VirtualDub Dropping Frames when capturing VHS

[big_al_40]

I am trying to capture VHS videos using virtualdub. I am encoding them with XVID @ 3200kbps at 25fps with the deinterlace blend filter. Something isn't quite right b/c I am dropping way too many frames. For example I just captured 12 seconds of video and i have 266 frames captured and 61 dropped. I did a quick google search and found other posts about frame dropping from 2003 and I have a C2D T7200(2ghz 4mb L2), 2gb RAM, 7200RPM hd etc. My system is 3-4 times as fast as those they were using 4 years ago but I am still dropping frames while other could encode with minimal frame dropping 4 years ago. Any ideas?

[jagabo]

Xvid is not a good choice for capture. If you need MPEG4 capture try Divx. It's about 3 times faster than Xvid. Or use a fast lossless codec like HuffYUV. Then convert to the codec you want later.

Blend deinterlace is one of the worst things you can do. Try Donald Graft's Smart Deinterlace if you want to use VirtualDub. Or inverse telecine if your source is film based. Better solutions would be to deinterlace in AVISynth with LeakKernelDeint() or inverse telecine in AVISynth.

[big_al_40]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'll try divx like you said. Any suggestions for bitrate settings? is 3200kbps like I had ok?

Does huffyuv use alot of disk space? i only have a 160gb HD.

what should I use in place of blend deinterlace? Should I even deinterlace at all?

[big_al_40]

ONe more thing where can I d/l divx? is divx.com ok or does it have adware/spyware in it?

[jagabo]

Note I added a few comments to my last post.

Yes, HuffYUV will take a lot of disk space. The amount varies depending on your source but you're probably looking at 30 GB/hr.

What do you plan to do with the video you are capturing? If you are going to make a DVD you should leave the video interlaced. If you're making a video primarily for viewing on a computer you'll want to inverse telecine (restore the original 24 fps film frames) or deinterlace.

If you continue to capture with Divx I would suggest forgetting about bitrates and using "1-pass quality based" encoding. Pick the quality you want and the encoder will use as much bitrate as required at each frame to achieve that quality. The file size will be unpredictable though. The quality is specified by the Target Quantizer the smaller the value the higher the quality. Try 3, that's usually a good compromise.

[jagabo]

Yes, you can download the free version of Divx (it has some limitations). It doesn't come with spyware but it does come with several programs you can choose not to install.

[big_al_40]

It looks like the only format I can use is UYVY but I can't find any codecs that work with UYVY. Any suggestions?

[deckard8]

Xvid works great and fast for capture if you turn off all options and just whack the bitrate up to max.

[gll99]

Virtualdub was originally designed as a vfw application. To capture using wdm device drivers which NT versions of windows like XP use, it needs to use a vfw2wdm wrapper. This is where the slowdown occurs.

You need to find a capture application made for use with wdm drivers. I use WinVDR Pro (not free but there is a 30 day trial) but there are many others like freeware Virtualvcr, Ize TV (no longer updated) and other non free directshow capture programs like iuVCR. Check the capture tools on this site for some examples and links.

It is possible that later versions of Virtualdub or Virtualdubmod have been reprogrammed to not require the wrapper but I really don't know that nor have I checked.

btw) Using filters during capture can add a lot of processing overhead depending on the filter and some filters designed for multi pass can't even be used at capture.