Dropping frames while capturing

[joea123123]

I am sure this topic has benn covered a million times here but I can not find the answer.

My problem is I can not capture video on my system without dropping frames. This includes analog capture with my xtasy everything video card or firewire capture with several different camcorders. I have checked my hard drive speed and they are all ove 15MB/SEC.

My computer specs are:
P3/533
640 MB RAM
Win XP
2 scsi hard drives (system is 15,000RPM with additional 10,000RPM drive
1 7200RPM IDE drive
2 scsi controller cards adaptec 2940AU and 2940U2W
via chipset with 4 in 1 driver installed

My computer used to have win 98 anwhen the problem started happening so I reformatted and installed XP from scratch with no change at all in capturing. This computer used to capture fine at one time back when 98 was on it but I dont know when it stopped, I must have changed something but I do not know what.......could it be too much memory?

Any suggestions would be appreciated before I pull all my hair out!
Thanks
Joe

[doug1937@hotmail.com]

1) Before you capture, try closing every single application that isn't absolutely necessary, especially all that crap typically found on the task bar.
2) Ensure you screen saver is set to NONE
3) The Power Saving options in the Control Panel Power applet should all be set to Never (never turn off the hard drives, never stand by, etc.)
4) Go into the BIOS and turn off the Power Management features.
5) If all of the above together don't improve your situation, try disconnecting all HDDs except one, including the controller(s) of the disconnected HDDs. If you can capture w/out dropping using only one HDD and one controller, try adding another controller/HDD, test again, and then add the third, etc.

BTW, you didn't say what your capture parameters are. They will have the largest effect on your drops, more than any hardware influence.

[joea123123]

Thanks for the response!

All power management except turn off monitor after 3 hrs is off and I ahve no screen saver. As far as capturing parmaters it doeesnt matter. Whatever size I capture I always get some dropped frames.

thanks
Joe

[timone]

[quote="joea123123"]
Thanks for the response!

All power management except turn off monitor after 3 hrs is off and I ahve no screen saver. As far as capturing parmaters it doeesnt matter. Whatever size I capture I always get some dropped frames.

thanks
Joe
/quote]
Dear joe,
Can I suggest the Foll:
1.I presume UR using VDub try internal capture and look at the average frame rate during capture it should settle to the fps you had wanted to capture quickly after capture is initaite if it does not the find the fps at which it settles even with dropped frames. Now use this figure in the settings dialogue box for your fresh capture. Try a fresh capture. Dropped frames should improve

2. I use Vdub with
AtholonXP 1600 ,512 RAM,Ati AIW 128pro,Win XPpro OS,2HDD 30gig7200udma and 40 gig 5400 udma and
I drop frames if set for 15 fps but at 16.6666 I do not drop frame for 3-4 hrs captur from TV/ composite video- quality is excellant.

3.If the above suggestion does not work try
a) fromatting disc
b)same fps as in internal capture but
c) use compatibility mode capture.
best of luck
timone

[Unravel]

Before you start capturing, you can go to the Task Manager, set your capturing program to high priority, then there should not be any frames dropped. I used to always have 1% frames dropped until I found this way.

[Macros746]

First of all, XP has been know to cause a number of problems with
capturing. That being said, what resolution are you trying to Cap. to?
You might try lowering a bit and seeing what that does for you....


Macros

p.s. maybe if you kept your 98 disc around you could reinstall

[joea123123]

Thanks for all your posts!

I have tried everything suggested so far and still get dropped frames. The best I have been able to do is to use Vdub and get no dropped frames by using huff comp and small screen size. Forget about 640x480 and above or even DV capture. My son has a similar computer (same MB, Win XP, only 340MB RAM, IDE drives, AIW Radeon) and it works PERFECT! No frames dropped with analog or DV capture through FW, so I cant imagine it being MB related, I am stumped. Things ive thought it could be are power supply and too much ram. Any ideas on those?

Thanks again in advance

[Macros746]

What drivers are you using in your AIW? As I'm sure you know by now ATI driver support is spotty at best. You should go to rage3d.com and download 2 driver sets: The latest drivers for your system...and then the unofficial leaked drivers. Then head over to omegacorner and download his latest drivers. Then uninstall your present drivers and try them in the order listed above. When you uninstall the drivers, if possible (if this is beyond your technical comfort level don't do it!) do regedit and remove all references to ATI. I'm guessing one of the first two driver sets will solve or at least help your problem. If not try the omegacorner drivers. He does great performance increasing work. The problem is, last time I tried his new drivers ATI (through no fault of OMega's) had disabled the cable input on the card......I'm not sure if this is still and issue...so try the first two and see what happens.

Hope this will solve your issues,

Macros

p.s. feel free to email me if you have any further questions.

[dphirschler]

Sometimes a poor quality VHS tape will cause frame drops. My computer captures and is only using like 10-15% CPU. Harddrive is easily keeping up as well. But at the same point on a certain tape, it always drops a frame. I am not sure what can be done about that.

As for methods to get a little speed out of it... try this method:

Set your audio to the poorest quality (telephone quality, mono). Capture like that. You should drop fewer frames or possibly no frames now. Problem is the audio sucks. So then capture only audio using Exact Audio Copy (another great freeware program). Next, extract the poor wave from the avi, bring it into Cool Edit, then bring the good wave file into Cool Edit and sync the two up. Then cut the good wave to the same size as the bad wave file and save it. Then load the new wave into your avi and go encode.

It sucks to go through so many steps, but it isn't that bad. And it is worth it if it saves you from dropping frames.


Darryl

[joea123123]

Hi

Thanks for your response but my systems specs are in top post. I have a xtasy everything video card and firewire card, my son has an ATI AIW Radeon and a firewire card. My delema is that his computer ( we both havrp3/533 same MB same FW card - he has 340mb ram i have 640 he has two IDE drives I have two scsi's, he has AIW i ahve xtasy everthing) captures great while mine drops frames like crazy ( this is in both FW capture and analog. What could the difference be?

Thanks,
Joe

[zzyzzx]

Perhaps it is your crappy VIA MB. Do you have the most recent drivers (4 in 1) and PCI latency patch?

[joea123123]

Yes, I agree it could be the crappy VIA MB but as I explained above my son has the exact same MB (differences are explained above) and it works!!! I dunno? Its driving me nuts!
Thanks,
Joe


......and yes I have loaded the most recent 4in1 patches I could find from www.viatech.com

[zzyzzx]

If you have the latest 4 in 1 drivers and the VIA PCI Latency patch, then try running somehting like HD tach on both computers just to make sure it isn't the HD. I get HD speed well in exces that's required to capture at 640x480, yet, I still can't do it and don't know why.

[Dragonsf]

There is one hint by Dazzle regarding to bad/dropped frames:
use only 1024x768 resolution and decrease 3D Hardware accelaration to one tick be full range. This reduced the rate of bad frames to just 1 per Minute (before I had 2 per minute). This is regarding old tapes, with new ones the rate is much better (up to zero)

[fspta]

[/quote]Before you start capturing, you can go to the Task Manager, set your capturing program to high priority, then there should not be any frames dropped. I used to always have 1% frames dropped until I found this way.

Could you please expand on how to do the above... I am running win 98se. TIA

[zzyzzx]

Before you start capturing, you can go to the Task Manager, set your capturing program to high priority, then there should not be any frames dropped. I used to always have 1% frames dropped until I found this way.

Could you please expand on how to do the above... I am running win 98se. TIA

[/quote]

I do not see how to do this in Task Manager. Please explain.

[damnim]

The single most important aspect of capturing is "how much cpu" do you have.

Capturing is very cpu intensive. A 500cpu will not capture at a 640x480 without dropped frames. It requires at least 900 and above.

352x480 is about as good as it gets with a 500. That is if you have disabled every nonessential running process and thread.

Furthermore, additional memory is not going to make enough difference to change dropped frames with respect to higher sizes.

[fspta]

I am sorry, my earlier post was garbled!!!

I wanted to ask how to play with task priorities using win 98se.
I could not find any info in the help section about a "Task Manager"... What is a Task Manager and how to access it?

Thanx

[ewingr]

Don't know if this will help or not. I am a newbie.

But, I was having problem with dropping frames. I was using Adobe Premier. I also tried a couple other programs, and tweaked some of the things listed here. I even defragged my drives, etc.

I was successful in capturing just last week a 90 minute Beta tape from a Sony Beta recorder through a Dazzle DV Bridge with zero dropped frames. I used Scenalyzer Live (http://www.scenalyzer.com/). That program seemed to do the trick (It also will automatically break your captures into different scenes automatically)

Note: I had to turn off the preview in order to capture without dropping frames.

They have a trial download at the site that is fully functional. Problem iwth it is that it puts logos in a frame every so often. I decided it was worth the $33.00 to get a good capture.

In case you are wondering: my system is XP professional; 1.7ghz PC, 768MB of memory; 2 7200 IDE 80DB drives.

[Dragonsf]

I am sorry, my earlier post was garbled!!!

I wanted to ask how to play with task priorities using win 98se.
I could not find any info in the help section about a "Task Manager"... What is a Task Manager and how to access it?

Thanx

No way under Win9x. There is no TaskManager (as such) and so no priority change.TaskManager issues only apply to WinNT, Win2K and WinXP.

[ironwood321]

Hi,
I just want to suggest something simple.
Are you using the same vcr you recorded you tape on to play it back?
Is it a mulipul generation copy?
If you capture hardware is Brooktree or Fusion 878A based try these low cpu strain drivers http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/

Do you have preview and overlay switched of on your capture card

Are you using shielded cable which don't go pass any interference like power supplies.

Have you tried using something like avi_io and defragmented your drive.