Best Capture Settings, HELP!!!

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Video CD : One Thread

I have problems capturing 352x240 at 30fps. Frames drop real bad with no compression.

I have AMD K6-333mhz, 327MB Ram, an AGP Cougar Video Capture Card with 32MB, a blank hard drive for capturing video (DMA is Set). I have tryed everything but frames still drop.

If you can please help.

-- PacMan (4machado@citlink.net), January 09, 2001

Answers

Your AMD K6 333MHz seems borderline for capturing; seriously, I'd take a 550MHz bare minimum, or if I were to start from scratch now I'll get AT LEAST a 933MHz PIII. The next thing to look at is your HDD. For a start you should NEVER use any HDD that has an RPM below 7200. Most HDDs out there will be 5400rpm and they look neat because they are big (20Gb, 45Gb, etc.) but they simply won't do for video capture purposes. It used to be that you had to use a SCSI drive (preferably UltraWide, 7200rpm) but recent IDE UltraDMA66/100 drives 7200rpm have proven their worth. You do know, of course, that a capture drive will not have anything in it, no temp files, no system files, nothing, except for your captured files, and it should be partitioned as one whole drive. Lastly, what codecs are you using for capture? Most conventional AVI codecs that get installed with Windows need top-flight PC specs EVEN for capturing 320x240 at 15fps, let alone anything bigger or faster. Did your Cougar come with codecs of its own? Are U using them?? There are some freeware good s/w AVI codecs out there like PICVideo MJPEG and HuffYUV; you could probably try them.

-- MT (turk690@yahoo.com), January 09, 2001.

Goto www.vcdhelp.com and get link to download HuffYuy2.1.1 codec. Goto http://www.geocities.com/virtualdub/ and download the latest virtual dub 1.4c software. Find out whether or not your capture card can support either RGB or YUY2 video format; YUY2 is preferable. If it does, then you are in luck. These two softwares can easy your system from dropping frames. It's the codec and the capture software that assist you in optimizing the best possible CPU/data bus/hard disk usage.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), January 09, 2001.

Ditto VD for capture software. On my Celeron 300 and AMD K6 300, have been able to capture raw with no frames dropped, though limited to 5 minute captures. I've also been able to capture 480x480 using MJpeg at 95% cpu utilization (VD)!

AMD 1GHz/AsusTek A7V is my dream machine.

-- me (snake_mountain@hotmail.com), January 10, 2001.


Thanks for all the replys.

I got all the software from above but now it drops maybe one or two frames but the video is very jittery and the sound isn't sync with the video.

how long should i be capturing for ( 1gb or 2gb ) and the spill system in virtualdub is't worth using.

thank

-- PacMan (4machado@citlink.net), January 10, 2001.


My suggestions on why you get drop frame and poor video quality:

1. Your CPU is under-powered, your K6 chips do not have MMX or SSE which helps multimedia applications to run smoother 2. Your hard disk may not be fast enough or is not defragmented 3. Your video capture card should come with compression codec other than the standard window codec, use it because the card is designed for that 4. Lower the audio settings a bit, e.g. use 22,050 instead of 44,100hz, use mono instead of stereo etc. 5. Before capture, close all other apps that appear in the systray, defrag hard disk, set fixed swap file, add ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 in [386Enc]section of your system.ini so that all CPU and memory are fully utilized. 6. Try to use Motion Jpeg, so that the resultant video file can be managed or edited using other video editing software easier, e.g. use Morgan mpeg codec, 1 hour of capture uses about 1.8 GB of harddisk at 85% quality. Or else, if you don't use compression before capture, you are unable to handle those several GB files which gives you only a few minutes of video, no fun just pain that way!!! That is why those high end capture card, eg. Pinnacle and Matrox use and produce MJpeg card. Mjpeg is also used by broadcast studio because it has broadcast quality and can add effect or cut and paste easily.

-- fieldside (fieldside@excite.com), January 11, 2001.



Ever heard of MGI VideoWaveŽ 3.5 its a great capturing software. If you need this software and like to share it I will be happy to share it with you so email me....

-- astromatrix (buzz913@hotmail.com), April 05, 2001.

fieldside,

k6 cpus have mmx.

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), April 05, 2001.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ