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  • Sudden quality changes while capturing

    My MJPEG-captures using a RRG and a G400MAX seem to suffer from sudden quality changes during the capture. At first the quality is fine, then it suddenly changes (to the worse as I'm usually use best quality) within a few frames, although the source video doesn't even have a scene change at that point.

    An example:

    I put up a small page displaying three consecutive frames from such a quality drop at http://www.fortunecity.de/wolkenkratzer/pci/622/ .

    I'd really like to see a solution to this (and also to the "jittering bug" which I also have) as I can't do a capture longer than about 5-10 minutes without the problem appearing.

  • #2
    I've noticed that the jittering effect occured for me somewhere between reinstalling Windows 98 the first and second times while trying to fix my other capture problems. This occurred when i upgraded from the shipping g400 marvel drivers to the newer drivers and pc-vcr utility by just upgrading over them.

    I was able to get rid of it by entirely uninstalling the pc-vcr and the matrox drivers for it and then reinstalling the newer version of the drivers for the card and the pc-vcr.

    If these problems have occured just after installing a newer version of the drivers over older ones then this may be the case for you.

    Hope this solves your problems, and may your capturing go smoothly.

    As for me; I'm going to be RMAing my g400 Marvel as I have been unable to remove the checkers of death that plauge my every video capture.
    http://www.coredcs.com/~amhelmke/checkers.gif

    If this does not help you than may you find some comfort in my own personal suffering in attempt to resolve my capture problems.

    Comment


    • #3
      Nope, this installation of Win98 has seen only the current version of the drivers.

      If it wouldn't be that extremely regular I'd say that you suffer from some kind of RF interference.

      [This message has been edited by Ingo Korb (edited 24 January 2000).]

      Comment


      • #4
        I'm 99.9% sure that this is related to the fact that Matrox doesn't know what "industrial quality software" is -- the fact that they released, and CONTINUE to sell their RR-G despite the fact that the drivers available for it are so full of bugs it makes Microsoft look good. Your best bet? Bitch and whine at Matrox - be heard, let them know that they can't release products like this. Go on Deja.com and other forums, make sure everyone knows what Matrox likes to do -- release hardware without supporting drivers leaving their customers to look to other solutions IE software codecs (hah), or different cards, lie about when the drivers will be released ("Very soon" my ass). Maybe all they need is a lot of very bad PR before they realize that they can't continue to dick around with their customers like this.

        every-post-I-read-about-people-having-the-same-damn-problems-with-their-RRG-makes-me-even-more-not-so-coolfish.

        Comment


        • #5
          Someone on this BBS told me that this was due to heat... Now I thought that they were ludicrous because I have 12 fans in my case, but I rearranged my cards so that one of the fans blew directly between the RRG and the MAX, and I haven't had this problem since.
          Now I don't know for sure if this may have had to do with anything else on my machine because I format it every month, so maybe some interfering drivers or software got removed, but I'm not sure. All I know is that I don't have the problem any more.


          I used to have this all the time when I would capture 60 minutes, it would turn to this poor quality after about 15 minutes, stay that way for about 5 minutes, and then revert and continue the cycle... it was so damn wierd. But over the past few months I have have captured several dozen hours worth of video and it has only happened once it all that capturing...

          but I also use AVI_IO only to capture, and I reboot to Win98SE to capture ( I do most stuff in NT, but are there RRG drivers for NT?) where I have nothing but a bare install and all drivers and all patches and set my desktop down to 800x600x16 so that the MAX's DAC is producing less heat.

          Maybe most of this is just superstition, but something in there has taken care of the problem... hope some of this helps....

          R. Garrett Bryant
          RBryant

          Tyan 1952DLU Thunder X
          2 PIII Xeon 500Mhz (512k)
          1 512MB ECC PC100 DIMM
          Adaptec AAA-133U2
          3 18 GB U2W Cheetahs
          Jaz 1GB
          UltraPlex40Xmax CDROM
          PlexWriter 8/20 CD-R
          Pioneer 6X DVDROM
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          Addtronics 7896 w/12 Fans
          Mitsumi Wireless RF Kbd
          Logitec Opt. Wheel Mouse
          1.5M/256k ADSL
          Trusty Ol' Floppy

          Comment


          • #6
            It's always good to know that your not alone!
            I have the exact same problem!
            It seems to have started when i changed my tired old g200 with my new fast g400!
            At some point (when i feel very brave) i wil either rip my old g200 from my mothers system or atach the rrg to the g200 in her system and test if it works there!
            I am curently replying to support!

            NOTE:
            Try capturing without sound at a bitrate belove 600 kb/s.
            It wil probably work beyond the 15 min barier!
            It's not a solution just a funny thing!


            ------------------
            INTEL PIII550 MSI 6163
            G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
            SBlive
            128 MB RAM
            19GB HDD Space! (6.4+13 quantum drives)
            SONY CDU771 32X SLOT IN
            SONY CRX100E 4/2/24 CDRW


            If there's artificial intelligence, there's bound to be some artificial stupidity.

            Jeremy Clarkson "806 brake horsepower..and that on that limp wrist faerie liquid the Americans call petrol, if you run it on the more explosive jungle juice we have in Europe you'd be getting 850 brake horsepower..."

            Comment


            • #7
              I had exactly this problem, but dropping the resolution to 800x600 and not having the capture window full screen seemed to sort it out.

              Let me know if it works for you.

              Comment


              • #8
                Seems like almost everybody has this problem and that the solution is to lower the resolution.

                But if the problem is due to heat from g400-ramdac (or whatever), it will NOT be solved by new driver-releases... This is a hardware problem.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Lowering resolution did not work.
                  Lowering AGP did not work.
                  In my country (Sweden) its winter and cold as hell (pun intended) and im almost frezing my feets of at the floor.
                  Mayby i should open the window?
                  Or mayby its enough vith the RRG-shaped hole in my outer wall !!??!!

                  Going to test erlier versions of vidtols!
                  I am still swapping mail with Matrox-support.
                  If it gives something i will post it here!

                  ------------------
                  INTEL PIII550 MSI 6163
                  G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
                  SBlive
                  128 MB RAM
                  19GB HDD Space! (6.4+13 quantum drives)
                  SONY CDU771 32X SLOT IN
                  SONY CRX100E 4/2/24 CDRW




                  [This message has been edited by Technoid (edited 28 January 2000).]
                  If there's artificial intelligence, there's bound to be some artificial stupidity.

                  Jeremy Clarkson "806 brake horsepower..and that on that limp wrist faerie liquid the Americans call petrol, if you run it on the more explosive jungle juice we have in Europe you'd be getting 850 brake horsepower..."

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    (I don't have any answers, but...)

                    Its probably not the heat. I have one of the most abysmal setups with regards to air-flow. Don't ask for details, its just bad, trust me. My motherboard reads a constant 30.C on cold days.

                    The worst I get with my Marvel G400 is the occasional artifact-blip (i.e.: a 1-frame duration bright cut-out fragment in the image somewhere.)

                    My experience has been initially with a PII-350 based system, and now with a K7-600 based system. Windows 98, etc.

                    Someone else suggested RF noise...well, lets just say you can capture very high quality STATIC too. : )

                    Judging by those screenshots, the loss is not in the signal, unless he happened to be capturing from a DSS system just as lightning struck nearby (or a seagull landed on his dish,etc.) introducing irreconcilable signal errors enough to cause visible and sustained artifacting in the MPEG2 stream. (ooo...that was pedantic, sorry.)

                    - --- -- --- - - -- - ----- - ---
                    P3-600
                    128MB
                    G400-TV
                    (everything else is incidental)

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      No, I was capturing from a normal (analog) sattelite transponder, the image was fine on the TV.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I have Found it!

                        The cause of the problem lies in either the G400 hardware or the G400 software as my RRG is working perfektly with my old G200!!!!!
                        With the G200 i succesfully captured 2hours of movie without coruption or signal drops.

                        BUT with the G400 back in my 'puter i cant even edit the clips without them being destroyed.

                        Everyone with this problem should email Matrox support so they get their eyes on it and fix it!

                        ------------------
                        INTEL PIII550 MSI 6163
                        G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
                        SBlive
                        128 MB RAM
                        19GB HDD Space! (6.4+13 quantum drives)
                        SONY CDU771 32X SLOT IN
                        SONY CRX100E 4/2/24 CDRW


                        If there's artificial intelligence, there's bound to be some artificial stupidity.

                        Jeremy Clarkson "806 brake horsepower..and that on that limp wrist faerie liquid the Americans call petrol, if you run it on the more explosive jungle juice we have in Europe you'd be getting 850 brake horsepower..."

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          EUREKA!!
                          It's software fault!!!!
                          My RRG is Working with my G400 when i use PD 5.15!!!
                          And its not a bug in Vidtools but in Powerdesk!!!


                          ------------------
                          INTEL PIII550 MSI 6163
                          G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
                          SBlive
                          128 MB RAM
                          19GB HDD Space! (6.4+13 quantum drives)
                          SONY CDU771 32X SLOT IN
                          SONY CRX100E 4/2/24 CDRW


                          If there's artificial intelligence, there's bound to be some artificial stupidity.

                          Jeremy Clarkson "806 brake horsepower..and that on that limp wrist faerie liquid the Americans call petrol, if you run it on the more explosive jungle juice we have in Europe you'd be getting 850 brake horsepower..."

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            well i'll be a monkey's uncle! you bet i'm going to try this out. too bad most games won't work without the latest drivers though.

                            hrm matrox's driver site has pd 5.13 and pd 5.21 but not pd 5.15 ? can you point us in the right dir?

                            thanks..



                            [This message has been edited by coolfish (edited 30 January 2000).]

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              You should always try the murc first:

                              http://www.murc.ws/Driver/Win9x.html

                              Comment

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