Choppy capturing with Leaktek TV2000 Deluxe

[gifty74]

hello all, i'm looking for some suggestions to try to get better capturing with my leadtek winfast tv2000 card. i recently purchased it, and i'm having some issues while capturing. i'm just looking to capture to a simple format, like divx, to watch tv shows on the pc at my leisure. i swear before i could capture to this without any issues, through the pvr program that came with the card. i like using their software because i can use the remote and other features. while capturing, the video gets somewhat blocky. it's very slight, but i can pick it up. also, the audio seems to lose sync with the video, and that is very annoying. i was thinking my system was worthy of the task (athlon 1600xp, 256, 40gb, ata100). while capturing i'm at 60% capacity of the cpu. while not, it's around 2-6%. any suggestions? is 60% cpu use while capturing pretty normal? i get the same results while capturing in mpeg2, and several other codecs. i'm sure i'll get some suggestions to use virtual dub, and i have, but i get the same results. your help is greatly appreciated.

[Quake2Player]

Hiya Giffy74...

I have a similiar setup to yours: XP1600, Shuttle motherboard AK35GTR (kt266a), 256MB PC2100 DDR RAM, 40GB 7200 RPM HDD, 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD, Leadtek TV2000XP Deluxe, Hercules Prophet II Kyro 65MB (AGP) vid card. 2 things:

1. My CPU usage maxes at about 29-32% while I am capturing ... no higher (using MBM... motherboard monitor). You must have other apps running in the background. I know there's an article here that goes so far as to recommend you do video capturing, editing and ripping on a totally separate partition with a clean install of your O/S independent of everything else you do on your pc (dual-boot). I have to disable my Antivirus because of something I found out....

2. Surfing some forums (maybe here)... someone mentioned disabling Norton Antivirus and it helped solve some problems. I am not using Norton, but AVG and I had problems capturing (about 3 mins into the capture, I'd get the Blue Screen of Death... and it always seemed like a different error!). Anyway, I turned off AVG and presto, it works!!!! I already tested a 30 minute capture off the TV tuner... burned onto a CD in VCD format and it looks as good as the original... slightly off on quality, but excellent considering the price of the card.

So, those are a couple of things to look into. I hope this helps .

- Quake2Player

[gifty74]

hey guys. looking at my original post above, any more suggestions? i just reloaded all the new drivers and i still cannot capture without it being choppy. and to boot, the 30 second divx i captured was 17mb. isn't that a little big? what can i be doing wrong in either case? thanks.

[jdizzy40]

First off what quality are you recording too? Mpeg-2, Mpeg-1? Your card does not have an on-board MPEG encoder does it? Or is it doing it thru it's software. I have used ATI cards(AIW) for years and they do a good job, however, I bulit a dedicated PVR 2 months ago, combined a WIN PVR 250 (which has a MPEG 2 encoder) and CPU usage is around 15% when recording DVD High Res. I have found if you want top quality captures, you have to pick the right TV Tuner. I compress/convert to DVix using Intervideo' DVD Copy which supports this format.

[kisk]

I've noticed the choppy picture also with divx. I think your best bet is to capture in a less intensive format (uncompress avi if you have the space) then convert that to divx. I have a p4 2.4ghz, 1gb ram and capturing to divx is still very choppy for me.

[spooky130]

I also have the Leadtek TV2000 deluxe. I was working on a web page detailing my capture process, but then started learning more and more, and have put it on hold until it can be at least semi-stable. :-)

But, here are a few things I've learned....

Capture using Huffyuv (if you have the HD space) or if (like me) you don't, use MJPEG. See the thread (and one particular post) at http://virtualvcr.sourceforge.net/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=4&t=544&s=29dac12f7982d3dcd...d322#entry2422
for more details. Remember this: DiVX is CPU-intensive. I'm guessing that when you refer to the capture getting blocky, you are referring to dropped frames. Dropped frames happen when the capture can't (for any of various reasons) keep up with the source. See the sticky in this forum for good info on that.

Try VirtualVCR (http://www.digtv.ws/). You'll also need the patch for the Leadtek card (http://wave.prohosting.com/avarakin/Video/), and you'll probably want the scheduler (http://vvcrs.50megs.com/vvcrs2.html) as well. Why VirtualVCR? It gives you a nice status window showing the number of dropped frames, time remaining on the HD, etc..... If you're seeing more than, say, a few dropped frames per hour, you need to look at your config. Remember, though, that problems in the source can also cause dropped frames---I normally get about 1--3/hour for recording OTA, or around 3--9/hour from VHS, depending on how bad the tape is.

Do *NOT* compress audio during capture. Do that later, during post-processing/editing.

If your audio gets out of sync, you can (based on my observations) fix this, 99% of the time, simply by letting VirtualDub adjust the frame rate so audio and video durations match PRIOR to any editing. (Video: direct stream copy. Audio: direct stream copy. Video-->Frame rate ....) I have, however, seen a few cases where the number it suggests is way out of range from what normally works for my caps (29.974 or, in rare cases, 29.973) ... so I use the second option and start at 29.974 fps.

Make sure that any anti-virus software is *NOT* doing any real-time scans on the drive you're capturing to, as a minimum..... That, or turn it off completely during capture.

Well, my breakfast is getting cold.... HTH, even if only as a starting point.

Later,
--jim