Marvel, SBLive!, choppy sound with yuy2

[kaneda]

Hi

I have a problem with my new system. I recently upgraded to a P3 1Ghz system. As a result, I had to get a new mobo. New mobos don't come with ISA slots anymore so I had to give up my beloved SB64AWE. I was using a cheapo PCI soundcard for a few days. Did the job but the capture quality was not satisfactory so I upped and bought an SB Live! After installing the Live!, sound captured wuth YUY2 was choppy and stuttering. The cheapo card didn't even do that. But the weird thing is, it only stutters on YUY2 captures. Even 24bit RGB captures were fine, as were mjpeg captures. I have tried every trick I could find, ie. turn UDMA off the hard drive (worse since without UDMA, massive dropped frames), turn SB16 emulation off, moved cards around so they're not sharing IRQ with anything (currently sharing with ACPI, can't find a way to get rid of it).

So if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I have currently resorted to capturing RGB and converting to YUY2/Huffy.

System specs
Win98SE
Marvel G400TV
Pentium III 1Ghz @ 133mhz socket370
2 x 128mb PC133
Abit VH6-II with VIA Apollo 133A chipsets with latest VIA 4in1 drivers
SB Live! Value
8gb Quantum UDMA 33
28gb Seagate UDMA 66 (dedicated capture drive)
2 x SMC NICs
Adaptec 1520b SCSI (ISA)
CDROM
Creative DVDROM
Yamaha CDR

HDD sharing IDE1
DVDROM+CDROM sharing IDE2
SB Live! sharing IRQ with ACPI
Marvel from memory sharing IRQ with ACPI and NIC (sharing before on crappy s/c with no probs.

Thanks

k

[This message has been edited by kaneda (edited 04 April 2001).]

[Dr Mordrid]

It's a bandwidth issue. The SBLive (SBUndead?) has very high latency drivers that eat bus cycles like a Tyrannosaur.

You can try a few tricks though;

1. disable ISA emulation. It's only used for DOS programs anyhow.

2. turn off all memory resident voices & features.

3. turn off all special features that use resources: reverb, 3D, spatial etc. etc.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 04 April 2001).]

[kaneda]

Hi Doc

Thanks for your reply. I know this Live issue has been flogged to death many times over. And I was a bit reluctant to buy the SB Live because of the known problems with it and video capturing. But where I am, I have never even seen the Turtle Beach on offer. The Echo is a bit on the expensive side. $300 is in US Dollars I take it? The way the Australian Peso is going it would end up costing more than the computer All the soundcards for sale here are either the cheapos or Creative.

I have tried turning the DOS emulation off. Same thing. Haven't tried turning off the special features of the card yet. I'll give that a try if I can find where the settings are. But isn't it odd that the high bitrate of 24bit RGB was fine but Yuy2 had the problem?

I forgot to say I'm using Powerdesk 5.55 and VT 1.52 with the Flying Dutchman yuy hack.

k

[This message has been edited by kaneda (edited 04 April 2001).]

[Raido]

Beside the wise Dr.Modrid advice, I would try to capture PCM audio(44-16-stereo) with Virtualdub which allows to set the audio buffer size: you can increase it (take a look at the virtualdub site to know what block size you can set) and see what's happen.
Bye
Raido

[Flying dutchman]

Experiment with the "pci latency timer" setting in your bios, it sometimes helps...

[AndrewDV]

Hello,

Just passing by and noticed that you mention the SBLive has issues with video capture. What is everyone using instead of SBLive?

This is really interesting because I am using the SBLive.

Thank you

[Dr Mordrid]

Right now I'm trying the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz in a couple of video systems. It seems to be working out so far, but I haven't had time to run extensive high datarate tests yet. It sounds great. ~$70 USD.

Other than that I've got an Echo GINA24 in my audio workstation that's FANTASTIC. It should be...its a low end studio card with a breakout box that has SPDIF/ADAT, 2 inputs, 8 outputs etc. etc. It also has low latency drivers. These list for over $400 USD but I got mine for somewhat less. Check it out;

http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/Gina/Default.htm

Dr. Mordrid

[AndrewDV]

$400 is a tiny bit out of my price range (by about $250).

The SBLive topic has me a bit upset. I'm wondering if some of the problems I have been 'dealing with' are caused by the card. For the $70 cost, I can always give it a shot.

Thanks

[Dr Mordrid]

Actually you might be able to find the GINA for about $300 OR you could check out it's little sister: the MIA. Check here;

http://www.echoaudio.com/mia.htm

Please note that the Echo cards are NOT necessarily for gaming. These are studio cards.

Dr. Mordrid

[kaneda]

Hi all

Thanks for all your suggestions. I tried playing with the PCI settings in BIOS. No go. But then I uninstalled all the software that came with the Live! except for the drivers. That got rid of the stutters! And then as an experiment, I reinstalled all the Live! software again to see if I can find the offending software. I tried it again and still no stutter! Is that weird or what! So in future system reinstalls, I hope I can replicate this solution!

Thanks for all your help.

k

[This_Idiot]

I use a Yamaha 192XG PCI in one system here -So far it's been teamed up with a G200 Marvel, G400 Marvel and a DC30+ (not all at the same time). The only problem I've had with it is sometimes the incoming audio seems a bit quiet, but it's never given me major problems.

The other PC currently has an SB128 PCI (the cheap one), and while I've not noticed any serious problems with it, I haven't really stretched it with any long projects yet.

[Technoid]

I can't resist:

Am I the Only one that has NO problem whatsoever with my SBLive?

[This_Idiot]

Technoid

Certainly not, there are plenty of folks out there that are happy with the combination. There are plenty of reasons for this. EG short captures, varying quality of motherboards, amount of available RAM, number of other PCI cards in use, number of background tasks going on (jeez, I didn't know so much went on in the background until I tried out TaskInfo - and I'm a professional programmer, albeit mainframe). Basically, anything that can have an effect on either the PCI bus, HD access or Memory allocation.

[AndrewDV]

Hello,

For an experiment, I removed the SBLive and did some test captures. The capture was the same good quality as before. However, I was surprised to find that the playback was imporved in the improved 'green flashes' category (I get these on my Intel machine as well as the AMD one). There were not a lot of flashses to begin with, but there was a difference.

[AmSci]

If you are using a VIA-based motherboard...its worth mentioning the VIA acknowledged the the Live! souncards do cause problems. Via are working on a fix:

http://boards.gamers.com/messages/me...dware&id=zzcws