AVI_IO Needs more I/O Buffers,looking for new cap prog aswel

[Neuromancer]

Hi I have been having some bad woes and I really need to get this capturing done.I've been using AVI_IO along with huffyuv capturing to 29.97 fps,720x480,48khz pcm audio.Now I captured to this a few days ago fine for a broadcast that was 8 minutes long.Yesterday I tried to cap a VHS but I dropped frames like mad then I kept receiving the need more i/o buffers error in avi_io then I defragged with Power Defrag.I was doing alright so then the next day I start capping a video and it's going fine but then 6 minutes in I get the need more i/o buffers error!This is very frustrating as I HAVE to get these capped and authored I'm on a tight schedule.I'm not running anything in the backend or frontend other than this.Also any other ideas for a good program for capturing?Virtualdub is useless as it drops 5 times as many frames.

-Thanks

btw I cap to a different hard drive and such but I'm getting a new 160GB SATA one soon would you think these problems will exist when I cap to that one?

[junkmalle]

I used to use AVI_IO a lot with a Matrox 450 eTV. It would always drop 1 or two frames a minute at 704x480. Try capturing at 352x480 or thereabouts. I never had problems at that resolution.

[Neuromancer]

thing is I have to cap at 720x480,I just don't see why it was working great the other day and now it can't last.

[redwudz]

If you are capturing from a VHS tape, they are not all that stable of a source. That's probably why you need more buffer space. You should invest in a TBC if you don't have one and you plan to do this often.

I don't think it is really a software problem. Also if you are capping VHS tape, 1/2 DI would work as well with a lot less frame drops.

[junkmalle]

If this is an emergency and you can only capture successfully at 1/2 D1, you can resize up to full D1 after capturing if you need to. Obviously, that's not as good as capturing full D1 to start, but it might get you through the current emergency.

You didn't list what your current drive is, what capture card you have, CPU speed, amount of DRAM, etc. so it's hard to say if a new drive or another program will help. If the new drive is bigger and faster than your old drive it may do better. Be sure you have DMA enabled for all drives, especially the one you're capturing to. If you have less than 512 MB of memory you might do better with more.

AVI_IO is pretty good at not dropping frames and handling dropped frames when it does. So I doubt that AVI_IO is the problem. It sounds like you are using a good combination of settings for AVI_IO: HUFFYUV compression, PCM audio. VirtualDub, in my experience, drops many more frames than AVI_IO. I never found a program that worked better (with the exception of Matrox's PC-VCR program, which only works with Matrox capture cards).

[Evander]

a couple of good options are iuvcr (30 day shareware) or virtualvcr (freeware)

[Neuromancer]

Thanks guys think I'm gonna try and rent a TBC aswell but if it helps here are my systems specs:

AMD Athlon 2500+ XP running at stork 1.83ghz
Abit Nf7-S mobo
Hyper-X PC4000 512MB Ram
Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT 128MB
ATI Tv Wonder VE

I drop about a frame every 1 to 2 seconds which I don't find to bad or probably noticeable at all it's just after like 6 minutes it stops capturing because of the I/O buffer crap.But hopefully a new stat 160gb won't have this problem when I cap to it right?

[Riccardom]

You can try to capture from a more stable source, like the analog output of a DVD player, playing a disc without macrovision.
In this way you can be sure if it is the source or your recording chain.
For the former you'll probably need a TBC, in the other case need to investigate further.
Hope it helps

Riccardo