MPG2 capture bad frm 40min to 50min marks, exclnt qlty before and after?

[tonytbaloney]

Hi all,

I'm trying to capture analog (rca composite) and tv using my ATI TVWonderPro card @ 720x480 or 640x480 mpeg2 using mostly the default settings in MMC. The drivers are version 6.13 and MMC version 9.16 (latest). Consistently, after 40 minutes of capture (either RCA or TVtuner source) the preview shows very choppy video as well as the capture for about 10 minutes during the 40 to 50 minute marks (file size is 1.5 approaching 2G) of the capture. Before and after this the MPEG2 file is beautiful (looks good to me and sound is perfectly synchronized). I was seeing this with the new and previous versions of MMC also along with my old Athlon 64 3500+ processor. My PC is running an A8V MB bios 0.219 with Athlon64 3800+ X2 (amd dual core patch) with 1.5G (2x512&2x256) RAM, lots of drive space, all NTFS (I have 2 internal and an external usb). WinXPpro SP2 OS is freshly installed and patched and drives are defragged. I don't think there is an issue writing the files to the drive as I've captured 50G AVI files using VirtualVCR and lossless codec without issue. I've used process explorer and performance monitor to see if anything was launching to interfere but there's no change in cpu usage fluctuating between 25 to 40% total usage (with either the single and dual core processors installed) and nothing else in the background (killed LAN, antivirus...everything). Only essential services are running. The Power Management options are all shut off, no hybernation etc...everything is set to stay on plus I've played with the mouse from time to time. Windows Restore is also shut off. I've loaded chipset drivers from both ASUS default and from VIA arena and no difference. The PC has always been rock solid with no crashes or issues for about a year now with 2 fresh OS installs. So far there is no response from an ATI support ticket i have open. Half hour shows would be no problem but hour long shows and movies will suck if I have to look at 10 minutes of choppy video. I could sit and restart the capture of home movies every half hour....that sucks also. Anyone with any other ideas for trouble shooting this? I would really rather capture high quality mpeg2 then large AVI.

Thanks to all who read and have input! Cheers,
tony

[redwudz]

You seem to have covered most of the common causes.

I would pull off the side cover of the computer and blow a desk fan on your capture card to rule out overheating. Do you get sync loss after the problem area? Have you examined the problem area frame by frame to see exactly what the 'choppy' part is doing? Missing frames or corrupted frames? You could step through the problem part with a video editor like VirtualDub Mod.

And welcome to our forums.

[tonytbaloney]

Thanks redwudz...I was trying to taclkle this from mostly the hardware side but you have an excellent suggestion. I'll take a look at the capture to analyse what is going on with the file. I'll post what I find.

Thanks again, cheers!

[tonytbaloney]

Hey all,

Turns out it's the MMC software or MDAC-DAO version causing me grief. I read through much of the forum regarding the ATI MMC software and found a lot if interesting stuff so I removed all ATI software and started installing these programs from the earliest versions I could get my hands on (keeping the same early video card driver every time provided on the CD that came with the ASUS ATI 9600SE card) and after removing and re-installing, the 4th installation (MMC 9.08 and associated UCI MDAC-DAO), I was able to capture 3 hrs straight of good quality MPEG2 @720x480 beautifully. The TV player picture is not the best quality (fast moving scenes look bad but slow or static video looks good) but the capturing is beautiful. I Think I'll keep going a couple of more versions to see what happens and also upgrade the video card drivers to see if that has any impact, then do a complete OS re-install and pick the best version of software and vid card drivers that work.

Cheers to all!
Tony

[jman98]

tonytbaloney - I gave up on ATI years ago. Doing software encoding is just ridiculous for standard def captures. I used the old Dazzle DVC-II at first and then moved to the Hauppauge PVR-350. Both do hardware encoding with a chip on the card. I don't have the bizarre problems I used to have when I did ATI captures on my old All-in-Wonder card. Sync issues were the biggest problem.

I know nothing about you, but I can tell you that ATI has a lot of fanboys. 5 or 6 years ago I knew of cases where guys literally spent $500+ on various hardware upgrades to their PCs just to make their damn ATI cards work correctly for video captures when they could have just spent about $200 on the DVC-II like I did and got on with their lives, but somehow that just seemed to make so much more sense to throw multi-hundreds of dollars on hardware upgrades than to buy a cheaper and better video capture device that just worked. If you are not head over heels in love with ATI, perhaps one day you'll consider Hauppauge. You'd have none of these issues with the PVR-250 or 350 models they make.

[tonytbaloney]

Thanks jman98....I agree with your comments and I should've tried the Hauppauge stuff or at least should have done some research first. I've never been an ATI fanboy, I thought I was getting a good deal when I spend $89 on the tvwonderpro 5 years ago with the thoughts of capturing all my old 8mm camcorder movies but never had time to mess with it and never really had the computer guts to work with it efficiently. My upgrades over the last 5 yrs are the result of failing hardware, design software minimum requirements I use for work, and some gaming. Now I know I have the processing power to push video capturing and editing. I find I have some time to start on my home movie project so now I'm seeing the real issues with ATI stuff. I now have a miniDV camcorder and firewire in the box which is much more efficient then the old analog capture and conversion process so when I have all those old 8mm tapes captured...I'll likely be done with the tuner card. Next PC might even be a HP media center flavor as my co-worker has one and he's producing DVD's all the time from it by capturing tv shows...and guess what....it has Hauppauge stuff in it.

Cheers and thanks for the advice.

[dadrab]

As you can tell from the number of posts next to my name, I haven't been around nearly as long as jman98 and redwudz. Those guys have forgotten more than I'll ever know, but I can tell you this with certainty:

The Hauppauge PVR350 just works.

I read this forum for 6 months before buying any hardware and saw a pile of the posts where these guys (and others) were trying to tell poor folks how to fix their synch issues - among other freaky problems. I noticed that many of these problems were associated with ATI products.

I was just lucky to have stumbled my way here before buying because I'd have marched my happy ass right down to CompUSA and bought one of those brightly packaged ATI cards too.

Follow jman98's advise and you'll be capturing before long.