VHS to DV... AVI is stuttering after 42 minutes

[Iceblade]

Hey guys,

I was watching one of the AVI files that I had created this weekend by using the passthrough function of my Canon Optura 20 connected to my VHS player and the video and audio looks great until I get about 42 minutes into the AVI file. I am using WMP 10 to play back the AVI... once it reaches around 42 minutes, the audio and video both really start stuttering and seeming to miss frames. I've only tried playing it in WMP10.. so perhaps I need to try some other viewer. I'll try that tonight. In the meantime, is there a tool or something I can use to try to figure out if the AVI file is ok and it's a CPU issue that is causing the dropouts or an actual problem with the captured data?

FWIW, I did rewind the file a couple times and the dropouts occur at the same place each time and continue for the duration of the file (another 18 minutes or so).

Thanks,
Jeff

[Krispy Kritter]

Have you tried the capture a 2nd time? Sounds like your pc had trouble during the original capture, not during playback.

[Iceblade]

KK,

No.. not yet. I guess the thing I fear is that it's something inevitable that will happen every time I capture it. This time, it all went to hell at 42 minutes... perhaps the next time it's at 17 minutes, etc...

I captured four hours worth of tape to DV that is currently hogging up my external firewire drive. I was hoping to start editing and converting to DVD by now. Guess I need to re-cap the tape yet again.

Other than running the captured vid AVI through another software player, is there any other way to see if it's a source error or a playback error?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Krispy Kritter]

I'm assuming your source material plays fine and has no issues. I wouldn't expect a vhs recording to exhibit the symptoms that you are seeing so I expect the source is fine.

Your computer is capturing the data supplied by your vcr, so unless your vcr was having issues, lets assume your video input was good.

That leaves the capturing process, your pc, or just a corrupt file as the problem. You can check the file for errors just to make sure it wasn't corrupt somehow, but I don't believe you will find anything wrong. There are a few guides on capturing if you need more info or tips. As for your pc, make sure you are capturing to an unfragmented HD with plenty of space and that you disable all unnecessary processes. Having NAV begin a scan partway through a capture is a sure way to screw to it up.

But, as I said before, your best bet is to try a 2nd time. If it fails again, you will have more information to use for troubleshooting. If it works, you save yourself a lot of time.

Hope this helps.

[Iceblade]

Thanks, KK.

I'll be nuking all 4 ripped AVI's from the partition I have been using on my firewire drive. Defrag that drive... reboot. Kill all unnecessary processes, unplug the ethernet cable and try one more time. I seem to recall having seen the dropouts on the very first AVI file I captured as well as the 3 subsequent ones... so I'm not going to get my hopes up. I guess worst comes to worst... I keep doing it in pieces until I get like 10 clips worth of stuff that comprise the whole hour... then edit it all together in Premiere and burn THAT as the DVD. What fun!

Thanks again,
Jeff

PS - BTW, is there a particular app that is used to tell if a given AVI has missing frames or errors and such? I seem to see people talking about how many frames they dropped, but I'm not sure how they are getting that info. Thanks!

[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

[Krispy Kritter]

Congrats....If I had to guess, I would expect it was attempting to capture to the external drive. But you will be finding for sure.

[Iceblade]

KK,

I had previously done the captures to the internal 120GB D: drive as well, with similar choppy, unusable results as when I was using the external drive. No clue what the heck the deal was/is. Like I said, I'll try with the external drive tonight and see if things change at all or if I get a good capture. More to come... thanks again for the help.

Regs,
Jeff