Cannot Capture with Quality...

[DirectBrasil]

Dear all,

I´m probably the Newest Newbie arround...

I´ve Downloaded VirtualDub and TMPGenc, I´ve Tryed to Capture Video with VirtualDub using some filters and stuff... Before Cpturing the image that VirtualDub Gives me on a Overlay Mode is Great ! When I Go to Preview is Lousy...

Well... When I Capture the Image comes very Chopped and slow (I am playing the video in Windows Media Player). I´ve tryed to use Some Codecs like Divx 5.0 although I know this is not the best way to go VCD or SVCD. Am I loosing frames ?

I´ve tryed to filter a little bit with sharpen and smothling... I don´t think this helped.

All I wanted is to put my Hi8 and VHS videos into VCD´s but with this quality...

I have a PIII 1.0Gb 512 Mb RAM, a PixelView Play TV Pro (30 fps), and a Geforce 2 MX 400 (64Mb), I don´t trust my HDD, at least I think it´s slow...

Can somebody help me get started ?

Thanks,

Guilherme Figueiredo.

[macleod]

Holy crap. A newbie that not only detailed exactly what he wants to do, but he EVEN FILLED OUT THE COMPUTER detail section!!!!! Sorry, had to say that. It is just so rare that a newbie fills out info that we can use to help him/her.

Barring other things, you computer is "man enough" to capture without losing frames and things like that. I am unfamiliar with your capture card and some of your setup. As far as reality checks, vcd from a vhs/hi8 source wont look the same as the source. You'll get some pixelation, especially at fast scenes. Divx does massive compression to your cap file and you could possible lose frames, but divx does it in such a way that you dont notice it on the computer. It sounds like you may have some type of conflict or something because like I mentioned, your computer should be able to capture. When you use vdub, for starting out, try to cap at just 320x240/288 and use the huffey codec. I believe that you should have the computer in preview mode to cap w/o lost frames, though I might be wrong. For AVI captures, I use IUVCR, which lets me use wdm drivers (I have XP).

For some suggested reading on this for newbies. Outside of the guides in this site, you can try nicky's guides at www.divx-digest.com. Nicky has some good "getting into the world of" guides that talk high level about digital capture and editing.

Have you considered going to a real time capture solution. I use to use(and still do for TV caps) powervcrII. It is a good real time capture software that will give you good (not perfect) captures.

For the reality check part, you will be hard pressed to get a "memorex" copy of your analog tape. You'll see pixelation and stuff like that on your caps. The world of digital.

Well, I hope that the other forum guys take a few minutes out to add or give you more advice. Its great to see a newbie who does some research, reads some stuff and fills out the computer section!!

[DirectBrasil]

Thanks Macleod for your answer...

My Capture Card has a BT 878 Chipset.

I don´t think pixelation will be a big issue for me, but the chopping image is.

I´ll try to go huffey this time, thanks.

Regarding conflicts... Uh ! that scares me! I´m using the M755MLR PCChips Motherboard and it only comes with 2 PCI slots so the capture and the Geforce are side by side... I don´t know... (PCChips support never replies to my questions) Does somebody knows anything about it ?

Thanks again.

[Dave B]

Can I first echo macleod's comments about your initial post

You should only ever capture to DivX if HD space is really an issue.. you have 40Gigs so as long as you've still got a large chunk of that left I would suggest capturing with a high quality compression codec such as PicVideo or HUFFYUV.

VirtualDub has a "Frames Dropped" counter at the bottom of the preview window. If that reports zero (or a low number) of frames dropped than don't worry if the initial video looks a bit choppy on playback. Some codecs (such as HUFFYUV) do not decompress particularly quickly so the video will actually stop and stutter in Media Player until you convert it into the final MPG.

To get you started I would suggest reading the following couple of guides.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/mjpeg.htm
http://www.lukesvideo.com/highrescapvdub.html

[bac522]

Regarding conflicts... Uh ! that scares me! I´m using the M755MLR PCChips Motherboard and it only comes with 2 PCI slots so the capture and the Geforce are side by side... I don´t know... (PCChips support never replies to my questions) Does somebody knows anything about it ?

Thanks again.

If need help with the PCChips board go here http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142/pcchips/

This is a great site.

[DirectBrasil]

Dear Dave B

I've tried to go huffyuv exactly as in http://www.lukesvideo.com/highrescapvdub.html as you told me to.

Many things happened... As I saw that in 1 minute of capturing I had an average of 16fps capturing... and I've dropped over 600 frames !!! I think this is too much isn't it ?

Another thing that happened is when I've tried to open the file in Windows Media Player it gave me an error message... Anyway I've opened in VirtualDub and it was terrible !

I am beginning to get worried...

Please guys help me !

[Racoty]

Hi,
I am using ulead videostudio6 with my capture card and capture directly to mpeg1 352x240 video bitrate 2200 audio bitrate 160 quality setting 15, i then use tmpgenc and run the mpeg tools go to merge&cut set it to vcd non standard. This helps with video & audio sync., fast foward & rewind. The quality of the xvcd is great.
I hope this helps.

[brycecroan]

G'day DirectBrasil.

The first thing I would be doing is partitioning off a section of your hard drive specifically for video capture. it makes a huge difference to capture speed (ie no or less frame drops) when you're capturing with little or no compression if you can scratch a disc or section of it clean and your drive doesn't have to go hunting for space to store the file.

It's cheap too!

[Dave B]

You shouldn't be dropping any more than a couple of frames with your system so I suspect there is more amiss than a fragmented hard drive.

To narrow the problem down, I would suggest that you try capturing video (without audio) and see if you still get frame drops. You could also try using AVI_IO to capture as it has a more simplistic interface than VirtualDub so there is less you can do wrong!