Strategies for locking out other programs during capture and encoding

[jeby1980]

Hi there, I've been sucessfully converting dozens of VHS tapes to MPEG-2 via PowerDirector and a USB Avermedia DVD Ezmaker; however, every once in awhile I get a gitter that gets baked into the native capture AVi. I think i've isolated the issue to random other programs that pop up during the capture and encoding process. Like my antivirus software, onedrive, random updates.

I was wondering if any of you have any tricks to "locking" out the system so nothing else pops up during these processes.

Or is this maybe a function of capturing to a 7200 RPM HDD with a 150 MB/s transfer rate?

[Bwaak]

You can try raising the priority of the capture task in Task Manager. Sure, stopping unneeded processes helps, especially those that do disk indexing or scanning in the background. Task Manager can help identify the processes that hog the CPU or I/O.

[TimSteve]

Use a faster hard drive If you suspect that the transfer rate of your hard drive is causing issues, consider using a faster storage solution. An internal or external solid-state drive (SSD) typically offers faster transfer speeds compared to a traditional 7200 RPM HDD, which can help improve performance during the capture and encoding process.

[rgr]

Hi there, I've been sucessfully converting dozens of VHS tapes to MPEG-2 via PowerDirector and a USB Avermedia DVD Ezmaker; however, every once in awhile I get a gitter that gets baked into the native capture AVi. I think i've isolated the issue to random other programs that pop up during the capture and encoding process. Like my antivirus software, onedrive, random updates.

I was wondering if any of you have any tricks to "locking" out the system so nothing else pops up during these processes.

Or is this maybe a function of capturing to a 7200 RPM HDD with a 150 MB/s transfer rate?

Use SSD/NVME.

[Alwyn]

150 MB/s transfer rate?

Wow. Even Uncompressed 720x576 is only 38MB per second.

Power Director isn't converting to MPEG 2 on the fly, is it?

[Cornucopia]

Uncompressed 4:2:2yuv8bit 720x576@25fps is 166Mbps for the video alone. Not sure where you got 38, @Alwyn. Remember, compressed DV 4:2:0 is 25Mbps.

Uncompressed SD video can push the limit on 7200rpm HDDs, if there are other processes going on. As already mentioned, easy answer: use SSDs/nvme. But also, check your codec & its bitrate. I recommend you use a lossless, or virtually lossless intermediate codec for capture, editing, archiving.


Scott

[Alwyn]

Bits verses bytes? Clearly, while DV is 25Mb/sec of something, it is not 1,500MB per minute or 90GB per hour, which is what we all use for size on the disk.

HDDs are normally advertised at MB per sec, and Windows shows MB for transfer speed.

My uncompressed capture shows 333Mb/sec in Mediainfo (50fps), but the file size, for 1 minute, is only 2.3GB. That equates to a data rate of 38MB/sec.

There is no way SD/VHS video is 150MB/sec.

[jeby1980]

The "bandwidth" of my 7200rpm hard drive is about 150MB/s. That's not the capture rate. fwiw, Blackmagicdesign disk speed test is very useful.

I'm capturing in media director to an avi.

I keep a pretty close eye on task manager and I really dont think either my hard drive or CPU are anywhere near maxed out. CPU and GPU are only around 10% utilized during capture; it just seems like any sudden blip in activity in the system is enough to make the avi capture studder. Malwarebytes anti virus seems to be the worst offender.

[jeby1980]

Fwiw, all capture jitter problems solved by upgrading the system 7200rpm hdd to a ssd.

[Bwaak]

Bits verses bytes? Clearly, while DV is 25mb/sec of something

It is about 29 Mb/s. Notice "M" for mega, not "m" for milli. Neither "mb" nor "mB" makes sense.

[Alwyn]

You must be bored, Bwaak ; I wrote that 3 weeks ago. It was a typo which I have corrected.

[jeby1980]

Fwiw, when capturing to 640x480 avi, it is hitting the hard drive at 17.8MB/s.

This is well within the limits of a hdd, however i suspect there is some sort of peak limit going on when another program fires up.