to all capture pro's - please read & give your 2 cents w

[djtrixx]

I'm getting into taping weddings & editing to dvd, also looking for a good way to capture all of my old music videos from laserdisc & vhs & burn to DVD to use in the clubs (without having to bring extra players!)

Until now I have been using ati raedon & virtualdub, and my results have been quite terrible - Dropped frames, a lot of picture noise, poor output, long encoding times, etc.... Here's my system:

P4 1.9
512 DDR
4 maxtor 80 gig 7200 ata 133
sb live!
ati aiw raedon 7500


This box is only used for capture, anything that isn't video related isn't on it so it's a clean system. I think I have exceeded my tolerance for messing around and it's time to move up so I need your opinion on a "pro" quality capture card. I'm now looking at a Pinnacle pro-one, does anyone know anything about it? Or suggest a different one? I'd like to spend $1,000 or less on the card.... All input is welcome!!!

[joinT]

You've got to be joking. How exactly are you capturing - just through the Inputs ? All my TV captures w/ my AIW 7500 were awesome (I choose highest quality) & became AWESOME quality SVCD's through TMPGEnc.

Are your Maxtor's in RAID ? That should be a benefit as well.
Are u trying to encode on the fly ? I haven't tried to capture anything from VHS or anything like that yet - but maybe try just capturing & then encoding in another program like TMPGEnc (encoding times are still long - but hey, it's a free prog)

[Macros746]

You have to give us more specifics about how you are capturing. It's obvious your rig is up to the task.... So what resolution to you cap to? What codec do you use? Have you tried swapping VCRs (I couldn't capture anything from one of my VCRs only to find that I could capture beautifully from the other). What sort of connection? As for my suggestions: I suggest capturing to 640 x 480 in virtual dub using the MJEG codec set to 18. Then I suggest feeding into VCD or SVCD using only the sharpening filter initially...then experiment with temporal cleaning and the like.

Macros

[djtrixx]

My vcr is a JVC SuperVHS, and my laserdisc is a Sony Lasermax. I am capturing using the s-video input in the raedon, and sound is thru the sb live. I am capturing in Vdub with a res of 720x480. Now, before the flaming starts, I simply don't like the quality I get capturing at a lower resolution. I've tried huffy, and I must be doing something wrong, because when I play back, the video freezes. I am currently using Picvideo MJPEG. From there, I use TMPGEnc, 2pass VBR, 2000 min, 4500 avg, 8000max. I then author with spruceup, then use ifoedit to get rid of the menu so I can put the DVD in and go while DJing, instead of being forced to worry about a menu.

I was a little more curious about what anyone thinks about buying a pro capture card, though, unless you really don't think it's worth the money.

THANX!

[Poplar]

Are you kidding me? Your system is my dream machine. I have been capturing with an ancient P3-500 and $50 Hauppauge WINTV-FM card. I convert captures to SVCD with CCE with quality very, very close to the source. Someone has said that capture is an art rather than a science. Here is what I have learned:

1. Fine-tune your machine to eliminate frame drop. Your system shouldn't drop any frame with Huffy or uncompressed. I don't recommend using MJPG codec.
2. Post-processing is just as important as capturing. You can use Avisynth filters to correct wrong field order problem with capture card or reduce noise.
3. I always use CCE to encode mpeg-2 stream. Some folks say TMPG is catching up, but I haven't checked it yet.

[PelicanDriver]

Poplar,

Are there any problems with the WinTV card? Are you restricted in the capture resolution?

I'm considering that card as a beginner. Thanks...

[Nelson37]

You most definitely should NOT be dropping frames with that rig.

Approach the problem in steps. Experiment with capturing from a new DVD or Laserdisc for a best quality source. VHS tapes can introduce some other problems. Laserdiscs have an odd resolution, you should not really capture at higher res than original source. Also, you need NTFS for large file captures.

You could purchase an expensive mpg-2 encoder, or you could use the high-speed processor you already have - your cpu. I have noticed significant improvements with mpg-2 captures with my ATI card as I have upgraded processor speed. I suggest you try ATI MMC 7.5 or better, mpg-2 capture, I-frame only, bitrate 12,000. Also try raw avi or Huffy.
The point is to get a high-quality, smooth-playing capture, w/no frame drops. You may even want to try Real-time SVCD settings in MMC.

Only AFTER getting hi-quality captures, THEN develop an encoding strategy. I agree with CCE as suggested above, 4-pass VBR should encode in less than 6 to 1 timewise.

[Poplar]

@PelicanDriver

WINTV-FM card (NTSC): maximum resolution 640x480, RCA and S-Video input, you can buy it on Ebay for $50. Good enough for VHS to SVCD conversions. Definitely worthy of considerations for beginners and those on a tight budget.

[dphirschler]

The only reason you may be dropping frames that I can see is your harddrive. I learned this lesson when I upgraded from a 5.7 gig to a 60 gig. Both were 7200, but the 60 would drop frames at anything bigger than 480x480. It just can't write the data to the drive fast enough. The processor is only at 16% when I capture. I fiddled with the buffers and got some improvement. Also, set capture to 16bit color instead of 24 bit. That sped things up as well. But the key for me was to reinstall the 5.7 gig drive. I now use that drive for my highres captures and the 60 for 480x480 and less.

Someday, I may set up a RAID array. You might consider that as well.


Darryl

[baseband]

I doubt that problem is universal. I have a 7200 RPM 80GB drive, and it only drops about 5-10 frames every half hour. And I haven't messed with any kind of buffer settings or anything.

Or perhaps it could have something to with VFW drivers and new hard drives. I'm using WDM drivers and capturing in iuVCR. With my old WinTV card on the same computer (athlon xp 1800, 1 gb ddr), I dropped 3-4 times as many frames in the same amount of time in VirtualDub.

Any minute now, the UPS guy is gonna show up with my new 120GB 7200RPM drive. We'll see how that performs.

[baseband]

Wow, this 120GB drive rocks! I haven't capped a full show yet, but a 15 minute test clip yielded zero dropped frames. When I check the speed of the drives in Nero (CD Copy option in the opening window(not the Wizard), then click the Image tab), my Maxtor 7200RPM drive has a speed of 37,000KB/s, while the new IBM 7200RPM drive gets 46,000KB/s! My old 40GB Maxtor 5400RPM drive rates a paltry 19,000KB/s.

The new IBM drive is the cheapest 120GB 7200RPM drive on Pricewatch right now. In fact, at $133, it's only $1 more than the cheapest 120GB 5400RPM drive!

[homerpez]

I only have a 1GHZ Athlon machine, 60 GB drive I capture to, and I'm also using the ATI AIW Radeon plus V-Dub.

Clearly, there is an issue here, and I think it IS the size you are trying to cap. I do agree with anyone who said it's a simple matter of file size: The virtually "uncompressed" MJPEG info you're doing is probably more than your computer (probably almost any computer) is capable of moving.

I can tell this is the case, because I tried this experiment with the MMC capping program, and setting the cap mode to "I-Frame Only". This made it so I was not using so much CPU power, but I needed to up the MPEG-2 bitrate to 10Mb/sec to get a good quality. Well, the CPU kept up, but the disk write to the 7200rpm ATA-100 drive wasn't fast enough.

You only really have two options, maybe three.

1) Use RAID... and set it up for SPEED (stripe across all 4 drives, pretend it's one). This MIGHT solve the problem.

2) Lower Cap Quality. You might just have to bite the bullet. I Would suggest you cap using Huffy rather than MJPEG. Better source material to re-encode from. I cap at 480x480 right now, looks as good as an S-Video source will ever look, anyway. MJPEG is lossy, Huffy isn't.

3) #3 was to be capping with MMC as MPEG-2 (as you probably have the CPU power to do so). However, I can't reccomend it - it sucks.

#2 it is, then.

[Allan55]

Hi,

We chose the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge last year and after replacing under warranty with the latest version, we are getting rock-solid captures using Scenalyzer.

Now, I'd also consider the Canopus ADVC100.

Search for previous posts about the DV Bridge. There is lots of info regarding it.

Allan

[VideoMann]

I got P4 at 2Ghz
GeForce3 Ti 200Mhz Nvidia Card
512 MB memory

no special capture card.
no dropped frames.

I use ADVC-100 external box to a Firewire/1394 Card to capture in AVI format.
Programs used to capture video:
Premiere 6---> DV-AVI (or w/ CCE to MPEG2 or TMPGenc to MPEG2)
Cyberlink Producer2 --> MPEG2
Cyberlink PowerVCR II --> MPEG2 (unstable under WindowsXP)

recommend any of the ADVC solutions from Canopus
or their MVR1000 live hardware MPEG2 encoder card. (S-Video input). Consider getting close to 1 Gb of memory to speed up things and decrease load on CPU. Dazzle seems to be a good solution for many.

Would not recommend Pinnacle or ATI solutions for their instability and hidden problems, for me they are a crap shot based on the number of posts in so many forums.

PS. You are lucky you went with Pentium rather than Athlon since many video incompatibilities and trouble comes from motherboards based on the Athlon CPU. It's not the Athlon that is at fault just the various chips on the motherboards made for Athlon CPUs .

[TurboRunner]

Hi, djtrixx

Try Huffy again but don't play back just convert using TmpgEnc or CCE which ever your prefer as Huffy is not made to playback and thats why it does playback very well. Then play the Mpeg/2 you created a see what you thanks.

You might want to read some capturing Guides found on VcdHelp.com

[homerpez]

I still say the bandwidth itself is his problem (720x480 uncompressed is way to big for even the best of systems that isn't SCSI RAID striped for speed - and maybe to big for even that)... simply too much data to move!

Especially since I haven't come across any capture hardware that's "slower" than any other one... mostly it's low CPU power that drops frames. And when the CPU is untaxed, it's the amount of disk bandwidth.

Any progress, djtrixx? Update?

(BTW Turborunner's absolutely 100% correct, don't play back your Huffy vid directly to gauge quality, re-encode it or observe it frame-by-frame instead, again it's really high bandwidth and tough for the computer to keep up with HUffy on real-time playback)

[baseband]

I don't think even the fastest computers on the block can get glitch-free viewing from HuffyUV. My Athlon XP 1800 sure can't. Files converted from HuffyUV to (S)VCD look fine, of course.

When looking at the size of my stream in inVCR, it's usually around 30KB/s (at 704x480). That's dangerously close to the speed Nero tested my slower 7200RPM drive at, which is why that drive drops frames and the new 7200RPM drive does not.

Tried another cap with my 120GB monster. Two full hours of 704x480 HuffyUV (took up 60 gigs!), and NOT A SINGLE FRAME dropped! I love this drive!

Just remember, not all 7200 RPM IDE drives are created equal. You may not need to invest the obscene amount of money that SCSI costs if you simply get the right IDE drive.