Does increased memory help in Video Capture ?

[VEBouto]

I am using the current WinFast / Leadtek v2.0.2.40 video capture application and it is working pretty well at the moment.
So i was wondering, if i increase my computer memory from 512mb to 1 Gig, would the capture process of the video improve, especially concerning the occasional dropped frame here and there. I realise it wouldn't improve the quality of the picture but i am hoping that the whole capture process would be smoother and less prone to error by increasing my PC memory.
By the way my computer is 3.2 Ghz, P4.
Thanks.

[guns1inger]

If you are running XP and very little else then 512MB might be enough. If you are running something like Norton AV or Trend or McAfee then you will benefit from having 1 GB. (Personally, I believe 1 GB should be the norm for XP anyway).

If you are running Vista then you should have 2 GB of RAM in order to do anything useful.

You will also get better performance if you have a drive dedicated to capture that you either format or defrag regularly. By this I mean a dedicated drive, not a partition on another drive.

[VEBouto]

Thanks guns1inger, i am running windows XP (SP2).
I will also try to transfer all the stuff from my PC to an external hard drive when i buy one in the next few days.
So eventually i want to just use my PC for Video capture and have as little other stuff on it as possible. I do defrag' quite a bit and am hoping the increased memory will help the video capture process aswell.

[Video Head]

Yes

[jman98]

My experience with XP is that 768 MB seems to be the sweet spot for memory. In some cases, 512 MB can actually not be enough. 1 GB does seem to be overkill for XP. I upgraded from 512 MB to 1 GB and I've never seen the memory used go above 700 MB or so, but I have seen it exceed 512 MB. If you upgrade to 1 GB, it may help, but I think you'd be wasting your money to go above that.

[DB83]

A few 'chains of thought'

1. try and capture to a drive that does not contain your OS

2. Install a 2nd copy of the OS with just the minimum software, codecs etc to do the capturing And No net access.. This frees up the memory-hungry resources such as AV software.

[Bjs]

Capture device being used ?

Prior to capture, shutdown all non-essential programs that run in the background

512mb of memory is not normally an issue associated with dropped frames during capture

[Krispy Kritter]

Aside from having enough memory to run whatever apps you are using, increasing the memory won't benefit your capturing. Dropped frames are typically hardware related. Either you don't have enough cpu power to perform the work load or the data isn't being moved fast enough. Using a capture device that performs hardware decoding can reduce the load from your cpu. For best results, as noted above, use a different HDD as the destination drive than the one which contains the OS and capture software. Another internal HDD would be best if possible, while USB HDD's should be fast enough, USB devices place a load on the cpu to transfer the data.

[Video Head]

A few 'chains of thought'

1. try and capture to a drive that does not contain your OS

2. Install a 2nd copy of the OS with just the minimum software, codecs etc to do the capturing And No net access.. This frees up the memory-hungry resources such as AV software.

No need to install a 2nd copy of the OS. Just create a second boot profile with only the necessary harware and resources enabled. At boot the BIOS will ask which profile to boot into.

[Video Head]

My experience with XP is that 768 MB seems to be the sweet spot for memory. In some cases, 512 MB can actually not be enough. 1 GB does seem to be overkill for XP. I upgraded from 512 MB to 1 GB and I've never seen the memory used go above 700 MB or so, but I have seen it exceed 512 MB. If you upgrade to 1 GB, it may help, but I think you'd be wasting your money to go above that.

I run 2GB of DDR800 on an XP Pro SP2 machine. It regularily goes up to 900MB-1GB of utilization. Another XP Pro SP2 machine I have had 512MB. Bumped it up to 1GB and the performance went up noticably, probably due to swap files. If your machine is utilizing virtual memory and swap files it will slow performance.

If your machine is using virtual memory during video capture =

[Clevo89]

Obviously....yes...no bones about it...no ifs no buts..an absolute YES!

Do not delay...



one But.... make sure you buy RAM that is...either the EXACT same as what you have now

or buy a whole new set...

if your MB handles it it might be better to buy 2x1G RAm rather than 1x2G of ram. get that RAM running in Dual Channels

[DB83]

A few 'chains of thought'

1. try and capture to a drive that does not contain your OS

2. Install a 2nd copy of the OS with just the minimum software, codecs etc to do the capturing And No net access.. This frees up the memory-hungry resources such as AV software.

No need to install a 2nd copy of the OS. Just create a second boot profile with only the necessary harware and resources enabled. At boot the BIOS will ask which profile to boot into.

I thought I had tried that once but it still installed all the memory-resident stuff such as AV software which I did not not need.

[VEBouto]

I might look into installing another drive that i will use just for Video capture, but don't i still need to install an operating system on the new hard-drive for it to work with XP and my current hard drive?
A few people have suggested that the drive i capture too, should not have an OS installed on it. So how does that work?

[vhelp]

So, you have the following set up so far:

OS: XP home/pro w/ sp2
CPU: P4 intel @ 3.4GHz
RAM: 512mb

fwiw, here is my setup so you can review it against yours perhaps. It's not perfect but maybe
it'll help you in yours for clues.

* April 21, 2007 Sat pm -- new purchase
* installed new home built Motherboard and CPU
* MOBO: ECS GeforceE6100SM-M w/ 1gig DDR RAM -- its a solid board
* CPU: AMD 64 X2 3600+
* Note1, graphics board seems to suck a bit.. ie, stair-stepping when enlarging video win.
* Note2, my build-in graphcs card has 64mb if I recall correctly.
.
* Software:
* MS Windows XP Home
* SP2 service pack -- it auto-installed a firewall and some other junk which slowed down my sys
.
* Capture Card: Pinnacle Studio AV/DV pci card
* VirtualDub-MPEG2 v1.6.15 -- used for the analog cabletv captures via Lagarith codec [YUY2]
.
* Capture PIPE's: HDD w/ multi 3 patitions; 160g external; 80gig external;
.
* Partition/FAT setup: internal HDD=NTFS, 160g=FAT32 and 80g=FAT32

Fortunately for me, capturing to any one of these drives always run rather smoothly. Even
when I capture to the external with the Huffy or Lagarith codecs [YUY2] the system performs
without problems. These are analog captures that require a huge volume of data to and from
these drives. The setup in my case can be any of the following:

--> PCI[pinnacle studio av/dv] -> DMA[HDD]=ntfs
--> PCI[pinnacle studio av/dv] -> USB[160g external]=fat32
--> PCI[pinnacle studio av/dv] -> USB[80gig external]=fat32

With the above system, I capture to both NTFS and FAT32 drives all the time.

However, given my system specs and an additional 512mb ram (1gig) maybe it does make a small
difference or not. I don't know. But I use the Lagarith codec in my virtualdub captures from
cabletv. I use the YUY2 option. And that requires aprox 55% or more cpu resources during
capturing. I throttle between 90% and 100% resources vs. Huffy only at 35% to 50% cpu. But
even with my SP2 install (of last year) it *does* impact your system throughput/speed, though I
still do not drop any frames. I guess I'm lucky, so far.

Now, I know some say they can get near less than 10% cpu when using Huffy codec, but I think
that it is unique to one's system, overall, and that some (like myself) can never obtain the < 10%
resource setup (I read here some months ago) some of you all get but, I'm ok with the resource
levels I have, as long as it does not drop frames or anything else, I'm ok.

-vhelp 4567

[bendixG15]

I might look into installing another drive that i will use just for Video capture, but don't i still need to install an operating system on the new hard-drive for it to work with XP and my current hard drive?

One Operating system,(your XP) is all that is needed to operate many hard drives.

A few people have suggested that the drive i capture too, should not have an OS installed on it. So how does that work?

Many solutions , here is the simplest to get your thought process headed in the right direction
Put XP on one drive ( drive C ) and put the video files on the other drive (Drive D)

[Illusionist]

My experience with XP is that 768 MB seems to be the sweet spot for memory. In some cases, 512 MB can actually not be enough. 1 GB does seem to be overkill for XP. I upgraded from 512 MB to 1 GB and I've never seen the memory used go above 700 MB or so, but I have seen it exceed 512 MB. If you upgrade to 1 GB, it may help, but I think you'd be wasting your money to go above that.

I agree with jman98, I have 2 gigs of ram on an XP OS,. I check my memory frequently, and it always say's 1.25 gig available.

From my past experiences, I never saw any improvements upgrading to higher ram, but I always did see improvements in upgrading video cards.

[Video Head]

How does a video card upgrade assist video capture?

[lordsmurf]

The only time I need more than 1GB of RAM is when I use Adobe software:
Illustatrator
Photoshop
Camera Raw
Bridge
Premiere
After Effects
InDesign

Not because it's a pig, but because it needs horsepower to drive a lot of complex functions.

[sanlyn]

My experience with several PC's and capture devices is that 512mb of RAM for XP isn't enough, even if you don't run AV or have your Ethernet card connected. 512mb is just "adequate" for XP under any conditions.

It also depends on your capture source and devices. Some capture cards just drop frames all the time, period, and some noisy VHS or other sources can give capture devices a hard time. I was getting a few dropped frames from my Ati card, but using a TBC and a proc amp between the source and the card stopped frame dropping altogether (and I had 1.5-gb of RAM).