NT Marvel users

[gibverse]

There's been talk in the past of sync problems with the Marvel G200 under NT in the past. I had such problems at one point I needed to reformat to fix. Unfortuantly, the problems have returned, however I'm fairly certain of the cause. My setup had been working perfectly for months, until this weekend. Using PC/VCR, I tried capturing 704x480 @30 fps with 6.6:1 compression and CD quality audio (3.102 MB/s). It didn't work. It grabbed about 5 frames, and stopped. I dropped down to a lower res, and it captured, but nolonger captures at the desired frame rate. Instead of 30, I get anywhere from .308 to 29.4 fps. All which are either unwatchable or lead to major sync problems. Cold boot, tried capturing with Premiere, captured 403 frames at 352x240 MJPEG, and died... had to reset button NT. I have a feeling something in the registry is MESSED. I really don't know enough about all the settings to figure out what to fix. I have a backup from last month, which I can load up, but I'd prefer to just go attack the registry first. Esp. if it gets to the root of the problem. Would any of the other NT users (esp ones with AGP 8mb and using NTSC) mind sending me the apropriate reg. keys? Everything under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Matrox (I really don't know where the problem would be in there, was just going to compare all the values).

Thanks,
John

[Rick6612]

Hi John,

First of all, NTSC video is really 29.97 fps. It is NOT 30 fps. If you insist on capturing at 30 fps you're going to have sync problems, dropped frames every 33 seconds, etc.

I've been playing around trying to get my Marvel G-200 to work under NT, but I have not had much luck with it at all. I have successfully captured some video on a couple of occasions. But other times, I get a lot of dropped frames when capturing. When I boot up under Windows 98 and capture the same video using the same settings, I get 0 dropped frames.

Once I get my video captured under NT and then go into MSP to edit, I have a problem in the scratch pad using the little jog/shuttle control. It won't go any faster than 1.5x. It just stops when I try to go to 2x or faster in either direction. Awhile back Olliver said he was going to try to help me with this problem, but that message thread fell off the bottom of the list awhile ago, so I guess that means he never found an answer to that problem. Of course, I have no such problems under 98.

Then there's the playback problems: I cannot get smooth video playback under NT no matter what. It might play smooth for a minute or two, but there are always occasional jerks and stutters during playback. Under 98, I can playback perfectly smooth all day long.

So, if you ask me, the only thing I can say is don't expect much when running under NT. If it works at all, consider yourself lucky. If it stops working for no apparent reason, that seems to be normal from my experience with NT.

Rick

[gibverse]

Rick,
Sorry to hear the drivers haven't worked for you. I restored my system from backup today, and indeed, I can capture fine again. I didn't keep an old copy of the registry values... If it happens again, I'll just restore from backup... If anyone else should have the problem I described again, I'll be happy to send my reg keys out in the future.

John

[DrMordrid]

Maybe my system is weird or something but under 3 different mobos and several different processors my system has worked fine with the Marvel's under NT4. I've used both SP4 and SP5, no problems.

One difference maybe: I use Winternals FAT32 filesystem for NT4. That way the system can "see" the Fasttrak, which is formatted to FAT32, from both OS's ('98SE & NT4-SP5 now). I've fount FAT32 better for video under NT than NTFS.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 23 October 1999).]

[gibverse]

Doc,
I'm using FAT32 as well, it just seems that whenever I capture MJPEG at greater than 352x240, I have to reinstall to capture again. Really wierd bug I guess. My system:

ASUS P2B
Intel PII 400 (not overclocked)
128 mb RAM
Marvel G200 AGP 8mb
3com 3c905b PCI NIC
Creative Labs PCI64
<no ISA cards>
3.5" floppy
Using onboard IDE controler (no FastTrack yet):
Primary Master:
Seagate Medalist Pro 9.1 gig
2.1 gig NTFS C: (OS, Progs, swapfile)
6.4 gig NTFS E: (data only, not used for capture)
Primary Slave:
Seagate Medalist Pro 9.1 gig
entire drive, FAT32 used for capture
Secondary Master:
32X ide CD-ROM
Secondary Slave:
2x2x6 ide CD-RW

I would like to know if you are using PC/VCR to capture? I'm curious to if I'd have better luck capturing from within Premiere, or maybe spring for a copy of AVI_IO.

John

[Rick6612]

Hi Doc,

I am also using the FAT32 driver from Winternals/Sysinternals so I can use my FAT32 formatted FastTrak RAID. I have also tried both SP4 and SP5. Still problems.

John,

I have used the PC-VCR Remote, Ulead MSP Video Capture and AVI_IO. I can use any of these under Windows98 and get fine results. I can also use any of these to capture under NT and most of the time get satisfactory results.

AVI_IO is definitely worth spending $25 on. Unless you never capture more than 5 minutes worth of video at a time.

Rick

[DrMordrid]

Hmmmm.....

PCI audio card 'eh?

I'd start looking right there....

Mine:

Asus P3B-F (6PCI, 1ISA, AGP)
Celeron 466
256 megs PC100
Maxtor 8.4g ATA33 boot
Toshiba SD-M1202 DVD
HP8100i CDR-RW
ZIP-100
Fasttrak RAID0, 40 gigs (four 10g 7,200 rpm Maxtor 2500's)
Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC
PCI v.90 modem
Creative AWE64 ISA audio
Win98SE/NT4-SP5 dualboot

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 23 October 1999).]

[Pertti]

gibverse,

When you have checked the soundcard, you might want to check the 3Com also.
Some people have been having problems with it on the Matrox Hardware Forum.
Getting "bare" drivers from 3Com has helped them - worth a try.

Pertti

Asus P2B-S
PII-333(400)
256 MB, PC100
3 x Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm (IDE)
2 x Maxtor 2500+ 7200rpm (IDE)
2 x Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm (SCSI)
1 x IBM DCAS-3433W 5400rpm (SCSI)
Promise FastTrak 33
Realtek RTL8029 network adapter
SoundBlaster 32AWE PnP
V.90 ISA modem
HP 8100 CDRW (IDE)
Hitachi GD-2500 DVD (IDE)
Pioneer DR-U16S CD (SCSI)
Dual boot W95B/NT4 SP4.

[DrMordrid]

Pertti is smack on about the 3COM NIC. I've seen those posts too.

Fortunately the Linksys NIC's, both the 10baseT PCILAN II and the 10/100 EtherFast, have been very good to me with absolutely no problems at all.

Dr. Mordrid

[gibverse]

In reguards to the NIC and PCI soundcard:

Why do they not cause any problems under 98 and why is it that I only have problems in NT _AFTER_ I capture above 352x240? It seems to me that if it was a issue with those cards, it would be seen on both OSs and would not be an issue of capture resolution. And again, why would it fix itself after I restored from backup?

To me, it must be some wierd setting in the registry (or an .ini file). I will try to keep looking into this as I get time.

John

[Rick6612]

Hi John,

I keep asking the same question: Why does my system work perfectly fine under 98, but not under NT. After all, one would think that a hardware problem is a hardware problem and it would always be hardware problem regardless of what operating system was in use, right? Obviously that is not the case.

I have an SB 128 PCI soundcard, which works perfectly fine under 98. Under NT, I have a problem where the jog/shuttle control in the scratch pad cannot go faster the 1.5x speed. If I take my sound card out altogether, this problem goes away.

So what does that mean? Could be the NT drivers for the SB 128 PCI are no good, but the 9x drivers are good. Could be that there is something about the way NT works that doesn't agree with the way the SB 128 PCI works, but 98 doesn't have a problem with it. Who knows?

Rick