Can't capute analog to avi without massive framedrops!!!

[jmatej]

Just don't know what to do...I am unable to capture analog feeds from my Hi8 camera to avi uncompressed without 25-50% frame drops. If I capture to mpeg2-I get NO frame drops. I have downloaded virtual dub and its hard drive utility indicates that I should have no problem capturing 30FPS.

Windows XP Professional with SP1 NTFS formatting
Athlon XP2100+ (not overclocked)
Gigabyte G7-VAXP with latest BIOS and 4-in-1 drivers
512MB Kingston RAM DDR 400
Leadtek WinFast 250 LE MyVIVO 128MB video card (GeForce Ti4200)
36GB Seagate Cheetah 15000RPM SCSI hardrive (dedicated for video)
80 GB WD EIDE HD (100 ultraATA) for OS
Tekram 390U2W ultra2 SCSI controller
Creative Soundblaster Live! Value sound card

It doesn't matter if I use Ulead VideoStudio, My Vivo PNV or whatever; I cannot capture smooth avi video...

[billson]

what resolution are you trying to capture? I have a similar machine (sort of - p4 1.8a, epox 4bda+, 80gig WD, 512RAM, AIW7500, Audigy...)

Like you, I can cap MPG2 without dropped frames but AVI, i cant do anything over 480 x 576 without dropping frames like mad. And i can only do that with Virtual VCR.

Have you tried iuVCR? Thats my only real tip because I havent solved my own problems yet. Ive tried everything but shifting the audigy to a diff slot (which i will have to try some day). I had better success capturing at higher res with iuVCR though than anything else. (actually AVI_IO was the best but i hate the file split).

[hwoodwar]

I suggest you start with working your way through this: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/81808.php

Note: It says it is for ATI cards, but in actuality most of it applies to capturing with any card.

[eonsign]

Haven't posted anything to these forums before but have been a regular reader for sometime. I also had significant drops on my AthlonXP1700, Win2000, 512mb, AIW Radeon, SB Live system with Virtual Dub capturing analog from a Hi8 camcorder. Even with AVI captures at 320x240.

It was driving me nuts so I decided to play around with a few settings in Virtualdub and to my surprise, I finally got captures to work with virtually no drops.

In Virtualdub, goto to FILE | CAPTURE AVI then under CAPTURE | SETTINGS, change the Video Buffer Limit, Audio Buffer Limit, and Audio Buffer Size to some high number. I set mine to 200, 10, 4000 but I have no idea what the context of these values are...does anyone? These numbers seem to work ok though. Click OK and try your AVI capture again.

Now, I just want to say that I'm not an expert in these tools and although I have opinions as why it works, I cannot technically explain it. However, I figured that every bit of infomation is helpful to someone and I haven't seen many solutions to the frame drop issue using this method.

[SilverMana]

i had to upgrade my ide drivers for my amd athlon 1600 xp+ in order to capture without frameloss... cuz myt hd writing was to slow

[jmatej]

Thanks for the input!!! I have in fact tweaked my system, and I confirmed that it read/writes adequately on all of the hard drives for dropless capture (using the bundled diagnostic with virtual dub). Yesterday I installed an updated version of winfast MyVIVO called winfast MyPVR. I also tried the suggestion to alter the buffer settings in VirtualDub. Now I get this crazy thing: when I try to capture in Virtual Dub or MyPVR to uncompressed AVI the diagnostics indicate capute with NO frame loss. When I try to play back the avi file I get NO video at all and just the sound track. But here's where it gets stranger: Now I CAN capture avi uncompressed with Ulead Studio without frame drops (which I could NOT do yesterday)... I just don't get it. Could there be some kind of codec conflict and if so, is there any way to verify/repair this?

[kenmo]

I just tried the settings that were suggested for VirtualDub and I'm no longer dropping more frames then I'm capturing. So far I've captured 41820 frames (23 mnutes) and dropped only 6 frames !

Great tip.....

Now I'll be testing to see if audio/video maintain their synch...


Cheers