Excuse me for bothering again with dropped frames.

[OcchiGrigi]

MB: MSI 6330 with Athlon 900 Mhx @ 1008 (so PCVCR can capture at maximum resolution)
384 Mbytes 133 Mhz Ram
1 Quantum 20 Gb UDMA66 hd for Win2k SP2
1 Quantum 60 Gb UDMA100 hd for captured video
Matrox 450 etv with standard cd driver (vt202 and pd535)

Matrox's PCVCR works fine, it can capture 704x576 streams without any dropping even if i use pc for other things

The problems come with Virtualdub/Avi_IO/FreeVcr ... btw with any program uses the standard avicap interface: until the program is on top of the other ("has focus") it losts about 1 or 2 frames per minute and after about 10/15 min it begins to drop 5 frames/sec !!
If i touch the windows taskbar it begins immediately to drop 5 or more frames/sec.
I've tried all possible setting in Virtualdub: overlay, preview, none, hide on capture ... nothing changed.
Notice that i'm trying a 352x288 25fps Divx capture.

Btw i've put in a WinTv Pci from Hauppage and ... no dropped frames (obviusly capturing from the wintv) even at full resolution with picvideo codec wich is less cpu intensive then Divx !!! so i think it's not a cpu or operating system or hardware issue but someting wrong with matrox's avicap driver (in a post in matrox's video editing forum Haig said that pcvcr uses DirectShow to do its work ... i'm trying to make a GraphEdit graph to capture video but it's not se easy)

I'm going to hate this card, i hate it's remote (what can i do with a 4 gigabytes mpeg2 file for an hour of video ??? you can tell me that i can recompress it with virtual dub, but it refuses to open the file) ... and i want to capture with vdub !!! :-)

Am I trying to use the g450 for something it isn't designed for or i'm missing something ??

I've also tried new video tools ... nothing changed ... even using the only 352x288 wdm choice.

Many thanks in advance.
Davide.

[mrtj1]

divx doesnt support mpeg-2 yet, but you can open it up in flask and make an avi that way, or use mpeg2avi which is what i had to do when i capped with my aiw

[OcchiGrigi]

You're right,
but what is driving me crazy is that I can't do something with a card i've paid 250$ while a cheap hauppage card for 70$ can do
Btw, i'll try this solution and i'll convert the mpeg2 streams to avi or VCD format with Flask.

The question still remains ... why does it drops frame ??

Many thanks mrtj1

[mrtj1]

Matrox's PCVCR works fine, it can capture 704x576 streams without any dropping even if i use pc for other things

i think it does drop frames, it just doesnt tell you. cant be sure as i always use avi io to cap. as far as capping goes, dont cap direct to divx. use something like picvideo or huffyuv and then convert that to divx. i think you are losing frames because divx needs a lot of proc power to compress especially in real time while capping, and if you do other things at the same time it will definetely lose frames. in ME or 98, it think that processes lose priority if they arent selected, the same for 2k i think. i.e. i compress to avi in flask and while it is selected, you can see the frame numbers increasing at a certain speed, if you click on the desktop or select anything else, the frame rate drops. if you're using win2k, can you increase the priority of your capping prog in task manager? put it on the one above normal. that might help a little. the main prob i think is capping straight to divx. if you capped direct to picvideo or huffyuv, you would lose less frames, even while doing other things. i tried yuy2 output for capping with huffyuv at 704x576 and i lost the same amount of frames as with hw mjpeg. i.e. not many. my specs are:

MB: KT7-Raid with Athlon Tbird 1ghz
384 Mbytes 133 Mhz Ram
1 30Gb ATA66 IBM 7200RPM hd for Win2k SP2
1 Matrox 82 Gb 5200RPM ATA100 hd for capturing video
Matrox G400 with leaked drivers.

i used to lose loads of frames in avi io as well. it was capping fine, then the number of frames being dropped went crazy, and there was only sound, not video during those parts. it wasnt due to fragmentation or anything like that. it must have been the drivers (in ME btw) . i use the leaked drivers in 2k now and they work a charm. no hassles while capping at all.

in the end tho, i wouldnt cap in mpeg-2 but in huff or picvideo mjpeg as you can dump those into vdub and go from there and edit/crop resize etc, and not have to use flask. unless you serve the files into vdub through flask.

i dont know if that was useful or if i was blathering on but.... here's hoping something there made sense.

[OcchiGrigi]

Something is going better ... in win2k, changing virtualdub process priority to real time i've captured 20 minutes 704x576x25 using picvideo mjpeg codec loosing only 2 frames.
The pc is almost unusable but i'm happy

Many thanks ...
Davide.

[mrtj1]

try lowering it to above normal. or at most higher. realtime is nuts. i did that with winamp once and it took me ages to get to it.

[OcchiGrigi]

Virtualdub already sets by default its process priority to "higher" .... just above "realtime" ...
One strange thing: in real time priority like in every priority i've tried, cpu usage is always below 70% but, without realtime it drops frames ...
Btw i'll post new test results soon ... hoping they can help someone else
Greetings,
Davide.

[FoX_M1]

Maybe I'm completely out of topic but I'd suggest you dual-boot WIn98se and you try under Win98se...

Fox
The truth is out there