Dropped Frames

[donsing]

I have been trying to capture Hi-8 and VHS movies for archiving tapes to VCD. I have had limited success, but I can get it all to work except for a continuing dropped frame rate of 15% to 20%. I have everything shut down via CtlAltDel except ULead Videostudio 6 SE basic, Explorer and Systray. Also, DMA is enabled on the hard drive. Computer data is available in profile

HELP

[snowmoon]

Are you capturing directly to VCD? What are your PC specs? What type of HD?

These are all important factors. If you PC just can't do full VCD compression in realtime I suggest capturing to MJPEG and doing an offline compression to VCD using TMPGenc.

[donsing]

I am capturing as MPEG1 using ADS Instant Video and Ulead VideoStudio 6 SE Basic and then using file to create a VCD. My computer specs and hard drive type are in Computer Details. I have 11 GB free on the hard drive.

[Ego_Shredder]

Well your computer spec seems fine, not heard of your capture card before, so I don't know how good it is.


I find frames dropped varies from tape to tape. A poor quality VHS tape like an old borrowed library tape will often cause bad frame drops, but not always. I have tapes which I have bought and hardly played, yet they drop frames badly.


My method is usually to capture using M-JPEG codec (Quality set to eighteen) at 480 x 576 resolution and 44.1/16 audio. If this drops frames I then use WinVCR using MPEG-2 (4000 video/audio bitrate) at 480 x 576 res. If I still can't capture properly, I use WinVCR using MPEG-1 VideoCD preset (in capture tab menu) and this works fine everytime!


Cheers,

Ego 8)

[teddymines]

Try this guide: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/89899.php

I agree that your computer/videocard may not be capable of compressing to mpeg1 in real-time. Capture to AVI using virtualdub, then use tmpgenc with VCD template to create your VCD-compliant mpeg.

Another possibility is the fact that video tape does not pump out frames at precise intervals, so your capture program may interpret late frames as missing. Try VirtualDub, this site has lot of info on using it.

I would add that if your destination is VCD, you can simply capture at 352x480 (to get both fields) as described in the guide. I also perform a 2:1 linear vertical reduction in vdub and get very good AVI's.

[donsing]

Thanks for the info. I am new at this and have no familiarity with virtualdub or tmpgenc. I simply have ADS Instant Video for hardware and ULead Video Studio 6 SE Basic for software. I mistakenly listened to the ad hype and thought it would do what it said it would do. Are you suggesting that is not true?
Thanks for your post

Don

[teddymines]

I suggest you look through the How-To section under the Newbie and Capture headings. There is a lot of good info there. Also, spend a few hours browsing and searching the forums and read the FAQ's. You'll get some good advice and the pieces will begin to fit.

FYI, VideoStudio is a good consumer editing prog, but its capture component is very poor. I tried using MediaStudio's capture app and gave up because it was not flexible enough for what I needed. Seriously, try VirtualDub and then Tmpgenc. They may not have the polish of payware, but there is a ton of information on these on this site and you will solve your problems more quickly and with no cost (both are freeware).

If you want to archive hi-8 and VHS to VCD (this is exactly what I'm doing) then capture to AVI as I described above, create a project in VideoStudio with the EXACT settings so it won't re-encode, edit with VS, output an AVI, then encode the AVI to a VCD-compliant mpeg1 using Tmpgenc. Doing your edits with the AVI will produce much better transitions.

[donsing]

Thanks. I have downloaded the 2 freeware programs and will begin experimenting.

Don

[donsing]

My capture device is ADS Instant Video (USB device). Virtualdub cannot locate its drivers. Any suggestions?

Don