Sound problems when capturing with AVI_IO using HuffYUV 2.1.1 compression

[BESommer]

I'm having problems with audio when capturing video with AVI_IO using HuffYUV 2.1.1. The audio is very scratchy when playing back with Windows Media Player before compression and with Xing MPEG Player after compression to MPEG-1. I don't hear any problems while the capturing itself is going on and no dropped frames are reported. I have audio set to PCM, 44100 Hz, 172Kb/sec since that is the closest I can find to VCD standard audio. Beats me why they don't have a 224 Kb/sec option. When I capture using the MJPEG codec at high quality I don't have this problem. I'm using Matrox Video Tools 1.52. My signature consists of my system configuration. Any assistance or feedback is appreciated.

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Intel PIII 733MHz 133 MHz FSB
ASUS CUV4X VIA Apollo Pro133A FCPGA/sound
256MB RAM
IBM DDYS-T36950 36.7GB 4.9 ms U160SCSI 10000rpm (Qty: 2, Striped)
Adaptec 2100S RAID Controller
Matrox Marvel G400 16MB AGP TV
Sound Blaster Live Platinum
Win98SE

[Dr Mordrid]

My bet is that you're running out of bandwidth. Given that you have a SBLive! and that HuffYUV encoding will be getting the system bus busy as hell more CPU might help. So might turning off the ISA emulation mode of the SBLive! in the Device Manager, as well as turning off reverb, spatial and other special audio modes and using 22.05khz instead of 44.1. Most times you won't notice the difference.

I don't have any problems using an AWE64 ISA audio card and 800+ mhz PIII.

The key info is that a less resource intensive operation like capturing with hardware MJPeg support gives you no problems.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 06 December 2000).]

[BESommer]

Thank you very much for the feedback! While it is disappointing that it appears my 733 MHz CPU with 133 MHz System Bus is unable to deal with HuffYUV compression - this computer being a new purchase - I guess I'll keep it anyways. ; ) Regrettably, my striped IBM UltraStar Ultra 160 drives attached to an Adaptec 2100S SCSI RAID Controller also has not met expections - even after following the Matrox disk optimization tips - the Matrox benchmarking tools only showing a maximum of 17 MB/sec on my defragmented video capture drive while SiSoft Sandra showed a maximum of 20 MB/sec sequential write. The individual drives themselves have an advertised range of 21-36 MB/sec.

I had already disabled SBLive's emulation mode via the device manager and will attempt to determine how to turn off the reverb, spatial and other special audio modes. As far as sound is concerned I'm definitely a newbie and with the exception of unmuting the line in have kept everything at their default level.

As far as capturing at 22.05khz goes, won't this affect my ability to burn Video CDs and SVCDs as the compressed MPEG will no longer be white book compliant? Or will the compression software (Panasonic MPEG Encoder or TMPGEnc) convert the audio from 22.05khz to 44.1khz?

[This message has been edited by BESommer (edited 06 December 2000).]

[BESommer]

Disabling reverb and all the audio modes didn't seem to have an effect but changing the audio setting to 22.05 kHz fixed things with the capture. The funny thing is that the problem with 44.1 kHz still existed when I tried capturing with HuffYUV at 352x288.

I saw that Virtual Dub allows conversion to 44.1 kHz and I have no problems performing MPEG compression to those audio settings.

[Dr Mordrid]

Cutting the data rate of the audio seems to confirm a bandwidth problem, doesn't it?

As many here know I'm NO fan of PCI audio in general and the SBLive in particular. It has a nasty habit of hitting the system resources very hard, even compared to other PCI audio cards. In general PCI audio tends to hog an already overworked PCI/33 bus whose bandwidth is only 133 mb/s.

This won't be a problem once PCI/66 hits in force with its 256 mb/s bandwidth, but for now it's quite a burden when used with other devices that hit the PCI bus hard. Examples are capture cards, fast disk controllers and RAID adapters, all of which are common on video editing systems. A VERY fast system could also help, but at what cost?

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 11 December 2000).]

[Technoid]

If SBLive is such an bus hog, why dident it show up om my system when i switched from an awe64(isa)?

I did have some problem with my old via MB.
but since it was still there when i removed the SBLive and put in the SB64(ISA) i changed to a BX MB and the problem was gone.
(it did not reaper when i plugged the sblive in the BX board)

[This_Idiot]

And it'll become more and more of a problem as ISA slots become history. I'm already in this boat with the latest machine, since the Asus A7V only has PCI slots (except the AGP of course).