Any good free video capture software?

[Helevitia]

I just recently purchased an X800 XT VIVO and I am getting ready to convert a bunch of VHS tapes to DVD. My video card came with Powerdirector 3DE. Apparently this is a cut down version of the full version. That's not a big deal to me because I don't need much. I have a problem though...

Whenever I hit the record button, the software locks up and I can't kill it from task manager. Actually, anything else I load up after that doesn't close properly, so it fubars my whole system.

So here I am, hoping it is the video capture softwar eso I can use something else and move on. All help is appreciated

And last, I'm willing to troubleshoot, but I don't know where to begin.

Thanks,
Dave

[Helevitia]

OK, I just remembered that Windows has a free video capture software "MovieMaker". I opened that up, clicked on a button adn the system pratically locks up again. I'm starting to thin I have a driver problem with my video card, I have a hardware problem with the Rage Theater chip, or I need to install some kind of directX video cpature software patch? *shrugs* This is all new to me. I remember having to install DirectX patches for my older AIW.

Dave

[mits]

Hi,
i have an asus 9600XT ViVo card and everything works fine. However, I remember that the first time i tried to capture with my card i hadn't the audio connected (from VCR to sound card) and the computer locked up (after connecting the audio everything was ok). A good free program for capturing in avi format is virtualvcr http://virtualvcr.sourceforge.net/ , but for 25$ i believe that avi_io is the best http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io.

[Adis]

For mpeg - WinDVR [not free]
For avi - iuVCR [not free]

You can download trial versions to see how it works with your card...

I have an old Askey capture card with BT878 chip and these programs turns it to a great card

[xortam]

Dave ... as an aside, have you been able to unlock the additional pipelines with your VIVO?

[Debbie]

I also have an Asus 9600XT ViVo and it works great with WinDVR 3. You can try FreeVCR as a freeware software but I have never happy with the performance.

Debbie

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by mits
Hi,
i have an asus 9600XT ViVo card and everything works fine. However, I remember that the first time i tried to capture with my card i hadn't the audio connected (from VCR to sound card) and the computer locked up (after connecting the audio everything was ok). A good free program for capturing in avi format is virtualvcr http://virtualvcr.sourceforge.net/ , but for 25$ i believe that avi_io is the best http://www.nct.ch/multimedia/avi_io.

Thanks for the help. I already had the audio plugged in, so I don't think that is it.

I also tried virtual VCR and it actually started to record. As soon as I hit stop, the system locks up like the other two programs. Damn, this sucks One of the main reasons I bought this card is so I could do cheap, easy video capture. So it appears to be an issue related to my drivers, hardware or directX.

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by xortam
Dave ... as an aside, have you been able to unlock the additional pipelines with your VIVO?

It already is an XT with 16 pipes It just has VIVO capabilities too. I just stressed that in the original post so people knew what kind of capture hardware I had.

[xortam]

Originally posted by Helevitia
It already is an XT with 16 pipes It just has VIVO capabilities too. I just stressed that in the original post so people knew what kind of capture hardware I had.

Oops ... missed the "XT". I was considering an non-XT VIVO and trying the softmod since most everyone was unlocking the extra pipes successfully. I'm glad I went with the 6800 though. The HTPC experts are coming to the conclusion that the 6800 now wears the HTPC graphics card crown. I'm still waiting for some X800 comparisons but they state that the 6800 is superior to all other ATI cards, et.al., AFA PQ in an HTPC application.

[mmp121]

Originally posted by Helevitia

*SNIP*
So it appears to be an issue related to my drivers, hardware or directX.

What drivers are you using ? Are you using the ATI Cat 4.x drivers or the ones that came with the board? Did you install some sort of Multimedia Driver or just video card driver?

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by mmp121
What drivers are you using ? Are you using the ATI Cat 4.x drivers or the ones that came with the board? Did you install some sort of Multimedia Driver or just video card driver?

Last night I upgraded to the newly released 4.9's and the same problem occurs. I checked out the capture drivers but those are all for AIW or VIVO cards that aren't X800's. So yes, just video card drivers and yes they recognize that I have a rage theater chip and it installs the correct capture drivers. I an bring up any capture software and press play on my VCR and see the video, so I know the capture drivers are working up until that point.

Something that I haven't mentioned yet is, For one day, I was able to caputre and I had no problems at all. I don't know what I changed though or what might have happened. I have tried killing every single process that doesn't need to be started but that didn't work either. *sigh*

Dave

[mmp121]

Is your capture drive connected to a PCI controller card or is it connected to your onboard EIDE controller on the MB? If its on a PCI controller card, maybe your PCI bus is being saturated?

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by mmp121
Is your capture drive connected to a PCI controller card or is it connected to your onboard EIDE controller on the MB? If its on a PCI controller card, maybe your PCI bus is being saturated?

hmmm, I know that via sucks with video capture but I am doing nothing else, why would trying to capture video saturate the bus so much that it is causing problems. On a side not, I tried capturing to my USB drive and it still locked up. Also, I tried capturing with DivX, AVI, mpeg1/2, etc...All the same.

[Helevitia]

*sigh*, I think I am going to resign to formatting to see if the problem goes away If not, then I have to deal with unhelpful people to try and get it fixed.

[mits]

Helevitia,
before you reformat, have you correctly uninstalled the old drivers and installed the new ones?
i.e.
1. Uninstall ati control panel
2. Uninstall ati display driver and reboot
3. Press cancel when "new hardware was found"
4. Given that you have downloaded and unpacked the latest ati display driver (~26MB the one with ati's control panel and not with catalyst control centre) run setup.exe. This will install ati's display driver, ati's control panel and ati's multimedia driver (ie wdm driver).
Normally installation should go fine, and if you check in device manager-> sound video and game controllers you should have 2 entries for ati multimedia like a. ATI rage theater WDM driver and b. ATI WDM MVD codec (i'm at work now and don't remember the exact names of these entries)
Connect your video signal from vcr to bob and your audio to the line-in of your soundcard and make sure that recording from line-in is enabled. Now check that overlay is ok, ie run whatever capture program you want (eg virtualvcr) and check that you see the input video on your monitor.
Run the capture program (eg virtualvcr), select the codec you want (eg Huffyuv or Picvideo) and make sure that you have selected to capture audio as well. Press the rec button and good luck.