Audio capture problem with ATI capture card

[Dreath]

Ok, this problem as far as I can tell has been narrowed down to the sound card. Using ATI's software ( ver 8.8 ) and an old ATI PCI TV capture card, I've been trying to capture some TV shows late at night. The problem was that there were random "drops" in audio with a corresponding slight jump in the image. Basically this would amount to someone saying "Holy Cow" and you actually hearing "Holy ow". This problem shows up within 2 minutes of recording the show and continues which makes it very annoying. Reviewing the log shows that there were no dropped frames! I also ran it through MPG2VCR tool to analize it for GOP errors and there were none! It didn't matter if I captured in MPEG1, MPEG2, or AVI. Even using another caputer tool MPGVCR (I think) to capture directly to AVI for a few minutes still resulted in the same problem.

Now, since I was using an onboard AC97 audio sound card, I decided to disable it and install a PCI SoundBlaster 512 card. Now the problem isn't so much as audio "drops" but rather about 1 minute into the capture I start getting a vibrating echo effect. Again, no dropped frames!

Finally, I decided to run the ATI system checker and it mentioned that my sound card clock speed wasn't within their spec. Also, I checked my IRQ settings and the video capture, ethernet, USB port, and sound card all share the same IRQ.

My system is WinXP Pro (no service pack) running on a Duron 1.1GHz with 256Megs PC133 ran and a built in SiS graphics card.

Since the problem seems to be the sound card, would upgrading the sound card help correct my problem so it passes ATI system checker? Also, would moving the IRQ's around so that the capture card and sound card don't share the same one help? How would I change IRQ settings under WinXP pro? Would it be better if I went with an ATI AIW Radeon 7500 and ditch my old ATI TV Wonder PCI? Please help. Thanks!

Also, just curious if anyone who doesn't have any of these capture problems have shared IRQs or systems that don't pass ATI's system checker?

[Dreath]

Bump!

Sorry, need help on this.

[edsmith77]

Dreath,
You might want to consider other possibilities like screen saver or other background running tasks.

Ed

[Dreath]

No screensaver or other background tasks such as antivirus scanners or anything. I know that during any video capture it's best to have a little as running as possible. I might try adding more memory (another 256megs) to see if that might help.

The only other possibility is that my IRQ for audio capture (I think) is shared by the built in sound card and the PCI network card (no, I was not browsing the web while I was captureing BTW ). I had hoped that I could assign individual IRQ's using the BIOS but it doesn't have that option. Any advice on what PCI latency settings might be helpful. Mine is set at 64 right now but I don't know if I should increase or decrease it or if it will even make a difference.

Oh, my CPU isn't overloaded as it was about 54% during the captures.

Thanks!

[Havrick]

I have about the same problem. When capturing, the audio becomes distorted/drops out. This happens about 1 minute into it. I have a ATI TV Wonder Pro with MMC 8.8. I found that the problem only occurs when my audio settings are 48kHz 16bit stereo. I changed my sound card from a Live Value to a Live 5.1 with no real difference. I have no frames dropped while capturing. When I capture with audio at 44kHz stereo all works fine. I notice the audio is delayed while capturing a 48kHz. Sound card shares IRQ with network card and USB controller. I get no errors so I think this is not an issue. System test says sound card timming is OK, but one time test said it was not? I have seperate IRQ's for Video card(ati9200) and capture card(tv Won Pro). Still working on this problem. I will post again with more info. Thanks, Mike.

[hudsonf]

Have you tried going into Network Connections and disabling your network connection. I do this all the time to avoid dropped frames. I know you said you have no dropped frames but if it is a conflict with your network card this might work. If you try this don't do like I did the first time and forget to enable the connection and wonder why you can't access the internet.

[Dreath]

Thanks for the info Havrick. I am trying to capture audio at 48KHz so it is DVD compliant. Luckily my DVD authoring software (ULead DVD movie factory) does an excellent job of converting 44 KHz audio to 48 KHz without any sync or lag problems. I was trying to avoid the long conversion time by capturing to 48 KHz but if there is no way around it, then I'll deal with it until a solution or fix is found.

My next step is to switch back to 44KHz and see if the problemgoes away. If it does, I'll switch back to 48 KHz and unplug my network cable to see if that fixes the problem..

Seems like we are finally understanding the problem. Lets hope there is a solution.

[DereX888]

Dreath
Does it happen at every (video) resolution you capture at with your Duron 1.1? Dont forget ATI cards rely on and use your CPU for encoding video; have your task manager on performance tab running in the foreground during recording and check how much of CPU is being used, maybe there isnt much 'juice' left in your CPU's power for audio encoding? Specially if you capture with video at some higher resolution

As I remember there were some WinXP's capturing bugs fixed in SP1, it would be wise to install SP1 at all (if you can ofcourse). Another thing is WinXP's DirectX - there was some DirectX7 (or 8?) update specially for videocapture as well in the past, and it was recommended to install by ATI for all their capture cards. Or just install DirectX 9 Gold ...

[Dude_Son]

Dude I have a ATI AIW card and I updated to the Catalyst 4.x and all the sudden my sound was horrible!!! so I then went back to my Cat. 3.1 and my sound is crystal clear. I to have a AC97 audio sound card. I also heard that MMC 8.8 has caused people some probs. If I was u I would use 8.1. but I think ur audio probs is because of the cat drivers. it was for me anyway. I hope this helps u out.

[Dreath]

Ok, I have confirmed the problem as being with the capture audio rate. Having the audio at 48KHz causes the problem while setting it to 44KHz captures just fine without an issue.

As for capture sizes, I'm limited to 352x240 (can't get more than 240 lines with the software limiting my ATI TV WONDER). I've used the resource meter to make sure my CPU isn't overloaded during a capture (averages about 53%) and that is with heavy video soap. Again, no dropped frames. See previous posts above.

I also have the latest Direct X 9.0b so that shouldn't be a problem.

Still haven't installed SP1 but might in the very near future.

I don't know why just changing the audio from 44KHz to 48KHz (keeping the same 16bit stereo settings) would cause this problem. It should also be noted that during the capture at 48KHz audio that the audio lags the video by a couple of seconds. Otherwise, at 44KHz the audio is in sync with the video during the capture.

Based on this information it seems like a software problem especially with MMC. Still have a few tests to do like disabling any hardware sharing the sound cards IRQ (USB and Ethernet card) and installing SP1. I'll let you know the results but until then keep the information flowing. There has to be a fix for this.

[Havrick]

Dreath. I am still working on this. Our problem is the same. What sound card are you using? I have VIA chipset. When my problem started is when I upgraded to MMC 8.8 from MMC 8.2. I was dropping frames in MMC8.2 so switched to MMC8.8. Now I have no frame drops just audio drops. Now I have configured my PCI cards (phisicaly) so my sound card has its own IRQ. No effet on problem, still drops audio after 1 minute at 48kHz.

[Havrick]

More info: Cpu usage OK, 85% during capture. I have SP1 on my XP Home OS. Abit VH6 motherboard. 512 RAM. Via Apollo Pro133A chipset. PIII 866. ATI 9200 Radion. ATI TV Wonder Pro. Sony DVD 510. WD 60 Gb. Soundblaster Live 5.1.

[Dreath]

Interesting Havrick. I have a VIA chipset (KT133) in my motherboard from MSI made for Gateway. I wonder if it has to do with the VIA chipset. I captured some stuff last night and as far as I know, it should be ok, will check when I get home from work.

If it's ok, then I have a couple of other options. One is to uninstall all the ATI stuff and reinstall a slightly older version of the catalyst drivers which Dude_son suggested. If that doesn't work there is a VIA PCI latency fix that I don't know if it will fix the problem as it seems to create some artifacts with my video card which is kinda odd. Finally, I can upgrade to the latest VIA drivers and see if that has any effect though I don't want to upgrade as the computer isn't broken per se.

Anybody else here with a different chipset that has the same problem? Just curious...

[Sulik]

I remember having a similar problem back when I was using a P3-700 on a VIA chipset and SBLive - the only workaround was to capture at a lower sampling rate (I had to go down to 22kHz). The problem was due to the bad PCI implementation from VIA (too long latency causing audio dropouts). This happened especially with video capture, when you have the uncompressed video data, disk I/O and audio data all going through the PCI bus at the same time.

I'd say it's 99.9% sure that this is your problem. I think MMC allows you to capture at 24kHz (converted internally to 48kHz). That would make you a 48kHz file but only use the PCI bandwidth of 24kHz.

[Havrick]

Thanks Sulik. I agree about the PCI bus being to busy. I still have my problem. I have now tried new VIA drivers with no effect. Also PCI latency patch file for VIA boards with no effect. Also removed Live card and used onboard audio with no effect. It now is time to accept my flaw in my hardware and move on. Thanks all.

[bottle-necked]

I had a motherboard with VIA everything on it. blaa. You notice in my profile now I have nothing VIA. Getting VIA to work expecially with the ATI and Creative combination is fairly hard to do, but I did it just a couple years ago so it can be done.

If I can remember right I updated my BIOS and motherboard drivers to the very latest versions available. MMC had no effect on my problems but the Cat driver did. I finally found an older version that would work with my setup then everything was fine after that. I can't remember the version number. Using the wrong version sent my CPU load sky high, you know the rest.

All the latency patches I tried had no effect even the Soundblaster latency patch. Nothing. Matching up the proper version driver that is going to work with that VIA piece of garbage (sorry old habit) is the hard part.

My P4 caps DVD MPEG2 and runs 13% cpu load. haaaa.

Good luck you guys.

[lordsmurf]

I have a VIA motherboard using a Celeron, no problems here. Just a buzz from ground-loop I need to fix still.

[DereX888]

Well, MMC 8.8 itself might be at fault. Try other MMC8.x as someone suggested earlier.
I had a problem with MMC8.8 too - all of the sudden once MMC8.8 was installed it couldnt start if I had Remote Desktop Sharing active (RDS is a part of NetMeeting in other than XP Windowses, similar to -but better than - Remote Assistance in WinXP).

I still think MMC 7.7.0.1 was the best version released so far, and I can testify I had it working on *any* kind of chipsets with no problem whatsoever. If you dont need to use videosoap, and youre OK with only 1 selectable personal capture setting (among them four selectable ones in MMC if ya know what I mean) then I would recommend going back to MMC7.7.0.1 - specially that it works with all the newest Catalyst so far anyway.
My favorite combination is MMC7 + Cat3.6, it does better VBR capping at the same settings than all other ones I've tried so far (with ATI A-I-W Radeon 7200, I dont know what results you might have with TV Wonder).

[presto]

I want to mention something that causes sound to drop out every 10 or 15 seconds throughout a capture. This happens when a scheduled capture comes on when MMC is allready capturing. You can also see the grey bar appearing and disapearing at the top of the picture as MMC keeps trying and failing to start the new capture.

It also happens if two captures butt up against each other but only if you have your temporary file set up on the wrong drive. I forget how I ended up configuring it but if you find you are getting the problem with captures that follow directly after another one, try changing the location of you temp file to the other drive. ATI does mention this particular problem in their known-issues on their site.

[DereX888]

presto

its true what you said; however it lasts only 1 minute from scheduled program's start (or first 5min? I dont remember now) until ATI Scheduler gives up and pass on the second scheduled recording.

butt-up scheduled programs may have probs when you set first one to 'shutdown MMC after recording completes'.
I dont know what ya mean about setting up drives? Maybe you mean having temporary capture drive and target capture drive on different drives? But this is obvious that MMC won't have time to transfer captured material from one drive to another when another scheduled butt-to-butt program starts... I thought everybody *always* set their temporary and target drives on the same drive/partition, as it doesnt make sense (with few exceptions) to *not capture* on the same drive where it will be saved.

[presto]

I'm sure your right. I never checked to see how long it persisted. I wanted to mention it though because some people drawn to this thread may in fact be having this trouble.

Consecutively Scheduled Events
If you schedule two or more recording events that are consecutive in time, the second event may not start, as the previous event has not completed saving the recording to your HD. To avoid this, make the temporary capture drive the same drive as where you have designated the scheduled event to save to, or from the scheduler in the player, adjust the time of the second event to be 1 or 2 minutes after the first event.

This might seem obvious but a LOT of problems are caused by things that are obvious in hind-sight. I didn't originally set up my temp drive at all I just left the settings where they were.

[Dreath]

Luckily I'm not scheduling recording events one right after the other so that doesn't seem to be an issue.

As for the update on my audio problem when I switched back to 44KHz, well the 2 hour video I captured Monday night had a different problem. The audio seemed fine but the video was really jerky. It would play for a second or two and then freeze while the audio continues. A second later the video would all of a sudden jump to catch up with the audio. No audio distortion but this time it's a video distortion! ARRRGGG!!! No droppd frames!!! This didn't happen when I did a few test captures (about 2-3 minutes each) before I scheduled this one.

Therefore I set up a series of recording events (with at least 5 minutes between each event) last night. I now have 4 videos of 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 1.5 hours in lenght. I will review them when I get home from work and let you people know the results. I'm suspecting that eventhough I've solved the audio problem, I have a new problem.

Oh, and before you ask, yes my DMA is enabled on my HD. :P

Geez this is such a pain. Solve one problem and discover another. If only PowerVCR would make compliant GOP closed MPEGS I wouldn't be using ATI MMC.

Oh, and those that keep saying that you use old versions of the drivers and MMC, could you post links to the files! It might help us who are trying to get this problem worked out.

[Dude_Son]

Here ya go man, I hope this works for ya!
http://www.ati.com/support/products/radeonwinxppreviousdrivers.html

[bottle-necked]

Just go to the www.ATI.com site and click on Customer Care, then Find a Driver. This will take you to the driver support selection page. From here you can select your specifics so you are sure to get the proper driver for your type of hardware. If any older versions are available for that hardware there will be a link on the bottom of that page.
Good luck.

[Dreath]

Thanks for the info but I found the problem with my jerky video. It was my settings in my video player that was causing the problem. DOH! The file was just fine.

All 4 recording times had no problems. No dropped frames and no GOP errors. Once I had the correct settings in my video player, it played just fine.

Now my only question is whether to record at 24KHz (and double the sample rate to 48KHz via ATI settings) or try to continue to work out the 48KHz issue. Do you think there will be a noticable loss of quality in the sound between 24KHz and 48KHz? Wish there was a fix for this problem.

[tjhayko]

I'm actually having a similar problem, but it appears with playing live TV only. While playing live TV, I get little audio pauses about every 10 seconds or so. If I capture at the same time and play back the resulting capture, the audio is fine. Anybody have any idea what might cause this?

I've got an All in Wonder 9600xt.