FlyDS problems

[danknugz]

Hi, I recently purchased one of these:

Philips SAA713XHL NTSC TV Tuner/FM PCI Capture Card (AVI/MPEG1/MPEG2/MPEG4/Hi-MPEG2)

The WDM drivers that came with it on the mini-cd work fine, however the actual app bundled with it always gives "Fail to initialize hardware" on startup so I have been using FlyDS which works fine.


My problem has to do with capturing using the Xvid codec. Through trial and error and comparison, I have found that for my purposes (recording from an xbox360 in standard definition to 640x480), Xvid provides the best quality/size ratio. However, FlyDS doesn't seem to be consistent in the way it captures when using Xvid, and I'm not sure if this problem is related to the codec or the FlyDS program.

Using exactly the same input video source (and clip), the first time I attempt to capture it (using Xvid) it will be fine - the bitrate typically stays between .5 and 1.2 Mbits, and the output clip shows no tearing. However after about 2 or 3 captures, all of a sudden subsequent captures will read almost at twice the bitrate (between 1 and 2.5 Mbits), the file will be larger, and viewing the clip shows visual "tearing".

The second problem is that I tried to uninstall DivX and installing the latest version of Xvid, and now in FlyDS, the option of selecting Xvid as an encoder isn't even there anymore.

If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[ebenton]

I don't know anything specific about Xvid or FlyDS, but with computer software in general, often the sequence of installing and uninstalling programs is important.
It could be that FlyDS searches for the Xvid codec based upon some registry or other values that were valid when FlyDs was installed.
Now that you have uninstalled and reinstalled Xvid, perhaps those values are different, and FlyDS does not know about them.
Perhaps uninstalling and reinstalling FlyDS will reset everything to an "as is" condition.
Just a guess. Your mileage may vary.

[danknugz]

Thanks for the reply, I tried reinstalling FlyDS and no change, I also removed all the "application data" settings related to FlyDS before reinstalling.

The tearing/random increase in bitrate problem was happening all along. Sometimes I could get it to capture without tearing and increased bitrate by simply exiting FlyDS and changing the output filename, but not all the time. It seems that now the only way I can get FlyDS to capture Xvid without tearing the output clip is if I let it sit there for an hour and come back, in which case the first clip I capture will be fine then subsequent ones will have tearing.

It's almost like FlyDS isn't properly clearing it's memory and attempts to encode the capture twice onto the same file or something, I can't think of another reason why the bitrate and filesize would increase almost twofold, resulting in tearing in the output clip.

The problem with Xvid not showing up as an option only happened after I installed the latest Xvid. I also uninstalled Divx too, around the same time, it might have been that. I know Xvid is related to Divx but would uninstalling Divx cause Xvid to become unavailable to use as an encoder or become unavailable to FlyDS as an option? I'm trying to make sense of why even with the latest Xvid installed (1.13), it isn't an option in FlyDS anymore.

Could my sound drivers have anything to do with it? I'm using the line-in on my integrated sound card to capture the audio instead of the audio in on the CC. I have noticed peculiarities with sound playback on this computer.

Another thing I should mention is that the 360 isn't directly going to the CC, it goes into an SDTV first, then an output RCA from the tv goes into the composite-in on the CC. The RCA cable is a radio shack gold-plated one but I wouldn't think that would make a difference.

Thanks

[themaster1]

personal opinion:

I have tested xvid encoding in real time in the past with an analog CC.=>bad results to average results.

I'd advice you to use fly 2000 tv and install windvr3 aswell (for its mpeg2 real time encoder which u can use with fly 2000tv)

So this way, you can Rec. in mpeg2 real time and if necessary you'll can encode in xvid after that.

That is for a CC. If you wanna Rec in divx realtime, there are devices especially dedicated for this task and i heard they do an good job.like this one

[danknugz]

alrite well it turns out the bundled software does work, the previous machine i had tried it in had 4 hard drives attached and I don't think the card was getting enough juice. now that the program recognizes the card successfully (before it said "fail to initialize hardware" on start up) it captures via MPEG-4 fine. maybe that FlyDS doesnt do as good of a job of handling the chipset that the bundled app does (which is understandable cause the bundled app is optimized only for that one chipset)


thanks for the help

[danknugz]

damn this app wont record mpeg-4 in 640x480, only 720x480, i have attached an image of the visual artifacts, anyone know how to rid of these, it's a shadowing effect

it's weird cause even if I turn the quantizer way up, it's still there so i dont think it's performance related

[danknugz]

here is a comparison of Xvid before and after, with the same xvid.dll and the same Xvid settings. (the one in the middle is just an MPEG II for comparison). note the "Hide/Show" icon.

How the hell did the one on the left encode so sharply when now it looks all blurry? It's the same xvid.dll that is installed with the bundled app.

[danknugz]

the only thing I can think of is that on the new machine, I had installed the latest Xvid (1.13) before installing the app that installed the older xvid.dll. Even though I uninstalled Xvid 1.13 after installing said app, might that cause issues between the two versions? Because I noticed that both the app and the Xvid 1.13 installer install not only .dlls into the system32 but also a file "xvid.ax" and I"m not sure if this is causing the issue.

Any input would be appreciated I figured at least someone on this forum might be familiar with this issue.

Thanks again