Capturing Problem.

[Spiffy007]

As a bit of a Video recording novice, I was wondering if anyone could help me with a small problem.

Im trying to record a few music videos for myself amongst other stuff, but get lines across the screen at random times, yet I dont know how to remove them or what the problem is. An example of it is below.



Yet I've tried WinVCRv2.0 Trial, and encoded straight to MPEG1 with a crystal clear video. Its doing my nut in.

Could anyone help? Thanks.

I've got a Hauppage WinTV PCI board on a Duron 800, with 384mb Ram, and a 7200rpm HDD.

[Spiffy007]

Surely someone can help me!!

[Macros746]

I haven't run across that particular problem myself but it DOES look as though you are having some kind of interference. I'd say make sure that your cables are short, I'd turn off any thing that might have a magnetic field in the area (i.e. stereos and such) and give that a shot. If that doesn't work you might try a signal booster from Radio Shack. They run about thirty bucks but they DEFINTIELY improved my TV reception on my computer. You never mentioned...are you capturing from Cable TV? Satillite? VHS.....that factors in too...give me all the particulars.

Macros

[Spiffy007]

Well my mam, the ULTIMATE novice that she is, suggested an interference problem!! Although watching it on WinTV, and capturing in real time MPEG1, the picture is perfect. Its only when I capture in avi using Virtual Dub that this happens.

Im recording direct from tapes playing on my VHS recorder. Only thing with a magnetic field would be my speakers wont they? they are right between my system and my monitor.

[Macros746]

Aha....didn't know you were capturing using VHS tapes. It might be your VCR. I captured beautifully from cable and had a disasterous time capping from my VCR...then I tried a different VCR and it worked beautifully....you might try that..

Macros746

[Spiffy007]

Well its a relatively new video, and the tapes are brand new so I'm not so sure. I mean like I said, capturing directly as MPEG1 the quality is spot on, but I can only capture 20seconds at a time, and aint got $50 to purchase the full product!

[Spiffy007]

An update on the situation. Instead of capturing at 24bit RGB, I changed it to 16bit RGB, and now I only get 1 or 2 lines every few seconds, which has improved it dramatically.

Any knowledge as to what my problem might be now or what Im doing wrong?

Thanks for your help.

[liquid217]

try capturing with regular yuv instead of rgb

[lusid]

I had a similar problem when I first switched to a WinTV board. To be honest, I'm not sure what fixed it. I know I moved it from slot to slot, tinkered with bios settings, updated the drivers, and I swapped out soundcards. It drove me nuts. It was happening on cable, svideo, composite, everything.

I know it's not much help, but at least it's not just you =)

[Spiffy007]

try capturing with regular yuv instead of rgb

Thanks for that. I'll give it a try but I've got 9 different YUV formats to choose from. Which do I select?

[jp1234]

Thanks for that. I'll give it a try but I've got 9 different YUV formats to choose from. Which do I select?

Huffyuv if you have a lot of disk space. There is an option "convert RGB to YUV2" in the configuration for huffyuv. Use that to decrease the disk usage - but your capture is no longer lossless. Without this option it is lossless.

Although there is loss RGB->YUV2 with huffyuv, it is very small... don't even know if it will make a difference with VHS source. Try both and see which one you like better.

[Spiffy007]

So what your saying is that these lines that are appearing could be down to what codec I'm using?

[monsoon01]

spiffy007,
those are interlacing lines. T.V. and VHS and the like are interlaced, just capture the video at 352x480 and deinterlace and resize and they will go away

[Spiffy007]

deinterlace and resize and they will go away

You've lost me now!!

[liquid217]

my appologies, i should have been more clear. Im not that familiar with your capture program so ill try to explain. RGB is a lot more processor depenent when captuing. YUV is easier on the processor. Look for an option like Source or format, it should be wherever the option is to change the size of the frame (320x240 or whatever the case is)

[monsoon01]

spiffy007,
deinterlacing is a processe in which the 2 interlaced frames are blended together(thats my thoughts on it anyway). and resizeing just does what it says, it resizes the video, it takes video from say 352x480 and resizes it to 352x240. virtualdub is a great program for this because it has those kinda filters built in and you can also down load more. if you need more help just private message or email me.

[Spiffy007]

Look for an option like Source or format, it should be wherever the option is to change the size of the frame (320x240 or whatever the case is)

These are the options I have to select from:

CYUV - Inverted YUV 4:2:2
UYVY - YUV 4:2:2 interleaved
YUYV - YUV 4:2:2 interleaved
YUY2 - YUV 4:2:2 interleaved
YV12 - YUV 4:2:0 planar
I420 - YUV 4:2:0 planar
IYUV - YUV 4:2:0 planar
Y41P - YUV 4:1:1 planar
YVU9 - 9-bit YUV planar

[Spiffy007]

Please help?

[monsoon01]

spiffy007,
use the YUY2 - YUV 4:2:2 interleaved color to capture with.

[liquid217]

heh heh, forgot to check back, yes monsoon is correct, use

YUY2 - YUV 4:2:2 interleaved

[trousers]

I was recently having exactly the same problem myself, capturing from multiple sources (DVD, satellite, VHS) at all resolutions from 352x288 upwards. Changing cap app, codec, cap settings, etc. made no difference. This was on a clean install of XP, using a WinTV Primio FM and the driver available at http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ Further system details in the profile.

This image corruption was driving me nuts, as this was definitely not due to interlacing artifacts. After hours of fiddling in the BIOS + swapping harware around, still no success. Finally 'solved' the problem - was capturing directly to the 40Gig RAID-0 array. Even capping at 352x288x5fps + no sound produced the same result. I can only assume this was due to contention / lack of bandwidth on the PCI bus when passing data to the RAID controller.

As this machine was built with a dedicated RAID array primarily for capping...

I can now cap up to 'full' PAL with no corruption, but have to allocate the capture file on an old 8Gig 5400RPM drive - not the best for the job, but at least it works. Now just have to consign my backup data to the RAID array + switch some drives around for better performance.

Oh, yeah - and get the SB Live! 'crackling' problem fixed

Spiffy - do you have the one drive only? Or is that 7200 dedicated to capping. From looking for a solution far + wide over the last week, I'm guessing you have a VIA MB chipset.

Suggestions - experiment in reducing the throughput on the PCI bus by changing cap sizes + CODECs.

Try placing the WinTV board in different slots. Check under 'My Computer->Properties->Device Manager->Hardware Manager->View->Resources by connection (IRQ)' or similar to check for IRQ sharing of cap card / audio card / anything else. Move cards to different slots if so. If you're feeling confident, try manually assigning IRQ's.

What are you capping with? Virtualdub? See if you have the same problem using the simple capture app available from the link above.

Good luck.

[lewisp]

Yep, I've had exactly this problem. Check if the interference appears at the same time that your disk drive is in use, which during capture will be most of the time.

The solution for me was to reconfigure my HDD DMA setting. I dont know how this works personally, but on my motherboard I have a VIA chipset. Using one of their utilities I was able to change the DMA setting from Ultra-DMA to Multiword DMA and my interference problems went away.

[trousers]

Interesting. Are you running XP? Was it the 'VIADMATool' (or similar) that you used?

Did you have to install the VIA IDE Bus Master Miniport driver 1st?

[D_Knife]

That is very interesting - that should have slowed down your bus transfers!
I wonder it the problem is IDE cable related?
you are using 80pin cable's right?

[trousers]

As I said, interesting.

In increasing order of throughput;

PIO, Multiword, UDMA 33, UDMA 66, UDMA 100, UDMA 133.

Personally, I'm using new 80pin cables, no kinks, sharp bends, etc. Perhaps dropping to Multiword cripples to the extent that the PCI bus can cope easily with maxed-out transfers in multiword form.

Unfortunately, I was trying to capture via virtualdub w. filters to a 50G/s sustained dual 7200RPM RAID-0 array, letting the Highpoint controller take all possible load off the cpu. Multiword might defeat the point. I'll give it a try, though.

[lewisp]

I have Win98 SE. The tool is IDETool from VIA, but I cant see it on their web page.

Incidentally, I also had the Soundblaster crackling problem too until I upgraded to the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers.....

[Spiffy007]

WOW! Thanks for the replys guys!! Appreciated.

The situation at the moment is that I can no longer capture at 358x288 without dropping bucket-loads of frames. But i can do 640x400 no problem!

I obly get them lines when capturing in 24bit RGB color. That seems to be the problem, as I've changed to 16bit RGB and YUV2 and they are fine with only the odd few during a 3/4 min video.

Trousers:
Thanks for the reply. I too have a RAID mothertboard (ABIT KT7-A RAID), but I only have the one hard drive (IBM 30Gig, 7200rpm, UDMA100), so the RAID function is not being used.

[trousers]

lewisp: I vaguely remember having a similar corrupted capture problem in 98SE, followed by no trouble in ME. Then again, I've had the crackley SB Live thing in both ME and XP. Always with the latest drivers, always after much tweaking.
I believe the IDETool is installed as part of the 4-in-1 set, and therefore not available in XP. I'll try tonight to see if the transfer settings can be modified via the device manager.

Spiffy: I had a KT7 (non-RAID) previously. Are you booting from a device attached to the RAID controller?

[lewisp]

The latest IDE miniport driver at http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66#mini claims to be suitable for XP with version 5.1.2600.0 and above.

...and IDETool is in there.....

[trousers]

Cheers - will try this, although VIA initially claim;

The VIA IDE Miniport driver does not install with the VIA 4in1 drivers. It should only be installed on systems with a VIA chipset and:
.
.
ATA133 hard drives under Windows 2000 and Windows XP
.

And then way down the page:

Please note: WinXP does not support ATA133 and therefore UDMA mode 6 will not be shown in Device Manager, even if the current timing mode is ATA133.

Could this be related to the interference?