it the Bad stuff starts to happen. It doesn't appen all the way through, it comes and goes, almost like GGGGBGGGGBGGGGB, like a repeating pattern.

Is this dropped frames? I know what they look like in an avi file but I have not seen it in an mpeg file before.

I do have the option in WinDVD Recorder to lessen the quality to 1/2 or 1/4 DVD, if that would help.

ANY help is always Greatly Appreciated

[lordsmurf]

That card with that software produces TERRIBLE results. I've given up on MPEG capture with AVER cards. I capture AVI (MJPEG) with iuVCR, convert to MPEG2 with TMPGenc (which takes 3 hours for a 1.5 hour movie), and it's alright, not perfect, but much better than WinDVR or PowerVCR.

That artifact normally happens on a new image at a scene change.

If you want good MPEG capture, grab an ATI. That's what I use for most of my captures. The AVER is not actually mine, but it's in a computer I use, and the results have not impressed me so far, though I'm working on making it better.

[JimJohnD]

I have an ATI 8500DV running the 7.5 TV app under win2K SP4. The first time I capture after booting I get a perfect capture(your pic #1) all the way through. If I capture again without restarting/rebooting I get the same thing you are getting(your pic #2) all the way through. I haven't had it start good and then go bad in the same capture but the appearence is exactly the same. Very consistant. If I capture with Ulead's MovieFactory 2 I get perfect captures every time. This wouldn't be a problem, but I would like to use the scheduled captures and easier access to changing the channels, but it does work. I am trying to find out what Ulead capture is using that the ATI TV isn't. The fact that you are getting the SAME THING with a different capture all together makes me wonder. I get the same noise using any format , VCD, VCR, DVD etc. using the ATI TV, so it isn't a format or datarate setting. Try the different formats and see what you get. Do you get the same thing?

Question: Is there a way to tell which codec driver is being used for a capture? How can you tell if something isn't being released properly and is staying around to corrupt the next user, i.e. dll or something. Like I said, if I reboot it will capture fine again, but only once.

Thanks for the replies! I have tried the Aver software but the enitre quality really lacks BUT it is better than the WinDVD "Bad" pictures. The Aver captures a some what grainy mpeg.

I can't get an ATI right now or even in the near future, that's one reason for my post. The $$ are not there (Family of 6 has some costs)

@LordSmuf:
What settings do you use with the IuVCR? I have it also but I have not been able to get a quality capture with it. So far my caps all have the Interlace/De-Interlace (Sorry can't remember which it is) lines OR I it won't cap with the settings I try. I have been experiementing with it for about 3 days now with no luck.

@JimJohnD:
I do have access to the Ulead app you mentioned. I'll check it out BUT: You mentioned something about

This wouldn't be a problem, but I would like to use the scheduled captures and easier access to changing the channels

. I take it that means I can't set it up to capture with a timer. How about the "Task Scheduler"?

Again, Thanks for the replies and I'm awaiting more wisdom!

[snowmoon]

The pattern you describe is because of interlacing ( actually telecining ).

In my cartoon caps ( in adult swim ). P = progressive I = Interlaced...
PPPPIPPPPIPPPPI.... your mpeg-2 encoder can't handle interlacing and is munging the image insted. Actually telecine looks like PPPIIPPPII, but with the fact that cartoon frames are often duplicated it becomes PPPPIPPPPI...

you need to enable interlacing or capture to .avi first.

[snowmoon]

Assuming you have the WDM drivers use VirtualVCR as you can use the scheduler to set it up and it can change channels and everything.

Experiment Time:

I'm going to try SVCD format tonight to see if this is due to my PC not being able to keep up with the capture.

@snowmoon:
Interlace/Deinterlace - I could not remember which it was called. When i capture with my current settings the only thing that gets messed up is the above BAD segment. I don't have any of the interlace lines at all. I was estatic to see this in my test caps at first but after capping a few episodes I started noticing the BAD parts. They come and go, more in the middle of the cap than at the begining or end.
I have tried using IuVCR for caps but I get the interlace lines like crazy. When I change the settings to use different codecs I get an error msg about not being able to start the capture due to the intialization of the mpeg stream (or something like that) so I change the settings again and again but I'll either get interlace or the error msg

I have emailed lordsmurf about the settings for IuVCR BUT if you or anyone else has a decent set of parameters to use I'm open for them. I have MJPEG (PicVideo) and the mpeg2 codec is apparently the Intervideo one as it shows up in GSpot as the decoder used. I also have just about all of the other codecs for use such as Divx and Huffy. I believe Huffy would be a bit too big for my free space (See Below).

BTW: For any of the settings for IuVCR: I have approx. 20gb free for capping 40 minutes of anime (I over lap 5 minutes early, 5 minutes late to make sure I don't miss anything).

Thanks Again People!!

[JimJohnD]

I did a quick test. I took two small captures 10 sec each. The first one was great, the second one was not. Using a program called BitRateViewer from http://www.tecoltd.com/ I found that the "Q-Scale" or Quantization for the "Good" capture was around 4. The factor for the "Bad" pegged at 19!! The video bitrate was about the same for each with all other parameters being the same.

While this dodn't tell me why it's doing what it's doing, I wonder if you would see the q-scale jumping from about 4 to 19 and back for your intermittant distortions.

[spiderman2k1]

I have a ATI All IN WONDER and it's very good with MMC 8.1 you can get a ATI AIW for $50.00 dollars at www.pricewatch.com I also have a Dazzle 2 and I love that card alot. If you want a dzzle 2 see if you mother board will work with it www.dazzlegeek.com this site has the best price on the Dazzle http://www.shopharmony.com/ there are timer's if your not home I like TWHN there are other's you will find every thing you need at www.dazzlegeek.com for satellite dish I like my Dazzle 2 little more for VHS capture's with old tape's I like my ATI AIW little more

[snowmoon]

The Q-scale was the ammount of data thrown away..... the less thrown away the better looking it is, so your results are just the way they should be. I still say that you are having trouble with interlaced materal. It's the only thng that makes sense.

SVCD was a "BIT" better. I'm going to go with a somewhat lesser quality and cap with 352x480 at 4000 bitrate, re-encode to 720x480 keeping the same bitrate. I figure my VCD caps with less bitrate give me "almost" what I'm looking for so this should work for me. I'll post any results I get.

Thanks again!

[lchiu7]

Why not try to capture in avi format with no compression? I have captured 720x480 on an Athlon XP 1700+ to a 80G 7200 drive as a master on the secondary IDE channel using only huffyuv compression with hardly any dropped frames. Then encode to mgeg offline and you will get much better quality

[snowmoon]

By lowering the resolution and upping the bitrate it will be better, but you are ignoring the source of the problem YOUR ENCODER DOES NOT LIKE OR PROPERLY SUPPORT INTERLACING. If you fix that your caps will have a lower bitrate/quality ratio and that should make all of your caps better.

VCD does not have interlacing and therefore would not have been affected.

@snowmoon:
At least I'm headed in the right direction If I could swing it I would buy another TV card BUT right now would not be good.

I may end up capping in VCD format (since I had no trouble with it before) and maybe up the bitrate some just to get better quality. I still have about 4 days to experiment before a new season starts of the show I'm working on. Plenty of time

Thanks again for all of your help everyone!