Windows XP capturing help please...

[rhuala2]

Well I am still on my quest of finding the holy grail of capture quality. I find I am running into brick walls becasue of Windows XP. I bought XP because it was suppose to be an 'an improvement to the windows multimedia environment'. Well the most touted capture program out there 'VirtualDub' doesn't capture properly on XP. I get a capture that is just a pure green screen that then crashes Media Player. I know it's due to the WDM vs. VFW Driver difference, and I am aware that I can use a wrapper to get VirtualDub to work if I really want. But the slower performance and loss of functionality are steering me clear of this path... for now.

I have been experimenting with the following programs without reaching my desired goals:

VirtualDub - Doesn't capture with WDM drivers (XP)
AVIIO - Same problem as VirtualDub
PowerVCR - Pretty good quality but captures to it's own mpeg1/2 encoders. Won't do raw avi.
WinProducer - Pretty good quality again, but seems to have own encoders and can't seem to change bit rate or fps
iuVCR - Couldn't get it to capture, kept giving me an error regarding change graph setting or something to that effect.
Windows XP Movie Maker - Couldn't capture hi-res


I really want to go down the route of:

1. Capturing raw .avi using the Huffyuv codec
2. Edit the raw .avi
3. Encode with TMPGEnc.

Unfortunately everytime I try, Windows XP slaps me in the face .

My most pressing questions are:

1. What is a good program to capture raw .avi using the Huffyuv codec on Windows XP pro???
2. What is a good program for editing raw .avi files? Can it be done without creating a new huge raw file?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

rhuala

[lb113]

What hardware are you using to do the captures?

Are the drivers for the capture card the most up-to-date from the
manufacture?

In XP you are using WDM drivers so things that capture well with WDM are the best here.

I found that VirtualVCR seems to handle WDM captures the best.
It will allow you to select a capture size that your card may not handle and get an error during capture.

Once I figured out how to VirtualVCR to work correctly, I had enough information to get Virtualdub to work for capturing. Most of this work was figuring out which resolutions that the capture card supports.

Also remember that the manufacture's software may be able to get to features that these other programs cannot use.

I'm currently using AverTV studio. The first attempt was using ADS instant video. It had problems installing the wrong drivers for the device to the point of not working.

SP-1 seems to also help in the driver install area as it at least allows you to make a choice as to how you install drivers.

[easydvd]

I think it may actually be a problem with your cap card or possibly the driver installation. I am running XP pro with sp1 installed and I haven't had any problems doing caps with VirtualDub or IuVCR.

My complaint with IuVCR is that I can't seem to capture at higher than 320x240. However, I don't have any problems with V-Dub at 352x480 or 480x480......higher than that I start dropping LOTS of frames.

What hardware are you using to do the captures?

Are the drivers for the capture card the most up-to-date from the
manufacture?

I use an ATI TV Wonder VE and was having HUGE problems until I junked the ATI drivers and ALL their software........

Can you give a little more information about your hardware and cap card?

[rhuala2]

Oh yes, sorry for not including my system info I usually do:

---system---
Windows XP Pro
AMD 1700+, 512MB RAM
MSI Geforce 4 Ti4400, Latest detonator Drivers
Creative Soundblaster Live
MSI K7T266 Pro2 Motherboard, Latest 4-in-1 drivers
60GB Hard Drive, ATA66

I do not have sp1 installed yet because I just haven't had the time. I think tongite I may install sp1 and then give Virtualdub another try. I really hope it works.

For massive raw .avi files do you guys edit with VirtualDub? Do you create a seperate file or modify the orginal. Thanks for the ideas...

rhuala

[dvfan]

It may help to have a faster hardrive such as an ata 100

[kayfam]

Oh yes, sorry for not including my system info I usually do:

---system---
Windows XP Pro
AMD 1700+, 512MB RAM
MSI Geforce 4 Ti4400, Latest detonator Drivers
Creative Soundblaster Live
MSI K7T266 Pro2 Motherboard, Latest 4-in-1 drivers
60GB Hard Drive, ATA66

I do not have sp1 installed yet because I just haven't had the time. I think tongite I may install sp1 and then give Virtualdub another try. I really hope it works.

For massive raw .avi files do you guys edit with VirtualDub? Do you create a seperate file or modify the orginal. Thanks for the ideas...

rhuala

Whether you install SP1 or not it's not going to affect your capturing ability. From personal experience with SP1 your going to get better results applying the service pack after a clean install unless of course you know how to make a slip stream CD. The only reason I'm even bothering to post this is that in my case after applying SP1 to both of my PC's one went without a hitch and the other resulted in me having to reformat. I'm not going to take this any further off topic, but I thought I might give you a heads up on what you might be in for.

[jesterspet535]

rhuala2,

I have been sucesfully capturing with Huffy through VirtualDub, editing the parts I want to throw out and keping th parts I want to join, inverse tecline, deinterlace, and compressing the audio all on Windows XP.

Without going into hardware specs, I can say that after I got my ATI AIW, to capture without crashing, VDub worked great at the default format values. When I started tweaking the values is where I started to runing into troubles.

The green screen seems to become present in Windows Media Player when you have alpha blending embedded into your AVI. I have noticed that in different players the green screen will either fade, or become invisible depending on some random reason known only to god & the gremlins in my AVI's. Remove the alpha blending and this should go away.

SP1 will need to be installed as it has some hidden "mess with the WDM & VFW" checkmark box that is unchecked. I have greatly improved the reliability of my captures, not dropping frames after this was installed on my computer.

Since your Videocard is different than mine, I'll offer the following sofware advice: if VDub will not see your card as a valid capture device, as it did on me, look into your drivers, and the order in which you installed them. for ATI AIW folks, we must get the order and the versions correct, otherwise we recieve no end of troubles. Your computer may exibit this quirky sense of rebellion for some reason.

[kalus69]

I agree with lb113. VirtualVCR is worth trying if you are having problems with virtualdub. I have been using it will huffyuv and dropping no frames at all. If you haven't already, try the btwincap drivers as well to see if you prefer it to wdm.

[rhuala2]

I keep getting a grainy type pixelated picture with Virtual VCR would u please share some of your settings. I have gone thru them all carefully but am sure it can be improved. Thanks.

rhuala

[nsdn]

Actually after capturing for a very long time I think I have found the holy grail of capturing...

I am using Xp and iuvcr along with a DV codec (which is wdm).

I am capturing PAL 720*576 using the tweeked bt848 drivers from the same site iuvcr comes from....the (mainconcept)DV codec only has two settings.....NTSC or PAL...at faull TV resolution.

Then....I can mix real DV with the analogue sourced DV using premier 6.5...and edit very nicely.

Then...I use DVD2SVCD in avi2svcd mode to make my mpegs.....using cinemacraft of course.....using the temporal smoother in dvd2svcd helps for those noisey camera scenes.

The result is the best I have ever seen....

[easydvd]

How are you capturing at such a large screen res with iuVCR? I have tried and tried and every time I try to go higher that 320x240 it crashes. Any advice?

[offline]

nsdn,

what is the name of that DV codec and what version?

Thanks.
[ using iuvcr to cap at 756x576 with picvideo's mjpeg @ 18 quality)

[nsdn]

Hiyah,

This is probably a pretty old version of the mainconcept DV codec...but it ain't broke so i have not tryed to fix it...the instal package is called mcdv204.exe so I imagine it is version 204. I still have it somewhere.....................

I did not have any trouble at all getting iuvcr to capture using this codec. In fact the codec does not give you an option to capture at less than 720 hor resolution.....I have not tryed overiding this using the capture format button in iuvcr.....i am sure it would have an attack....plus because I was editing a mix of real DV and old analogue camera tapes, I was wanting the streams to be as compatible as possible (premier had no problems with the 2 streams...ulead did not like them tho..it wanted to re render the whole friggin timeline everytime u previewed). The only problem i had was when I capture over an hour in one file...I seem to be prone to loose audio sync suddenly, answer is to use segmented capture....seems to fix it.....not that big a deal when your editing tho ...just move the audio on the time line....

I did find that I could not use smartree to preview the video while capturing....had to connect separate monitor...caused dropped frames for me, also need to select RGB24 for capture format....cpu usage was up around 80%...but zero dropped frames even after 90 mins of capture.

My system is as follows:

athlon XP1800 (o/ced to 2000)
7200rpm drives (80gig/40gig)
a 4 year old fly video 98 bt848/878 TV/capture card..hehe
used the tweaked bt848 drivers from the iuvcr site...had to fiddle with these a bit.

oh yeah.....for some reason dvd2svcd did not like the native dv stream this codec produces...it screws up the audio for some reason...but Premier 6.5 thinks the stream is ok....so just simply open the file in premier then save to AVI...there is no conversion time.....then DVD2svcd converts no problems. The mpeg 2 plugin for premier is a piece of junk btw.....it might be a problem if u have really large AVI files....I am sure if I played with it a bit more i could get it to work directly but I found a solution that worked......

My settings under DVD2svcd (in avi mode) is simply smart deinterlace and I used the temporal smoother on its lowest setting. I encoded at 480*576 since there was some real DV stuff in there...and at a bitrate of 3M/sec average using 4 pass VBR....this bitrate is the fastest my DVD player can cope with...but there is absolutly no pixelation which is actually saying something for home video footage at this resolution.

I would be curious to see how those media converters compare that u can get for about 200USD.

[VideoMann]

Using WindowsXP on a P4- 2GHz/GeForce3

no problem capturing 720x480 with
cableTV-->ADVC-100--->iuVCR or Premiere or WinProducer or PowerVCR or PowerDirector, VegasVideo

no SP1 update for WinXP,latest detonator nVidia drive but also worked fine with previous drivers.

You must have a software conflict or one of your video apps must have corrupted some common dll.

[rhuala2]

nsdn,

To summarize your process:

1. Capture using iuvcr w/ DV codec, @ PAL 720*576
2. Covert/Edit using Adobe Premier 6.5
3. DVD2SVCD in avi2svcd mode to make mpegs (use cinemacraft temporal smoother in dvd2svcd helps for those noisey camera scenes)


May need:
tweeked bt848 drivers from the same site iuvcr comes from the same site iuvcr comes from.
mainconcept DV codec...the instal package is called mcdv204.exe

Couple questions:

1. Where are you cropping the file. You say "so just simply open the file in premier then save to AVI". I guess if no changes are made Premier will save in same codec it loaded. If you use Premier to crop and edit, it will save in it's own .avi file, is there someway to get around this extra compression? In other words, what are you using to crop and edit the iuvcr file?

2. How does DVD2SVCD do for compression size vs. quality? Is it better than TMPGenc?

Thanks,

rhuala

[nsdn]

Actually I know I should crop but I did not bother.....the tape head switching area is out of view on the TV set so it did not bother me...although yeah I know it eats into the mpeg efficency. Since my end project was only 5 minutes in duration I just turned the bitrate up as high as I could go (3M/sec av for my dvd player), there are no artifacts at all.

If you want to lower the bitrate, you probably should crop the switching noise off.

There is a native iuvcr croping filter but I do not know if it works or not. definitly worth the try, or i am sure as you say you could use premier to crop.

The temporal filter is not part of cinemacraft, I am pretty sure it is part of avisynth which is a module within dvd2svcd....avisyth does the framserving, resizing and other stuff before feeding it to cinemacraft. Using the preview you can turn the filter on and off and see the effect, as with differant deinterlace techniques (you missed deinterlacing in your summery....I know mpeg2 supports interlacing but the result is definitly better for me anyway deinterlaced)

The latest builds of tmpge are getting closer to cinemacraft, but it still does not compare to 4 pass VBR using cimemacraft. I used to use tmpge for everything, but I am a solid convert to cinemacraft/dvd2svcd.

[offline]

is called mcdv204.exe so I imagine it is version 204. I still have it somewhere

Thx for the info nsdn. I'll see if Mainconcept has a trial version
they are willing to let me test. Don't give out any copies as
it will be most likely under copyright.

I did a test of the Canopus DV codec that everyone is raving about
(capture thu firewire) and while it was very nice, analogue to huffy
is still tops in my book.

[nsdn]

no probs.....tho huffy is vfw based

simply however the method described above replicates the quality off the camera tape...which is better than I have been able to achieve previously using huffy,picvideo and or a plethora of other methods I tried.

Also if you use anything but the dv codec, premier will want to convert it before u preview it..../edit mix with DV footage.

I would never give anyone the codec......when its so easy to get for ones self )

If anyone is interested I can snip a bit and send an example...I am too lazy to put it up on a web site....not used a web bassed hard drive for a while....if u know of one I can stick a snip up there...with an example of a transition from the analogue to DV