VirtualDub for capture app?

[pgoelz]

Anyone using VirtualDub for their capture app? I'm still looking for the best, most reliable capture app and thought I'd try VirtualDub. It has a LOT of features I have been looking for. Trouble is that in my experience it is highly unstable and quirky. It has frozen several times. It leaves my capture device (ADVC-55) either locked or connected every time I close VD, requiring me to unplug and re-plug. And the most puzzling.... it did a capture which when played back had the video and the audio out of sync by about five seconds. I didn't think that was possible with DV-AVI. They are locked together when presented to the application by the ADVC aren't they? Does VD split the interleaved video and audio and process them separately?

Just curious. I'd like to love VD but so far it hasn't gone all that well.

Paul

[El Heggunte]

Those problems may have various causes.
What version of VirtualDub do you use?
Your OS, is it a 64-bit one, or not?
Is your PC "fast enough"?
Are there many other processes running while you capture video?
Also, there might be some kind of conflict between
VirtualDub and the drivers for your capture device...
Besides, have you already tried to capture through other applications than VD?

[LightWeightProducer]

It leaves my capture device (ADVC-55) either locked or connected every time I close VD, requiring me to unplug and re-plug.Paul

Virtualdub has the dubious honour of being one of the few applications that can desync the audio that comes out of Canopus devices but really virtualdub is overkill for DV. Grab a copy of windv and you won't look back.

[danno78]

WinDV and DVIO are specially made for fireware devices, virtualdub is not.

[pgoelz]

Thanks, I'm auditioning WinDV now. I think I tried it earlier and if so, I forget why I abandoned it. Seems simple and basic enough. Does it preview audio during capture? I could swear I saw something about previewing audio but I can't find it.

I'm using VD 1.9.8 on Vista Ultimate 64 bit. The processor is a dual core 3GHz. There are no other process running during capture other than background system processes. As for conflicts.... who knows. Yes, I have used as many other capture apps as I could find. VD is the only one that behaves like this.

Paul

[BrainStorm69]

I don't know if it will work any better (I don't use it), but you might try VirtualDub VCR+Sync as mentioned in this article:

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2003/03/vidcap.ars/

There is a DL link in the article.

[pgoelz]

Well, I tried VirtualDub VCR+Sync and found it even more fiddly than VD. When I could get it to capture at all it had no audio and reported 3-4 dropped frames per SECOND. Preview didn't work because it "couldn't find a driver for this non-RGB interface" whatever that meant. Plus, if you read the article it implies that VD VCR+Sync doesn't totally solve the audio synch issue.

All in all, not recommended.

Paul

[vhelp]

Depending on your driver installation and firewire card (and device ie advc) virtualdub will capture from firewire fine. I used to capture with it when I use to use the advc-100 back in the day.

Well, I use it regularly. I did dscaler as some suggested, but its the last time I ever use it. I used it on my hvr-2250, worked fine, but watch out, because it doen't "keep" the dropped-frame count for you. You see, when it captures video, and when it drops frames, it reports it at the time, but.. moments later it removes the dropped frame counts by bumping back to zero. What? no wonder why I couldn't get a good ivtc on the videos i knew shoud have worked. Anyway, thats my rant for dscaler.

Virtualdub works great for me, winxp home, 2 gig, 2-core, amd system, w/ hauppauge hvr-2250 pci-e card.

However, I'm currently researching the idea of coding my own little avi capture utility. There's some things I want and don't want in a capture app, though vdub is a great tool. One thing i'd like in a cap app is the flex'ty to shrink the capture window and stay-on-top while capturing so i can read other parts (documents, etc) on my screen at the same time. I need something that I can click in an instant if and while i'm already capturing, at a winks notice. If I try to do that w/ vdub, it drops frame while moving or shrinking the window around the desktop.

-vhelp 5354

[pgoelz]

Interesting that VD works for you and has never worked reliably for me for capturing. It has worked just fine for other uses, I should add. There may well be an issue in my setup but if there is, I am at a loss to find it.

If I can add to your capture app wish list.....

1. Ability to monitor video, audio or both while capturing.

2. Ability to turn audio monitoring on or off while capturing.

3. EASY way to select and display the capture folder and filename..... this is where a lot of capture apps fall down.

4. Some sort of video level monitoring during capture. It needs to be real time but does not have to be updated frame by frame. A histogram would be good but simple black and white level displays would be OK.

5. Timed capture OR the ability to terminate the capture after a defined period of no video.

6. Ability to split the file after a defined period of black, no video or stationary image.

7. Buffered capture so no dropped frames.

That's my list

Paul

[BrainStorm69]

Well, I tried VirtualDub VCR+Sync and found it even more fiddly than VD. When I could get it to capture at all it had no audio and reported 3-4 dropped frames per SECOND. Preview didn't work because it "couldn't find a driver for this non-RGB interface" whatever that meant. Plus, if you read the article it implies that VD VCR+Sync doesn't totally solve the audio synch issue.

All in all, not recommended.

Paul

Sorry to hear it doesn't work for you. I just thought it was worth a try.

[rcubed]

Pgoelz,
I can recommend using AVI-IO as a capture program. I use it extensively with my ADVC-100. Never had a frame dropping or audio sync problem. I could never get VirtualDub to capture properly either. The AVI-IO program breaks the capture up into blocks defined by the program itself. AVIsynth will load the entire sequence of blocks simply by opening the 1st one in AVIsynth. You can monitor the input with the program. In fact I used to use it as a cable program interface to my PC to watch cable on my PC. The only problem I had with it was when I tried to span disks. It worked best capturing the entire program or input to one folder.

rcubed

[pgoelz]

Heck, any capture app is worth a try and thanks for the recommendation. I'm just amazed how few there are and how poorly implemented they are. WinDV seems to come pretty close. Still can't figure out if it is possible to monitor audio during (or before) capture though.

Paul

[pgoelz]

Pgoelz,
I can recommend using AVI-IO as a capture program.

rcubed

Thanks. I had a look and didn't like the fact that it breaks up long captures into 4GB sections. Seems unnecessary on today's PCs? Can this be defeated? It didn't look like it could.

Paul

[rcubed]

Pgoelz,
I can recommend using AVI-IO as a capture program.

rcubed

Thanks. I had a look and didn't like the fact that it breaks up long captures into 4GB sections. Seems unnecessary on today's PCs? Can this be defeated? It didn't look like it could.

Paul

Paul,
As far as I know, it can't. Since I do things like crop, edit out commercials, or noise filtering it's not a problem. I do one pass with AVIsynth with an input script, do a direct stream copy to a 2nd .avi file and then encode that one. That method has the down side of taking about twice the disk space do to the 2nd file having to be generated. I haven't looked into it much, but one might be able to frame serve the output of AVIsynth and avoid the intermediate file.

rcubed

[pgoelz]

Paul,
As far as I know, it can't. Since I do things like crop, edit out commercials, or noise filtering it's not a problem. I do one pass with AVIsynth with an input script, do a direct stream copy to a 2nd .avi file and then encode that one. That method has the down side of taking about twice the disk space do to the 2nd file having to be generated. I haven't looked into it much, but one might be able to frame serve the output of AVIsynth and avoid the intermediate file.

rcubed

Out of curiosity, why go to that much trouble? There are DV capture apps that ,aside from their quirks, capture in a much more straightforward manner, and to a single file.

Paul

[rcubed]

Out of curiosity, why go to that much trouble? There are DV capture apps that ,aside from their quirks, capture in a much more straightforward manner, and to a single file.

Paul

When they were captures of TV series that had commercials I preferred cutting out the commercials to frame accuracy in the original AVI file. AVIsynth allows multiple cuts and I never had any problems with keeping the audio in sync when I did those cuts. I normally use HC Encoder to do my encodes. It doesn't allow cutting the video file except to a single starting point thru an ending frame. Not useful to remove the umpty ump commercials that show up in a one hour show (about 18-20 minutes of the 1 hr of capture). The total time doing the intermediate file then encoding it didn't add that much overall time to encode. Also force of habit, I started doing the captures about 8 years ago and the availability of good capture programs (that didn't give me sync problems) was limited. I just got used to doing it that way. I'm an "old fart" and it's tough to teach an old dog new tricks.

rcubed

[magillagorilla]

One thing i'd like in a cap app is the flex'ty to shrink the capture window and stay-on-top while capturing so i can read other parts (documents, etc) on my screen at the same time. I need something that I can click in an instant if and while i'm already capturing, at a winks notice. If I try to do that w/ vdub, it drops frame while moving or shrinking the window around the desktop.

-vhelp 5354

Use 2 monitors. That's what I do. I can read stuff on monitor 2 while capping. Most of the time I have Windows performance monitor running in monitor 2, while capping so I can watch for CPU/Memory spikes.

[magillagorilla]

Heck, any capture app is worth a try and thanks for the recommendation. I'm just amazed how few there are and how poorly implemented they are. WinDV seems to come pretty close. Still can't figure out if it is possible to monitor audio during (or before) capture though.

Paul

Paul,
I had the same issue for a while. It seams monitoring the audio from a firewire transfer can be problematic. I just turned up the little speaker on the miniDV camera during playback so I could at least hear something. My goal, was just to hear the video to make it less boaring during capping. This does not help if you need to monitor levels or something fancy.