System freeze/lockup during video capture

[PeterZ]

My system (see Computer Details):

- CPU: AMD Athlon 1.2GHz
- MoBo: ASUS A7V-VM, Chipset VIA KT133
- Memory: 128M + 512M - PC133 SDRAM
- Hard Disk: 60GB@5400rpm + 120GB@7200rpm - DMA: yes, both
- O.S. WinXP Pro, clean install (dual-boot w/ Win2k Pro)
- Partitions: all NTFS; WinXP boot part. and video capture on 60GB disk
- Graphics Adapter: ATI Radeon VE
- Video Capture card: ATI TV Wonder VE - use Composite input
- Video drivers: latest ATI XP drivers; Btwincap drivers: can't install!

Other details:

- use VirtualDub or AmCap for capture - same problem
- video capture: Composite in (TV), resol. 320x240 or smaller, NTSC, YUY2, 29.97fps
- video encoding: DivX codec, 1000kbps (or any), on-the-fly compression
- audio capture: line in, MP3 encod., 128kbps 44kHz st.
- resulting video+audio stream written to disk: <10MB per mn

- Watch TV on PC for several hours (w/ Dscaler): OK
- Capture video only: OK (3 hours at least without lockup)
- Capture audio only: OK (though I need to re-check)
- Capture video+audio: Lockup after 1 to 10 to 15mns

I'm getting consistent system freeze (lockup: everything stops, can't use the mouse, can't CTRL+Alt+Del, have to hard reboot) when trying to capture video clips with audio capture enabled.

From browsing thru this great vcdhelp forum I'm convinced someone will get me out of this very frustrating issue.

TIA,
PeterZ.

[The village idiot]

Sounds to me like there is some kind of hardware conflict. It may not show up as a truely conflicted device. It might just be a matter of 2 things sharing the same IRQ. Does it lock in both XP and 2000?

[PeterZ]

Yes, it does lock under both Win2k and WinXP.

Bw I could never install the ATI drivers for Win2k (tried over several months!), the computer would hang and reboot while installing the Video Capture part of the ATI WDM drivers... In the end I tried to install the ATI *XP* drivers in Win2k, and the install went flawlessly. Damn ATI for that!

Same problem when installing the Btwincap drivers (under both Win2k and WinXP): hangs and reboots at the precise time it tries to install the bt848.sys driver file...

One last note: the computer initially came with WinME on it. I've been able to consistently capture hours of video (also with ATI drivers, same capture setup, except using ATI's MMC capture software), with only sporadic lockup's every now and then (e.g. it killed my recording of the SuperBowl 2002 - good thing is, the PATS won!!

And no, the solution for me is NOT to go back to WinME...!

Thx,
PeterZ.

P.S. But wait - under WinME I was capturing in MPEG2 or MPEG1 format - NOT DivX. Hmm... I wonder if...

[The village idiot]

No going back to winME is NOT acceptable! I had the same problems with the BTwincap drivers. Never did get it to work with anything but old MMC7.1 drivers. If you could find those, give them a try. I ending up ditching my ATI, because of all the problems and limitations. OH! Just had a thought. Search for IUvcr, and also try powerVCR. Both have demos available. The other secret was using IUvcr with the old MMC7.1 drivers. You also might have to install the OS as a "standard PC". I don't have that info with me now, but can look it up when I get home from work. You could search the MicroShaft knowledge base to find the procedure if your in the mood for searching.

[IanJ]

....dang pain, I typed a lengthy reply and it went awol.

Short reply:-

You need to install the "4-in1" driver from viarena.com. There's a bug in Via mb chipsets which cause IDE lockups. Or, install a Promise ATA133 IDE controller and say goodbye to your lockups.

Ian.

[PeterZ]

Village idiot:
I had installed the MMC7.1 drivers with WinME and they worked fine. At that time I had no reason to try the Btwincap ones so can't comment.

At some point I switched to Win2k and was NEVER able to install neither the ATI Win2k drivers nor the Btwincap drivers: they would both cause a hang and reboot during install of the Video Capture WDM drivers. This caused me dozens of hours of frustration, over several months, trying everything possible to no avail, until...

ATI put out WinXP drivers on their site; I thought what the heck, so installed these WinXP drivers on my Win2k machine and BINGO! They installed flawlessly at first trial. Damn!! Still, the Btwincap won't install.

I then recently switched to WinXP Pro, and same XP ATI drivers installed without a problem. Btwincap still can't install. I doubt the MMC7.1 stand even a chance to install, they are build for Win98/WinME architecture, NOT Win2k/WinXP, so I won't even try.

I'll give a try to iuVCR, ya never know; PowerVCRII shows same lockups problem as VirtualDub, AmCap, and others...

IanJ:
sorry to hear you lost your edits, drives me crazy when it happens! Also I'm sure I'd be interested to read those; anyway, I do have the lastest VIA 4in1 drivers installed (v4.43 I think) but it didn't seem to change a thing...
I'll look into yr idea of installing a new IDE controller, although I kinda' doubt it will make a difference: with the compression scheme I'm using for Video (DivX) and Audio (MP3), the resulting disk I/O rate is pretty low (about 10MB per mn, nothing impressive!) and I'm routinely transferring gigabyte files between partitions and disks without a glitch.

Thanks to all for yr feedback, keep it up!!

PeterZ.

[IanJ]

PeterX,

You don't need a mega amount of IDE activity to have Windows crash. I would often be 10% into a CD burn and everything would lock up.....very frustrating.

I consider my VIA board fixed now (famous last words!), but I tell you I had to do a fresh install of win2k, install the 4-in-1 drivers and then everything else.
I have a 3rd party 4-port USB card fitted also (USB would lock windows as well with my Iomega zip drive, another Via chipset bug!) and although I do have the Promise board fitted I still have my 60gb boot drive on the Via motherboard IDE interface and with luck so far not one lockup despite some large amount of data transfer between it and my 120gb drive sitting on the Promise card. My DVD writer and CDRW are on the Promise interface.

Given the cost I'd give the Promise card a go if I were you, it's far more painless than the hassle of swapping out mb's.

Ian.

[kalus69]

I did have the same lock up problems for ages. Tried every capture program out there. One program that didn't cause any lock ups was VirtualVCR using huffyuv compression. Since then i decided to give the system a fresh install. The only different thing i did was put the audio line in directly into the sound card instead of via the capture card. (this may have made no difference). But anyway i now can capture for hours and have only had the odd lock up and i can now use winDVR 2 which for your information is the best real time mpeg capture program out there. Forget PowerVCRII.

[PeterZ]

Ian: understood. Still, I find it suspicious that, despite all the activities my PC runs (I have a Web site, FTP site, and postmail server all running 24/7, that plus lots of CD burning, MP3 encoding and other multimedia tasks - not to mention huge disk-to-disk file xfers), the *ONLY* lockups I ever get are when capturing video... (btw, lockups do NOT occur when I capture video only or audio only!)

kalus69: I have not tried VirtualVCR yet (can't remember anyway, but I've tried so many different tools!), so maybe there's hope. I have tried capturing in Huffyuv format though, but lockups did happen.
I'm not using the capture card audio either (in fact, I'm not using the Tuner part at all, I'm grabbing the composite video and stereo audio signals direct out of the DTV set-top box, and send the audio to the sound card Line In as you mentioned).
Thx for the tip on winDVR 2, I'll do some search and try it out.
Btw, lockup problems are very much dependent on the computer configuration; would you mind sharing yours (at least Windows version, CPU, MoBo, and capture card) - thanks!

PeterZ.

[Nelson37]

I am rather amazed that several of you seem to have zeroed in on the problem without realizing it. SOUND CARD. No one gave their sound card specs, yet if you cap with no audio, no freeze.

Throughput could be the issue but this is far easier to test than getting a new IDE controller, simply lower bitrate to significantly lower file size during capture, then do it again, see if there is a corresponding effect on the lockup issue. My guess would be no, you shouldn't be stressing your drive as it is.

Corrupted file or codec is also possible, try something besides Divx.

There are timing issues with several types of sound card/video card/mobo combinations which often cause lockups. Apparently the clock chips on some soundcards are more variable than they should be. Try a different sound card, and/or try running the audio thru the video card connector as this may correct the synch issue; you could also try some minimal setting on the audio to test the theory, like 16-bit mono or some such.

[PeterZ]

Well, remember though, I'm able to capture audio alone for hours without a glitch (though with a different tool, but it shouldn't matter). It looks to me as if, under certain conditions, the *simultaneous* capture and on-the-fly compression of both Video AND Audio signals causes the lockup.

I've done a couple more trials (and I feel much more are needed!) which yielded the following:
1- video 160x120, Huffyuv, 29.97fps + audio 22kHz mono, PCM => OK (45mns)
2- video 320x240, Huffyuv, 29.97fps + audio 22kHz mono, PCM => lockup!!

I was even able to listen to MP3 stuff and browse the Web etc... while doing the experiment 1- above, w/o a pbm. Btw these also required much more from the disk in terms of I/O xfer rates, so because 1- went well I'm still convinced there's no pbm w/ my IDE controller.

Anyway, what does this tell us? Well, I'm not too sure, except that there seems to be a "threshold" point beyond which lockups start to occur... However I need to make sure I can repeat those experiments and get consistent results/behaviour. Still, this won't tell me the exact "root cause" of the problem, and capturing at any less than 320x240 is frankly not very exciting to me (until I give up, that is...).

Btw - the audio is embedded on the Mobo (VIA AC'97 chip type), there's no "sound card" as such.

I'll keep experimenting and will keep you posted. What about PSU? *Any* chance it could be a problem you think?

[peterg]

system:
Windows ME
Processor - AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz
Chipset - Via KT 133
Mobo - ASUS
Memory - 256 MB SDRAM Speed 100 MHz
Hard drive - 80 GB ultra dma
Video - Riva TNT PRO 32 MB
Sound - AC97 sound on motherboard
Capture Device
- Avertv stereo
- dazzle 80 usb

very similar system to yours, peterz

Problem is when i try to capture at anything greater than 352x240 (NTSC) to MPEG 1/2 my system also locks up although the sound still plays even though the video and other IO devices all lock up.(using avertv) i would like to be able to capture to at least svcd qualityin both NTSC and PAL. If you find a solution please be sure to post it here as i am also fighting and about to throw in the towel. (probably wont give up but dont have the time to spend hours experimenting)
Using the dazzle device results in huge avi files with more than 15% dropped frames and resultant jerky video. converting these files has not been a problem.

Thanks to all who have already replied

[Nelson37]

If you can repeat the experiment with some consistency, that does tend to indicate it is a throughput problem. Why? Because filesize is the major change between 1 and 2, and 2 failed. However it could also be that whatever is causing the problem did not occur during #1, for whatever reason, hence the need to repeat to get consistent results. Also try something like 640x480 with no audio, if that works (consistently), that would tend to eliminate throughput as the problem.

Audio capture success WITH ANOTHER APP does not tell us the answer other than that the other app may not be sensitive to the problem, whatever it is. If your capture app will do audio only and THAT works, now it looks like a synch compatibility issue. Or still possibly throughput.

You mention a number of other programs running concurrently, eliminate ALL of them and then test. Video cap is kinda like CD burn, it does not tolerate interruptions very well. It is possible one of your other programs is attempting to access some resource, probably sound, while capturing. This could cause lockup. ELIMINATE ALL possible software interactions.

Many diagnostic tools are more expensive, less accurate, and more time-consuming than simple Isolate and Identify procedure, combined with selective hardware replacement.

Power supply can cause a myriad of strange problems, and they are relatively cheap to replace, as are sound card (your onboard audio device, which I would call a built-in cound card, can be disabled). If you have access to another PC or some parts, you could try swapping sound card, power supply, or even Hard Drive.

Also, try a complete uninstall of all ATI drivers, there are several step-by-step guides here and at rage3d website. MMC 7.6 gave me significant improvement on XP Pro, it would be interesting to see if MMC has same problem, also new drivers are often the solution. Definitely do a complete uninstall, Control Panel uninstall often does not work for ATI.

[PeterZ]

peterg: (like your ID btw :)

your system _must_ be an HP Pavilion - am I right? ;) Anyway, the key differences with your setup are:
1- WinME: I'm running XP; it's a huge difference because I used to have almost no lockup under WinME... which btw gives me some confidence on the hardware (on-board audio, TV tuner/video capture card, and the rest)
2- when my PC locks up, the entire thing stops, I don't even get audio anymore
As for a solution to this, you'll want to simply follow this thread, rest assured that I will definitely post my findings along the way and will write a "closing" post with my conclusions.

Admiral:
agree with most yr comments...
I've created a spreadsheet in preparation of my next round of experiments, and will try to capture there (so to speak!) all the important parameters and the results obtained under various conditions of video resolution/size, frame rate, compression format, audio capture/no capture, etc... Not sure if I can post the spreadsheet as an attachment here, can I?

As for ATI drivers: again, clean install of XP Pro and drivers (multiple times for the latter, removing all unwanted ATI stuff manually - all clean now, thank you!).
Q: what d'ya mean by "MMC 7.6 gave me significant improvement on XP Pro" - what improvements? Versus what?

Beside PSU as a possible root cause, what about IRQs? Most if not all of the multimedia "devices", including audio and video, are under the same IRQ (#9 I think) thanks to ACPI (or because of it, if you prefer). What if an audio i/r gets messed up with a video i/r? In an ideal world, Windows should be able to manage this; oh but wait! Did I put "ideal" and "Windows" in the same sentence? :-]

[peterg]

peterz,

yep, hp 876. i thought yours might be the same when i saw the spec.
i will try the chipset drivers recommended earlier in this thread when i get some more time. i will also try reinstalling the tvcard as i removed it through pure frustration and tried the dazzle 80, which for my requirements is not a viable option as it is limited to 352x240 capture and drops too many frames for anything resembling halfway decent capture.

will lt you know the outcome when i am done, in the meantime i will continue to follow this thread.

cheers

[medievil]

I didn't read the whole thread, but I at one time had the same problem, system would completely lock, sometimes even reboot. I found out the problem was Crappy Video card Drivers. The version I was using (Nvidia detonators somethings) was extremely buggy and would cause a system lock due to overlay. After changing drivers the problem went away.

One other thought, If you have an Athlon/duron system with Via Kt133 based motherboard, make sure that you HAVE a chipset fan. Most Makers skimped on the fan and the chipset really, really needs it. Most, if not all I/O goes through that one chip.

[PeterZ]

peterg: Dazzle is an external box, right? All the low-price video capture boxes have an USB1.0 interface, which *garanties* you're going to have dropped frames beyond a certain resolution due to limited data xfer rate. USB 2.0 or Firewire should be used, but I guess that'd mean more expensive toys...

medievil: would you know how to measure chipset temp., is there any reliable tool out there?

Having said that, I've done some more experiments, in summary:

1- Video Capture only (no audio): I have not experienced even a single lockup, though I did captures up to 640x480, Huffyuv compression, meaning > 9 MBytes/s acquisition rate (i.e. disk write rate) for 15mns (something like 6GB of video data). That's right, 9 Mbytes/s, not Mbits/s.

2- Audio capture only (no video): well, I've been able to capture the entire audio track (> 2h length) from a DVD with real-time MP3 compression (in addition to DVD decoding/playing). Again, no lockup here.

Conclusions:

- I confirm I have no problem with capturing Video and Audio *separately* (at least with minimal compression on the Video side; I'll try with high compression formats like DivX later and see what happens)

- I have no disk I/O thruput/instability/... issue; same for AGP/memory xfers

- I probably do not have any major chipset/CPU/MoBo instability problems (due to timing, or temperature, or power supply, or bad drivers, or... type issues)

It really feels like I need to perform *simultaneous* capture of Video and Audio to trigger any lockup. Well, I'll try to confirm on this with more trials.

[PeterZ]

Me again

actually I've done some more essais, and I'm getting really intrigued: still not one single lockup...

- Video: 640x480, DivX 5, 148kBps, 0.4% dropped frame, 114MB data
Audio: NONE
Combined: 148kBps, CPU 80-100%, 114MB data (13mns video)
=> NO LOCKUP

- Video: 640x480, HuffYuv, 9.3MBps (!), 0 dropped frame, 8.3GB data
Audio: 44kHz, 16-bit, PCM, Stereo, 176kBps, 160MB data
Combined: 9.480 MBps, 8.46GB data, [CPU 40-48%] (15mns video)
=> NO LOCKUP

Note: from what I can judge visually (not so smooth video), playback of 640x480 Huffyuv with WMP8 is run at a lower frame rate than original captured 29.97fps, apparently due to CPU at >100%. Hmm... guess my 1.2GHz Athlon ain't good nuf'...

Heck, I'm not really sure anymore I have a lockup problem... (I wish!)
I'm getting a feel that the *only* combination that might yield a lockup is the one I've been trying to use for my routine captures: Video DivX + Audio MP3 - because of too intensive CPU %...? Murphy's law at work again... we shall see!

PeterZ.

[Martok]

1. Amd has a Reg Patch for AGP.

2. Check Device Manager. If your machine is set up as an ACPI, W2k and XP will force IRQ sharing. This works for most, but not for heavy duty processing. You'll need to set it up as a "Standard PC". This will allow you to assign IRQs.

Here's directions from http://www.athlonoc.com/

Disable ACPI (IPCA) in the BIOS along with APM or if that's not possible, you can do it manually from within W2K...

Go to Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/Computer. From there, navigate to Driver, Go to the bottom and click "Update Driver". A wizard opens up, click "Next" and you will be presented with the description of your computer and 2 options at the bottom. Choose "Display a list of known drivers.......specific driver". Click Next. The next screen shows you compatible models with 2 options at the bottom. Choose "Show all hardware of this device class". The screen will now show you manufacturers on the left and models on the right. On the left, Choose "Standard Computers" and on the right, Choose "Standard Computer". The wizard will tell you it's ready to install, click "Next" and watch what happens. it may give you a warning about the driver not being right, disregard and continue until it tells you to reboot the computer. Do so and here is where it gets "unusual" It will ask you for driver disks at some point, so have them ready usually video and RAID controller. It will take about 4 reboots before everything settles down and returns to normal. This will reset all IRQs and usually leave 2 "Standard Computer" entries in the Device Manager under Computer. Don't worry about that. I have the same thing and there is no problem with it. Your ACPI within Windows 2K is now disabled. You will have to manually shutdown the computer by holding the On/Off button in for 10 seconds when you see the screen for "It's Now Safe to Turn Your Computer Off" . Have fun...

[Nelson37]

Pete - it looks like some step-bystep analysis has zeroed in on the problem, as it often does. Divx capture is not generally recommended, anyway. Your statement about framerate apparently changing could be the key, as this could point to a synch issue which gradually climbs beyond tolerances. Divx could be set to change the framerate, or it could be dropping frames to allow the CPU to keep up.

[PeterZ]

Martok: thanks, in fact IRQ's is s'thing I've had an eye on as I see lots of people seem to have trouble with them in Win2k and WinXP; however switching to non-ACPI mode seems too involved and probably a little risky too. I'll try other things before resorting to this, but hold it as a good thought.

Nelson: just to clarify, what I meant is that the *playing* of the video in WMP8 is running at lower frame rate, NOT the capturing which was succesfully done at full 29.97fps rate. Might be due to the fact that decoding is always heavier on CPU (at times, WAY heavier depending on the compression format) than encoding.

Since then, I've extended my trials by changing Audio capture from basic PCM to MP3 (128kbps, 44kHz) while still capturing Video at 640x480, Huffyuv, 29.97fps... that's again about 9.6MB/s of capture rate, and I had NO lockup within the 35mns capture (which filled up that partition, a 19 GB data chunk in 35mns...!).

In summary: it continues to look as if the *only* combination creating lockup problems is (DivX 5 + MP3) simultaneous capture and encoding. CPU not able to handle it? Ok, but why on earth should it lockup the PC? Oh but wait - this is not Unix, this in Windows... :-[

My next trials will be to try the infamous combination at various resolutions and see what happens. Heck, I haven't had a single lockup in 2 days, is it possible that... <dreaming out loud :>

[PeterZ]

Oh well... Continuing on my extensive trials, I inevitably got back to situations causing lockups; at this point, any capture involving DivX5 encoding at 320x240 or higher, 29.97fps with any sort of Audio (MP3, PCM, no compression at all) does result in a lockup. Damn!

I'll try at smaller video resolution and lower frame rates, but I think I know the outcome already - and it's not good; can't be a coincidence that, as soon as I do NOT capture Audio with the Video, I never seem to get any lockup!!

At this point I'm going to start another topic, basically asking the question like; is ANYONE able to capture video and real-time encode to DivX5 together with audio? We'll see, maybe just about noone is doing that today, that would be "fun"... NOT!

And if this doesn't get me anywhere, well I guess then I'll have to give up and live with HuffYuv and ucompressed audio... when will that 1TB disk be on sale, already...?

[mrpoopy]

Peterz, I was having a similiar problem but I think I may have solved it.

I think we are both using the same tv card (ati tv wonder ve) and the problem was basically the same, not being able to capture audio and video together without a lockup.

I was using my mobo's built in sound (which is total trash) and it seems like thats where all the problems were coming from. Today I bought a cheap PCI sound card and installed it. It looks like the problem is gone.

It was a really cheap sound card, only 20 dollars and I needed it anyhow since I was crappy onboard sound. What kind of sound are you using on your system?

[mrpoopy]

I almost forgot.. I tested my system a lot while I was using onboard sound and I could only record video for around 30 minutes. After that the system froze. With this new sound card I've been recording for 1 hour without a single problem. I'm going to continue to record just to make sure it doesn't lock up.

I just checked pricewatch.com. They have basically the same card listed but are they are a better brand for 13 dollars including shipping.

Is your system a HP Pavilion XL876?? I looked it up on HP.com and it looks like it uses the same AC97 sound as my board. If that's what you're using, disable it and install something else.

[PeterZ]

Interesting... well, actually I own a Pavilion 7950, but it also uses the AC97 type audio chip (part of the VIA KT133 chipset I think), therefore you might have nailed down the problem... Although, others before (e.g. Nelson) have suggested that I should try this (disable the on-board audio and install a PCI Audio card) but I was not really convinced (also because I wanted to try everything else before buying add'l h/w).
Just out of curiousity, what PCI Audio board did you buy?

Yesterday I installed and tried the PicVideo MJPEG codec, and was able to capture 30mns of combined Video (MJPEG quality 17) and MP3 audio, s'thing about 22MB per mn... I was kinda' expecting a lockup which didn't happen, therefore I'll try longer capture (2h) later and see what happens.

Still, DivX is way better than MJPEG at the very low bitrates (e.g. 8MB/mn, at that rate MJPEG is plain horrendous), so I still do want to have DivX+MP3 capture working on my PC - not to mention the upcoming DVD player that can also play DivX (seen the ads? http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/021022/047810.html) which will allow the 'capture on PC -> burn a *CD-R* -> play on yr DVD/DivX box -> view on TV' paradigm to work...

Then in 2 yrs from now when we can buy DVD+R's media at 50 cents per unit it will be time to burn DVD's..

[mrpoopy]

Peterz, the card I got is a AOpen AW-850. The same card is listed on pricewatch at something like 30 dollars. Dunno why tho, mine was only 20.

[lusid]

"...Then in 2 yrs from now when we can buy DVD+R's media at 50 cents per unit it will be time to burn DVD's... "

Why wait? it's so close to that now. DVD-R can be had for about 80 cents, and the burners are in the $250-$300 range.

[PeterZ]

. DVD-R can be had for about 80 cents, and the burners are in the $250-$300 range.

what are you smoking? No, just kiddin'
I agree on the very reasonably priced DVD-R/DVD+R drives, but 80cents per DVD-R media? A link please Sir, a link...!

[lusid]

Where I live, they have computer shows somewhere in town about once a week. The going rate at the shows for 1xDVD-r is about .80, 2xDVD-r is about $1.30. I think you have to buy 100+ to get that price, but still. Not bad.

I haven't shopped online for media, but if I can get it locally for those prices somebody must be selling them online in that range too.

well, I just put "cheap dvd-r media" into a search engine and here's the first link: Click Me
100 pack DVD-R, $89

edit: just looked at meritline.com and their price drops to .60 if you buy 500. .92 if you buy 50. So look at it this way: $600 gets you a DVD burner and 500 blanks. That'll keep you busy for a while. esp. burning at 1x

[Nelson37]

Sorry I missed your MMC 7.6 question. Comparing to I believe 7.2, visual quality distinctly improved, framedrops disappeared, cropping available. Real-time SVCD ALMOST there, but I can't edit it. MPEG-2 caps better than MPEG-1, minor difference but the opposite of observed quality with MMC 7.2. I even had success with on-the-fly IVTC, but I can't cut the file without losing audio synch unless I re-encode, in which case I might as well cap hi-bitrate and re-encode that.

I would really recommend capping in higher quality and re-encoding later for best quality.

BTW, if you get a sound card, make sure and get one with digital inputs for eventual capture of AC3 audio - only useful for DVD burning, although I guess for DIVX on PC it will work. Don't know if new DVD players which play Divx will handle AC3 on CD, hmmmmmmm.