Too many dropped frames

[Topha]

First my system config:

AtholnXP 1800+
MSI Via KT266A
512 MB DDR CAS 2
20gig IBM with windows + virtual mem
80gig seagate for video capture
sb live value
Matrox G450eTV
Win2K SP-3

When i record with the Matrox VCR its okay, both for mpeg 2 full res and YUV2 full res.

But when i use Virtual Dub to capture at 704x576, there are way too many dropped frames (about 1 every second), both with HuffYUV and PicVideo MJPEG Compression. It works okay if I use no compression at all, but it eats up too much space.

Shouldnt my PC be fast enough? Or is it really the Via Chipset and/or the SB Live? And why then does it work with the Matrox VCR?

[Indiana]

Simply take the SBLive out and try to capture again. It could be the SBLive and this is the easiest way to find out.
Some people have luck with the SBLive, but this specific soundcard is a known troublemaker in desktop video fori around the world.

Your AthlonXP1800+ is fast enough, I could capture full-res PicVideo MJPEG with a Duron@1000MHz.

[Topha]

Took it out, still dropping a lot of frames, might even be more (not sure, though). But at the moment im using the onboard sound from the Mobo, so i dont know if its an improvement.

What else could be the problem?

[Indiana]

Are you using some sort of compression on the captured sound? If you use mp3, this WILL cause some dropped frames over time, but still not as much as you're getting.
Try a capture without sound (onboard sound often is even crappier than the SBLive)
Your HD is in UDMA mode, not PIO?

[Topha]

HD's are DMA, and i didnt use audio compression (actually i tried mp3 because i thought it might work better, but it didnt )

I defragmented my HD, and its not too long ago i formatted it, this is a rather fresh install of windows.

I just tried capturing without sound, but its no use. and whats really bugging me, is that i dont drop frames with the matrox vcr, but when i use it, audio and video get out of sync really fast.

Now i will shut down the PC and go to bed, its 1:30 in the morning over here...

Edit: Aber das ist wohl bei uns beiden so

[Eddy]

On my old PII450 on a BX board with a G200, cheap Bt878 tuner card and SB Live, I can capture full res PAL with hardly any dropped frames. That is with VirtualDub, PicVideo MJPEG quality 18 and uncompressed audio. So your PC should be fast enough.

But I have to disable overlay in VirtualDub, as that causes extra CPU usage. And in the settings, there is a setting that specifies the number of bits per pixel to use for the overlay. I switched that to the depth of the current display mode, as that was faster for me. But that was mainly for playback, as I disable overlay during capture.

So you could try to disable overlay during capture (don't know whether that uses the PCI bus on a G450eTV). Or maybe another capture program, like AVI_IO.

Eddy.

[keithm]

The reason you don't drop frames when using the matrox is the card uses hardware assisted mjpeg compression which takes the load off the pc. I would guess the dropped frames is the via chipset. I never managed to get good performance until I changed to a cheap sis based board. You could try freevcr,( do a search on this forum and you'll find a link): it is very good at capturing. You could search for bios tweaks for the KT266, I double the throughput of my ram with some changes to the bios-but the SIS is still better.

[Indiana]

No. No problems with capturing full-res video on both, my KT266 board and my KT333 one. And the PicVideo MJPEG codec is really FAST, so you won't need a hell of a CPU, about 800MHz should be enough. Without any tweaks, "latency-patches" or something.
Only thing that caused some dropped frames here was the SBLive and it already did that on a BX-board, now that I've thrown this ugly piece of garbage out, i rarely drop frames (0-30 per movie, depending on the simultaneous use of the computer while capturing..)

Yes, with BT848/878 based cards you should turn of the overlay and even the preview at all when capturing full-res. But he uses a Matrox, so I don't know if this is true for those as well.

[keithm]

kt 266 worked-pure luck

Indianna You're lucky you're lucky you got a KT266 based board working. If you check other forums you will find lots of people having trouble with that chipset: indeed via's own forum is full of people complaining.

Most people who want to edit video with an athlon have dropped via based boards and according to the forums that's a fact.

[Sciascia]

I'm running a KT266a and it is the best board I have ever owned, even better than my BX-440 was. It has built in RAID and USB2.0 and is so solid that it makes me bored. It worked with my old Marvel G400 and works very nicely with my ATI 8500DV.

SBLives should be banned as the most harmful junk ever made. I just can't stand them. 90% of my friends own Santa Cruz's now and the 10% who don't have issues with everything. Some people just won't listen to facts.

[funky-d-munky]

Do you have anything weird in your system tray? Like an always monitoring Virus program, Firewall, esp. Norton! How about Messanger or some other such program? I used to have a Gravis joystick installed (Huge piece of S*it) caused my capturing to drop frames every 2 seconds. Disable any or all while trying to capture.

Via works FINE, proven by many users (me included) but you must make sure the drivers are installed. Latest 4-in-1's. Just choose automatic installation.
Also as far as the soundblaster Live, Un-Install all that crap software that comes with it. Play Center ect.. You just want the basic driver, none of that other crap. It has a huge overhead, its buggy, and doesn't play well with others. Un-install it, take out the card, reboot, put it back in and just install the latest basic driver from Creative.
Try capturing to both of your drives to see if there is a difference. You HD's are on Primary 1 and Primary 2 I hope.
Your system is far above spec VIA or not!
My money says it a software/driver issue or a HD issue.
Let me know what happens.
funky

[Eddy]

There are alternative drivers for SB Live. See www.kxproject.com. They are fun to play with as you can reprogram the EMU10k and have it do stuff like prologic decoding without using any CPU time. Maybe these drivers don't cause dropped frames.

They also have a page about VIA chipset issues and a description on how to solve them: http://kxproject.spb.ru/686b.php?language=en . Maybe that also works with the standard drivers.

Eddy.

[Will Hay]

I swapped my board for a K7S5A (with SiS) and now my system is superb (IMO, for me anyway), including my SB Live 1024.
Will

[Will Hay]

I swapped my Via KT133 board for a K7S5A (with SiS) and now my system is superb (IMO, for me anyway), including my SB Live 1024.
Will

[Topha]

Thanks for all the advice guys, but i wont be able to try it for a few days, since i was talking about my dads computer, and im back studying in another town now.

funny thing is, i have the same mobo, ram, cpu as him, but im using soundblaster audigy and ati aiwradeon 8500, and it works just fine over here, i will have to check it out next time i go visit my parents