Capture Video issues..

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris King
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Chris King

Just upgraded to Windows XP, however I am having probs with the codecs I
think (the problem is here!).
I use Pinnacle Capture MPEG capture card (DC10 plus and Studio 8) for
capturing video / audio onto VCD/DVD for home use.
However since upgrading to XP, I am finding whilst all the hardware checks
out fine, and the capture card work, after a few minutes of capturing the
data/video files, the audio drops out (switches off), if I stop the capture
and restart, it all starts again, but again after 3-5 mins it drops out
again, so I am assuming it must be a driver related issue. I have downloaded
all XP service packs, and the Pinnacle drivers/capture drivers and latest
releases, but the problem still haunts me? Any ideas?

Also I have Ulead DVD/CD Moviefactory version 2, (version 1 I had used to
run on Windows 98SE until I reinstalled 98SE), I bought version 2, as I had
MPEG issues with V1 on XP, however the MPEG encoder fails to run properly on
V2, and AVI will only capture in the wrong picture size, so whilst it works
it only focuses on the screen centre and not the whole captured image, and I
can not seem to change it!.

What is wrong? since its a fresh install of XP, and all the cards/hardware
are working fine, XP is running on NTFS file system so no problems with the
limit of capture files), I did try reformatting the capture hard drive as
FAT32, but no difference, so have gone back to NTFS.

Help people please! :)
 
I had similar problems with a custom build for a customer. The only
difference is that the video card for this machine has video-in.
Unfortunately, the software provided with the card refused to capture sound
(it would capture video just fine). I spent about four hours trying to find
a capture program that would work. Finally got it to work with Ulead
VideoStudio7 and Microsoft Movie Maker2 (believe it or not). Pinnacle
refused to even capture.

Bottom Line-Try other capture programs until your find one that works.

Hope this helps,

D.
 
A couple of things come to mind. Have you read all of the "patch"
instructions from the Pinnacle web site to make sure your following the
correct sequence of installing the drivers ?

You didnt say what video card your system uses, many video cards feature
video In/Out these days. If you installed the drivers that activate the
video In/Out features on your primary video card you will have a conflict
occuring.

Another possability is your motherboard chipset drivers. If you reinstalled
WindowsXP did you follow the correct steps for the boards chipset drivers ?
nVidia, VIA and Intel all require that chipset drivers be installed at a
certain time during new system set up. If you do it at the wrong time your
IDE bus may not be able to feed the data at the full speed the harddrive
needs to write without dropping frames.

What speed is your processor ? You may be losing frames and audio sync due
to a processor that can not handle WinXP and your video processing at the
same time. How much ram do you have ? Same issue. To little ram and WinXP
will have to write to the harddrive using virtual memory....I can guarentee
that will cause dropped frames and loss of sync because even a powerfull
system will fail under those conditions.

Last I would try this site. Ive had good luck here so maybe they can help
you.
http://www.driverforum.com/

Good luck.




Chris King said:
Just upgraded to Windows XP, however I am having probs with the codecs I
think (the problem is here!).
I use Pinnacle Capture MPEG capture card (DC10 plus and Studio 8) for
capturing video / audio onto VCD/DVD for home use.
However since upgrading to XP, I am finding whilst all the hardware checks
out fine, and the capture card work, after a few minutes of capturing the
data/video files, the audio drops out (switches off), if I stop the capture
and restart, it all starts again, but again after 3-5 mins it drops out
again, so I am assuming it must be a driver related issue. I have downloaded
all XP service packs, and the Pinnacle drivers/capture drivers and latest
releases, but the problem still haunts me? Any ideas?

Also I have Ulead DVD/CD Moviefactory version 2, (version 1 I had used to
run on Windows 98SE until I reinstalled 98SE), I bought version 2, as I had
MPEG issues with V1 on XP, however the MPEG encoder fails to run properly on
V2, and AVI will only capture in the wrong picture size, so whilst it works
it only focuses on the screen centre and not the whole captured image, and I
can not seem to change it!.

What is wrong? since its a fresh install of XP, and all the cards/hardware
are working fine, XP is running on NTFS file system so no problems with the
limit of capture files), I did try reformatting the capture hard drive as
FAT32, but no difference, so have gone back to NTFS.

Help people please! :)

--
Chris King
mail: (e-mail address removed)
Remove "nospam" to email direct
CARGPB#19
Click to expand...
 
Hi Ed....

I will try and answer as best I can here your suggestions :)
I always install read all the info re updating drivers/software, and have
been frequenting the Forum on there for support, one Pinnacle guy has asked
me was it an upgrade or a new install, to which I have replied "new install"
and am currently waiting his reply back.
You didnt say what video card your system uses, many video cards feature
video In/Out these days. If you installed the drivers that activate the
video In/Out features on your primary video card you will have a conflict
occuring.
Click to expand...

My video card is a Hercules Prophet 9200 128mb AGP card, to which I have got
all the latest drivers and patches etc, its always installed top of my
install list (but below bios updates/driver updates for the motherboard (as
soon as XP has installed) to make sure this is up to date.
I will check the graphic card settings for video in/out, but I am sure its
not enabled/set up/in use.
Another possability is your motherboard chipset drivers. If you reinstalled
WindowsXP did you follow the correct steps for the boards chipset drivers ?
nVidia, VIA and Intel all require that chipset drivers be installed at a
certain time during new system set up. If you do it at the wrong time your
IDE bus may not be able to feed the data at the full speed the harddrive
needs to write without dropping frames.
Click to expand...

I have a disk which came with the motherboard, and install this as soon as
possible once the main operating system has installed (i.e. as soon as XP
has finished installing. I also have patches for the bios/motherboard and
they are also installed before any other main hardware drivers.
What speed is your processor ? You may be losing frames and audio sync due
to a processor that can not handle WinXP and your video processing at the
same time. How much ram do you have ? Same issue. To little ram and WinXP
will have to write to the harddrive using virtual memory....I can guarentee
that will cause dropped frames and loss of sync because even a powerfull
system will fail under those conditions.
Click to expand...

Processor speed is 2.4ghz, and ram is 512mb, the thing is I am not dropping
frames, this is where its odd, as what happens is the capture is started,
the pic and audio are capturing fine, then after 2-3 mins, the audio stops
capturing, as does the video, but no frames are dropped and no errors, and
the main capture software is still incrementing/increasing the
min/sec/millisecond counter below the preview (which you can not turn off).
So in effect, the PC has acted as if you have hit the Stop button on the
capture, but the software counter has not registered this.
i.e. pic / audio stop capturing (no more written to disk), but software
capture window etc, carries on, if you do hit the capture stop and then
restart, it starts again normally, capturing audio/video with no errors, so
the capture card is fine, it seems to be a software issue on the capture
side. Its not audio sync either, as thats fine for what it has captured,
drive space is not an issue as the drive it has for capture is 30gb, and the
image I am capturing does not exceed 2gb), I have tried another tape but the
same thing happens, and there are no errors on the tape that cause the
capture to go out sync, as they are brand new tapes never used.

Cheers for the link :)

Chris
 
I would try capturing to a different format first (at high quality to
minimize degradation during the next step) then try converting to whatever
format your trying to capture at now. If you capturing directly from tape
try MPEG2 at max quality then maybe convert to Divx.

Im not sure but maybe your WinXP audio cards drivers dont work with the
drivers for Pinnacle's card. Its possible the video codec your trying to use
(Pinnacle's MPEG? codec) doesnt like the audio drivers. Try a different
codec to see if the audio drivers like it better than the one your using.
Here's another link for a site I use...maybe someone there has run into this
already...
http://www.marcpeters.co.uk/index.html

Definetly sounds like a software issue between the sound drivers and the
Pinnacle card drivers or the Pinnacle codec.

One last thing that I can think of is are you sure the capture has actually
stopped ?
I dont use Pinnacles card but I do know for fact that some Video capturing
software
stops updating the display window making it look like the capture has ended
when it is still going fine and just needs to be allowed to finish....

Processor speed is 2.4ghz, and ram is 512mb, the thing is I am not dropping
frames, this is where its odd, as what happens is the capture is started,
the pic and audio are capturing fine, then after 2-3 mins, the audio stops
capturing, as does the video, but no frames are dropped and no errors, and
the main capture software is still incrementing/increasing the
min/sec/millisecond counter below the preview (which you can not turn off).
So in effect, the PC has acted as if you have hit the Stop button on the
capture, but the software counter has not registered this.
i.e. pic / audio stop capturing (no more written to disk), but software
capture window etc, carries on, if you do hit the capture stop and then
restart, it starts again normally, capturing audio/video with no errors, so
the capture card is fine, it seems to be a software issue on the capture
side. Its not audio sync either, as thats fine for what it has captured,
drive space is not an issue as the drive it has for capture is 30gb, and the
image I am capturing does not exceed 2gb), I have tried another tape but the
same thing happens, and there are no errors on the tape that cause the
capture to go out sync, as they are brand new tapes never used.

Cheers for the link :)

Chris
Click to expand...
 
Pinnacle captures by default as AVI for VCD, after which you can output to
media in all formats (VCD, SVCD, DVD etc), it contains setting for quality
of capture and I am using VCD as my base format type. If I move up to SVHS
or higher then obviously I need more disk space, which is not a major
headache, but my "capture temp" drive is only 30gb which is fine for most
things (I can allocate more if needed but it means a major shuffle about of
drives etc).

Ulead seems to give me problems if I capture in MPEG, and in AVI its fine,
but the picture wont focus on the entire capture only the centre, i.e. try
and imaging you standing 2-3 inches from the picture on a TV and capturing
it, you would not get the full pic only the centre, Ulead is behaving like
that and I can not seem to adjust the settings?

I am not 100% convinced its "only the audio", it seems strange that the
capture stops after 2-3 mins, and its the audio I see (as it has visible
moving colour bars on the software display" that drop out. I have downloaded
all the new drivers for my sound card (SoundBlaster Live).

I actually agree with you 100%, its definately a "driver" issue, but on
which one its hard to pin down, thanks for the link, I will drop by and see
if I can see anything over there that has been raised by others or drop an
email in there in regards to this issue.

Alas the capture has stopped, the way I know for sure, is I left the tape
being captured by the card whilst the tape ran its full episode, and came
back in time to stop the capture. I saw the software counter still running,
but did not spot the audio bars had stopped, I clicked stop on the software,
but the software did not report anything, and when I then went to the
capture drive, instead of the file being about 430mb as normal, it was about
2mb, I obviously tested it by playing it, but it stopped at the point it
dropped out, further tests also showed this to be case. Its a "mystery" :)

Chris
 
Hi
I just came across this thread, so apologies if I'm covering old ground. But if
you capture with a low compression ration, you might possibly get up to a 2GB
file in under 3 minutes, which I understand is the max file size for FAT32. I
know there is a utility somewhere for VidCap32 that allows a series of partial
files to be written seamlessly (can't remember the name).

Hi Ed....

I will try and answer as best I can here your suggestions :)
I always install read all the info re updating drivers/software, and have
been frequenting the Forum on there for support, one Pinnacle guy has asked
me was it an upgrade or a new install, to which I have replied "new install"
and am currently waiting his reply back.


My video card is a Hercules Prophet 9200 128mb AGP card, to which I have got
all the latest drivers and patches etc, its always installed top of my
install list (but below bios updates/driver updates for the motherboard (as
soon as XP has installed) to make sure this is up to date.
I will check the graphic card settings for video in/out, but I am sure its
not enabled/set up/in use.


I have a disk which came with the motherboard, and install this as soon as
possible once the main operating system has installed (i.e. as soon as XP
has finished installing. I also have patches for the bios/motherboard and
they are also installed before any other main hardware drivers.


Processor speed is 2.4ghz, and ram is 512mb, the thing is I am not dropping
frames, this is where its odd, as what happens is the capture is started,
the pic and audio are capturing fine, then after 2-3 mins, the audio stops
capturing, as does the video, but no frames are dropped and no errors, and
the main capture software is still incrementing/increasing the
min/sec/millisecond counter below the preview (which you can not turn off).
So in effect, the PC has acted as if you have hit the Stop button on the
capture, but the software counter has not registered this.
i.e. pic / audio stop capturing (no more written to disk), but software
capture window etc, carries on, if you do hit the capture stop and then
restart, it starts again normally, capturing audio/video with no errors, so
the capture card is fine, it seems to be a software issue on the capture
side. Its not audio sync either, as thats fine for what it has captured,
drive space is not an issue as the drive it has for capture is 30gb, and the
image I am capturing does not exceed 2gb), I have tried another tape but the
same thing happens, and there are no errors on the tape that cause the
capture to go out sync, as they are brand new tapes never used.

Cheers for the link :)

Chris
Click to expand...

Regards,
Tony (remove "_" from email address to reply)
 
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