Problem with Mainconcept-please advise

[Osm3um]

I have been just recently getting into the whole video capture stuff and any help would be much appreciated.

I REALLY like Mainconcept for some reason and thus my wanting to figure this issue out

I just hooked up a canopus 55 and am running some home vids into it via a VCR (they are CVHS tapes BTW). NOTE: Some of the home videos have some spots where the camera was shut off and on which resulted in a couple seconds of serious snow between shots.

A couple of videos simply would not capture to mpeg via mainconcept and freeze during the capture, this seemed to occur at the spots of snow as stated above.

Whereas almost all would capture but the "processing" would fail after the capture was stopped. There would be a bunch of temp files but no hard drive action etc. This also occured using the mainconcept DV codec. NOTE: Both the mpeg and the DV codec can are buffered via MC.

So, What gives? Anyone else have this issue? Am I correct in guessing it is the "snow" causing the freezes? Would this be something that could/will be corrected via TBC? IF not, what can I do?

NOTE: The same tapes captured to mpg via WinDVD Recorder just fine.

NOTE #2: I have an AVT-8710 TBC on order....

Thanks,
Bob

[Osm3um]

Last night I tested a commercial VHS and it succesfully captured and encoded to mpeg for 1:32 and change. At which time the same issue occurred. It froze up and left a bunch of temp files.

Any suggestions?

Thanks again,
Bob

[Benn_Black]

Mainconcept MPEG Encoder is great for encoding but not so great at capturing. Use Fly DS to capture :

http://www.asvzzz.com

Then the filters in Virtual Dub MPEG2 to tidy up the video.

[redwudz]

I would try WinDV or DVIO and go directly to your hard drive and see if you have the same issues.

I run my ADVC-100 DV output into Mainconcept and it works great converting directly to DVD compliant MPEG2. The only problem I had was with the buffering turned off, could barely keep up. The problems you describe others have had with damaged tapes. Apparently the DV converters don't like blank spots, though I haven't had problems.

Not sure about the TBC being a cure, but it will definitely help the transfer. I have been transferring old VHS long play tapes. Only problem I had was a complete 6 hrs, 3 movie tape that ended up with sync problems, maybe because of blank spots between the movies.

It seems there's not a lot of info about Mainconcept tweaks and fine tuning, especially with DV encoding on the fly.