How Many Dropped Frames Is Too Many?

[Teshia]

Okay, I'm a newbie. When I capture on my system (specs below), I get some dropped frames, but I'm not sure whether this is a lot or not. I'm capturing 352x240 NTSC YUY2 using HuffyUV and the playback seems to be quite good, but as an example, I just captured five minutes of video off VHS and got 9 frames dropped. Is this unacceptable or pretty much commonplace? I have DMA enabled on the drive and nothing is running except the virtualdub.

specs are as follows:

Athlon 1.2
win98se
256mb
60 gig drive (not the same drive as os)
ata66 rated cable and ata100 hard drive
matrox g400 tv 16mb agp

Thanks in advance!

[therick]

@Teshia- good rule of thumb is 1/1000...5 minutes of video x 30 frames/sec = 9000...so that is about 1/1000, so you should be alright...VDub will drop frames to keep the audio and video in synch...so this normal...

[vhelp]

teshia,

One thing i hate most (beside jitters) is frame drops (or frameloss, same thing)
In my video capture endeavors, I will not accept a SINGLE frame drop as normal
well... not any more

In my earlier days of capturing, I had between 7 and maybe 20 or so drops an
hour.
Today, I've had much more than that. I'm tired of it. I have a beafy enough
PC to give me ZERO frame drops. So, there's no excuse to have any.

There are many, many factors involved, when you talk about frame drops.
In short, you must have:
* your graphics drivers PROPERLY installed
* and the right Direct-X version (you have to test each versoin w/ your graphics
driver intallation (I have gone this route)
* then, the capture cards' driver. Now, sometimes, you have to use the drivers
on the supplied disk. Other times, you have to go searching the boards website
to find out IF there is a latest version update. And, if so, D/L them, and
install them. But, make sure you FIRST test out your current driver's capturing
abilities, ie frame drops. Record those numbers. THEN, install those latest
drivers you D/L'd. And, test w/ some captures. DO NOT TEST CAPTURES W/ DIFFERENT
SOURCE MATERIAS AND SCENES. ALWAYS USE THE SAME SOURCE MATERAILS AND SCENES!!
USE DVD AS YOUR SOURCE, SO YOU DON'T WEAR YOUR VHS TAPES (if your goal is to
capture VHS tapes) Don't worry too much about MV till you FIRST identify your
capture's frame drop issues first! MV is another story/issue. You main
concirn is the frame drops.

If you want, you can visit this link on frame drops. Keep up with the updates
here for most current info. And, no, I'm not a doctor, so please don't assume
I am, and PM me w/ a dozen questions. Just piggy back off my findings and learn
a few things along the way
** see this link for more details and interesting reading
--> VHELP's FrameDrops - To Eliminate, once and for all...

Good luck in any case.
-vhelp

[Teshia]

Ok, here's another question then. When I capture using HuffyUV and RGB24, the output is much larger than if I capture using HuffyUV and YUY2. I'm told the difference is fairly neligable, but the file size is almost double. Should I be sticking strictly to RGB24?

[kayfam]

Stick with the Huffyuv. The compression is roughly 2.5:1 as compared to uncompressed RGB24 and is lossless.