Capture problem - rendered video preview "stuttering&qu

[jolobg]

Hi all!
First, my equipment:
AMD AthlonXP 2600+ @1.91 GHz;
A7N8X-E Deluxe s,A nForce2,Ultra,DDR400 DCh,6ch,LAN,SATA,1394,8x
GV-R925128VH VIVO (128bit, 128MB) using as a capture card, complex video-in
Samsung Dual Channel DDR 512 MB 400Mhz
Seagate 160 GB 7200 rpm, ATA V, 8 MB cache

Software for capturing:
Ulead Video Studio 8 (ofcourse )

Camcorder:
Sony, analog

I have been trying all possible bitrates, resolutions, MPEG and AVI and so on and always (more or less) I get on the rendered preview "stuttering" (dropping frames I guess) picture from time to time, especially when either the object or the camera moves (pans), even not so quickly. When the signal comming from the camcorder is just "displayed" on the Ulead preview screen without actual capturing, the footage is as smooth as on the e.g. tv screen!
The best result with capturing I got so far was with the following settings:
- defragmented HDD;
- page file - none;
- no unnecessary tasks running;
- Video: Field order Lower field first, DVD MPEG 720X576 25 fps, VBR 8000 kb/s, quality v/s speed slider 50-70%;
- Audio: MPEG mono, 48kHz, 64 kb/s.

I only got (I think) a bit of improvement when setting the down to 0.1% compared to the 100% one...
I also tried with a separate virgin HDD connected to the second IDE channel (CD ROM), but didn't find any difference!

Any comment or advice will be highly appreciated!
P.S. The CPU usage doesn't go over 70-75%, and the RAM usage is about 230 MB during capturing.

[Ken Berry]

One important thing you did not mention was how you have your analogue vidcam connected to the computer: internal or external capture card? Composite video (i.e RCA cords) or S-Video? Other?

[Ken Berry]

Sorry -- on re-reading your post, I see you had a capture card, and assume that by 'complex video in' you mean composite.

The thing that immediately struck me about the properties you list for the captured video was that field order was wrong for an analogue camera. Should be Upper Field First, If VS 8 autodetected lower field, then it was wrong and you should correct it manually and retry. Good luck.

[jolobg]

Thanx for replay!
Yes, that's right - the field order is wrong, and I discovered that a day ago - the VS8 doesn't recognize properly the signal from ATI based cards...
In fact I DID use the "upper field first" setting at some stage (I don't remember which overall capture/project settings I used at that time), but without noticeable improvement/change in the quality.
Forgot to mention:
- DMA mode for all IDE is enabled
- write cache for HDD's is disabled

[rwindeyer]

Just one question - the stuttering and jerky movement that you describe - is this only in the preview display, or in the captured file itself? Try firing up something like Windows Media Player, look in your working directory for the media clips, and play a few of them. If they look OK it's just a preview problem, and you could possibly ignore it. If the file itself is bad that's a different matter.

[jolobg]

When the signal comming from the camcorder is just "displayed" on the Ulead preview screen without actual capturing, the footage is as smooth as on the e.g. tv screen!

As said above (English is not my mother tongue, so exuse me for not so clearly expressing mysefl!)- no problem at all when the clip (video tape) is played back on the CAMCORDER and previewd in VS8 either in full screen or normal mode! The stuttering comes when the captured clip is played!!! I have tried many players - PowerDVD, WMP etc. - same result as when viewed on the rendered preview screen of VS8.

[jolobg]

... an update:
1. When capturing from DVB (Digital satellite TV receiver, composite video out) - no problem at all! No "stuttering" even on very fast motion scenes!
2. Tried capturing from the camcorder with NeroVisionExpress - and even the result was same as with UVS8 - there was no SINGLE DROPPED FRAME (NVE has a nice small frame counter)!
So, I believe these two facts prove that the problen is neither in the system nor the capture card itself - it must be either the lower quality of the signal from the camcorder (as a specification) or the MPEG encoder which is the reason for the not so smooth capturing!

[porterfi]

I had the same problem. I just used windows movie maker to do the capture and Ulead to to the editing and MPEG compression. A little awkward but works.