Is it possible to do a decent capture with my system ?

[Dwight]

Hello

I have a Pentium II MMX 300mhz (333 mhz max) with 196 mb RAM
8 gb Seagate + 80 gb 120GXP 7200 rpm IBM deskstar hd and my
graphics card is Ati Rage IIC 4mb and TV-tuner card is Bt829 based Ati ISA Tv-tuner.

So far I've had no luck doing a good capture in virtualdub.
I lose A LOT of frames at 25 fps (30 out of 100 easily). Is my pc too slow ? or graphics card too weak..or virtualdub set wrongly ? or something ? Any help would be appreciated. I always try to captue to my 80 gb hd.

[Sartori]

Capture the avi at 352x288(240) , I`m sure you can use the tweaked Bt capture drivers (you`ll have to do a bit of searching about this on the forums and web) , use a huffyuv (as I recall it doesn`t use much cpu power - please correct me if I`m wrong , with a 2100XP in mine , cpu usage isn`t a problem) codec to cut in half the amount of video data captured . Reduce the sound to mono to cut that data rate in half .
What CPU usage is coming up during capture?

I started capping with a 450 PII and that captured fine , but a 300 PII , I don`t know , your hard drive is up to it at least . I can`t say about your graphics card but it does seem underpowered .
Make sure you haven`t got the 80G Hd on the same ide channel as your cdrom drive as this will slow it immensely .

[Dwight]

Well, my hd is the secondary master..cd-rw (number 2) being the slave..can't really change that at this point. I like having two burners and this is an old machine.

The cpu usage is very low or either very high 100% (at compatibility mode)..at normal it's very low ..don't know why.

I can make a decent capture at 15fps if all goes well..but that's it.
(that does not work at times). I'll take a look at the tweaked drivers issue.

EDIT!

Huffuyv does nothing for me really. I lose 50 frames per 250 captured ones at 25 fps and around the same even at 15fps..something is badly wrong in my system or software. I mean I should be able to capture IMO.
Now if I could only find a guide on the tweaked drivers issue

EDIT! #2

Okay, I capture with Huffuyv or without with Virtualdub with the screen size 352 x 240 (CIFF NTSC with 500 frames I lose around 50...but this is not good enough still. At 352 x 288 I get a lot more loss...I'm a bit clueless now.

[Nelson37]

Disconnect that CD form your capture hard drive and test this setup. This is almost guaranteed to improve your situation (check DMA settings). Assuming that solves your problem, then decide which difficulty you would rather deal with.

With that hardware you need to get all the performance you can, if having the second burner (???) is that important suggest you consider abandoning effort.

[solarfox]

Suggestions:

(1) Rearrange your IDE devices to put both hard drives on the Primary IDE channel, and both CD-R(W) burners on the Secondary channel.

(2) If your motherboard supports ATA66 or ATA100, make sure the appropriate drivers have been loaded and that DMA is enabled for them. If your motherboard's onboard IDE does not support ATA66 or ATA100, consider installing an aftermarket ATA66/100/133 controller.

(3) Even after doing (1) and (2) above, the older 8Gb hard drive might slow things down, especially if its not an ATA66/100 drive and the 80Gb is. Consider replacing this drive with something faster.

(4) Instead of trying to do analog capture, consider investing in a Firewire card (about $50 or so) and an analog-to-DV converter box such as the Canopus ADVC100. I've done many DV captures on a K6-2/380, with no dropped frames, using this method.

(5) If all else fails, keep an eye on your local Fry's Electronics ads (if you have a local Fry's ) and consider upgrading your system the next time they have a good deal on an Athlon CPU/motherboard combo.

[Greg12]

I think you should go to Fry's and skip all the other stuff.


That system is soo slow and the CPU doesn't meet the qualifications for alot of video programs.