Dropped Frames on Capture with VFW

[Christrati]

Marvel G200 Capture settings

Well, first with the bad news:

Using VT 1.52 with the Macrovision patch and the YUY2 crack, I still loose frames in AVI_IO. Now for the good news.

MJPEG captures -- not a drop!! At least for the 5 mins I've recorded so far. I forgot about how nice the capture function was with the G200 along with the TV output--Outstanding!

Well, I'll try some Win ME tweaks and I'll post my system config, but so far, capturing with YUY2, I'm loosing frames, but at least I'm not loosing them with MJPEG!

System Config:
Abit BE6 1 GHZ PIII 100 FSB
Marvel G200 AGP TV w/ DVD Decoder (A Rock stable card for me !)
IBM 60GXP 40 gig 7200 RPM
WD 7200 20 gig HD
Santa Cruz Soundcard
Netgear PCI 10/100 Network Card
Power Desk 5.55
VT 1.52
YUY2 patch
Macro Patch
Zoran DVD
MGI SoftDVD

Here's some further information other people might find interesting. When I playback my MPEG2 files I made with the Marvel G450 eTV, they are also a little cropped, but look great! I can go into more detail if anyone wants to know more about this.

As for MJPEG capture and playback, great!!! No problems so far there, the image is not cropped and everything looks crisp and smooth. Of course, my old video's still drop frames, but nothing is perfect right?

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to stick with my Marvel G200 for a while and see if I prefer it for VideoCapture and edit. Hope this helps other people!

Chris

[Dave Brown]

Hi Guys (gals, if any reading), Well I still havent solved my problem yet of dropping frames. Mikiem, your quote

"SoundBlaster family cards MUST BE USED AT A SAMPLE RATE OF 48KHz. due to input/output clock drift on these cards"

I was origonally using 44k, if I use 48k won't this cause problems for the mpeg encoder? not sure about this. Strange thing is that over the years I have used a variety of capture cards. I origonally started with a Pinnacle PCTV and a K6 2/450, which didnt drop frames, then moved to a DC30 again which didnt drop frames. Strange thing is I have another computer almost the very same spec as this one and the DC30 drops all over the place, this has a VA6 motherboard with a VIA chipset, I put the old Pinnacle PCTV in and it works sweet.... work that one out... a Brooktree 848 card outperforms a DC30 and G400 both of which are hardware compression (believe me there is nothing wrong here with my hardware setup, not that I know of anyway). Your other comment about YUV and the Huffyuv is strange in that I know a straight YUV capture put's far more demands on my system because of the use indicator, yet it dosent drop frames, but Huffyuv as you say is optimised to avoid the requirements of horsepower, yet it drops frames. What actually happens is the frame rate very slowly drops say 25.00..24.9999...24.9998 slowly then bottoms out somewhere then starts to rise again. During this time it has dropped several frames. It doent start to drop frames until after 10-15 mins. I usually capture movies 1-2 hrs in length and have done so ok in past. Its as though you get one problem solved and you get another one back. Like I say the new drivers have cured big problems for me (both on 98 and 2k) but I now drop frames Grrrrr. Do you think I should junk the Awe 64 gold, I was told it was a good audio card?


I have heard that the Picvideo codec works with these new drivers, think I will have a go. Let you know what happens. Hope you fix your problem Chris, dont think I will buy Matrox again though (or Pinnacle for that matter).... whats left...?

Dave Brown

[Christrati]

Here's an update to my progress so far:

Still getting dropped frames about every 1:35 mins. Of course, I don't loose any frames if I record only video, so I'm not sure what else to really try and fix the problem. I've used both the 1.52 video tools w/ the YUY2 patch (Marvel G200). With the Marvel G450, it has the same problem.

The good news is, MJPEG with the G200 works great but when I convert it to MPEG2, I get some nasty color distortion probably due to the MJPEG hardware. Of course, if I use YUY2, it does a great conversion to MPEG2, but it shows dropped frames.

In AVI_IO, I'm thinking about having it "insert dropped frames" when capturing but I don't have a way to test jerky playback since I am a "G4x0" owner with a "DVDMax playback" issue. At least with MPEG2 files, I can pop in the ol' G200 and playback any MPEG2/DVDs on my TV with crystal clear, full-framerate glory!

Does inserting dropped frames sound like a viable option at this point? From what I've read on the "Gotcha" section of AVI_IO, this is a common problem with audio/video synch. Any other suggestions will be appreciated!

Chris