frame drops (over and over .. ) :)

[kropotkin]

I have the setup from the signature, and i use as a stable capture solution yuv2/picvideo.
I use mostly avi_io, however, sometimes, don't know why, it tends to BSOD, so, when i don't need full res, i use virtualdub, which never crashes.
However, if i try to capture with full res in vd, i get a constant frame loss, like 1 -2 fps. Any ideas why? i tried all virtualdub variants and none worked properly, so i suspect something different.

Cheers,

Adrian

[Flying dutchman]

What sound card? Could be a quartz frequency issue.

[Dr Mordrid]

Or, in the case of this mainboard, does it have and are you using the optional AC '97 audio?

Dr. Mordrid

[kropotkin]

Phillips PSC706 Acoustic Edge, 1.89 drivers. What's about quartz freqs? That's new

[Flying dutchman]

I have two identical Creative Soundblaster 128's. I use a Terratec Cinergy 600 for capturing (full-sized 720x576 Huffyuv on a Celeron 900!).

When using one sound card, it drops a frame every two minutes while capturing, when using the other only one frame per four minutes !!!

The only way I can explain this is if the quartz frequencies are slightly different, maybe a few ppm.

[kropotkin]

This really sucks! Maybe my sound card has this kind of problems.

[Dr Mordrid]

When using my Santa Cruz (aka: Sonic Fury) I get a drop about every 100,000 frames, if any, using the below system.

With my Marvels and eTV analog capture hardware the situation was about the same (1frame/100k) using AVI_IO. This was mostly using Asus P3B-F mainboards, but also more recently with the SiS 735/745 chipped boards by ECS and MSI.

It helps a lot to keep the usual system crud off the editing system. I do this with removable boot drives, with the editing one having NO email and NO crap software. Just stuff proven to be solid and for graphics/editing.

Dr. Mordrid

[Flying dutchman]

I also had less than one drop per hour when I still used the Marvel plus Avi_IO. Avi_io simply has a perfect frame buffering scheme. I hope Markus Zingg will develop a WDM version soon (are you reading this, Markus?)

Now this has definitely worsened with my new WDM-based Terratec card: I now get 1 drop per 4 minutes (=6000 frames).
Still, several issues have vastly improved: channel tuning is perfect, multi-gigabyte files are no problem, S/N ratio is visibly MUCH MUCH better thanks to the 9-bit Philips chip, it supports more resolutions than the Marvel and most important, it doesn't suffer from the sudden frame-order reversals which occasionally happen on the Marvel. Downside is the increased number of drops and the not-too-stable Terratec CinergyTV software that may suddenly halt the recording if CPU load gets a bit too high to its taste. I'm still looking for the perfect recording software...

[landrover]

Haven´t I read this somewhere before???

[Flying dutchman]

Sorry, I get carried away sometimes...