DVDWS2 hangs when "Flushing DV transcode buffer"

[Alan Mintaka]

Hi Everyone,

Until today I've been successfully capturing from a video cap card (Canopus) using custom audio and video settings. All the options are the same as DVD except that I set the capture format to MPEG-2 in order to capture in that format, not AVI.

Starting today, DVDWS2 freezes when I click on "Stop Capture" at the end of the video. In fact the whole system slows to a crawl since DVDWS2 takes up 99% of the CPU activity.

After a few minutes of this, a small window appears:

"Flushing DV Transcoder Buffer"

The progress bar in this window counts down in frames until it reaches o (after many minutes). Then the window goes away and DVDWS2 remains frozen. I've never seen that window before.

When I can get Explorer to respond, I see that there are two files in the Capture folder. One is an MPG file and is about half the size it should be for the length of the movie and the bitrate I'm using.

The other file is about the same size and is named

dswplug.fqf

These two files stay the same size even though DVDWS2 is still using 99% CPU on something. I did frequent "Refreshes" in Explorer to make sure nothing was changing.

I let this sit for an hour then gave up and used the Task Manager to kill the process. When I restarted DVDWS2 and loaded the MPG, it was indeed half the length it should have been for that movie. It was supposed to run a little over 2 hrs but was slightly more than 1 hr.

But the starting and ending scenes of the movie were fine! I started keying along the timeline and found that after about 52 minutes of capturing correctly, DVDWS2 started recording digital video noise (random pixelation/colors). This lasted about 20 min. on the timeline but when the movie reappeared about 1 hour had been lost.

Something ran out of room and/or time somewhere but I'm baffled by this because it never happened before. What could have changed that would make DVDWS2 act this way? There's plenty of free space (~50GB) on both the program disk and the disk where I capture the video files. I can't see anything in the Task Manager that takes much more than a few percent of the CPU while DVDWS2 is running over 90%.

I did note that "sqlserver" seemed to be the one program that consistently grabbed 2 or 3 percent of the CPU. Could this be the problem even though it uses so little CPU?

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for your time in reading this and have a good day!

Big Al Mintaka

[skier-hughes]

I owuld run a ram test and a hdd test programme as well, to check these are both ok.

[Devil]

It is a BIG mistake to transcode when capturing. Much better to capture in AVI and then encode to MPEG-2 (after editing is finished).

Why?

If you do the latter, how long does encoding to, say, 6000 kbit/s take? On most modern rigs, 1.1 to 1.2 times the project length. If you try to transcode at the same quality, by definition, it has to do the same work plus the capture itself in real time or 1.0 times. Something has to give. On a short project, RAM is used to buffer the difference, but this is impossible on a long one, unless you have enormous memory (>10 Gb). In reality, two things happen to try and overcome this problem. The first is that the encoder is modified to allow more rapid transcoding than encoding, so that the quality is lower. The second is that the transcoder tries to hog all the available horsepower of the system (CPU + RAM). If this is insufficient, then you get the results you describe.

Bottom line: do NOT transcode if you can help it. If you absolutely must, then make sure as much resources as possible are available by releasing all unnecessary applications and then compromise by reducing the video bitrate to, say, 4000 kbit/s.

[Alan Mintaka]

Hi Devil,
It was never my intention to deliberately "transcode when capturing". The Canopus has hardware MPEG-2 encoders and captures in that format. If DVDWS then turns around, converts it to AVI while capturing and then back to MPEG-2 when it "transcodes", then there's a lot of overhead going on that was never apparent before this.

Besides, as I noted in my post, this is the first time this has happened. In the past when I've clicked on "Stop Capture" there was a delay of maybe a second or two before the video appeared on the title bar. In addition there was an MPEG-2 file in the capture folder immediately. There was never any sign of an intermediate "transcoding" step or any significant delay at all. How could I have known that DVDWS was doing this?

As far as reducing the bitrate to 4000 kbit/s is concerned, that's way too low to generate acceptable video quality in a DVD. At that rate, even if I set it to constant, there's pixelation all over the place in the finished DVD.

My system has 1.0GB of RAM. In the past I've captured 12GB+ MPEG-2 files without a hitch.

I'm beginning to think that the "something has to give" condition is somehow caused by McAfee. I installed their Internet Security 8-in-1 upgrade last week and after only a few hours tanked it because it was so bad. Although I uninstalled it and restored the previous version, I found that some of my browser settings had been modified in ways that screwed up my popup blockers.

Now I have this performance issue with DVDWS. Although I disable McAfee when I capture, I smell a rat.

Of course I'm only guessing here. All I can tell you is that none of the problems you describe nor the ones I'm having now have ever happened in the past.

Looks like the short answer is AVI capturing though. What a waste of that Canopus card. I knew it was too good to be true. "Hardware MPEG-2 Encoders". Right.

Thanks to you and skier-hughes for taking the time to reply. I'm a little short because I'm PO'd at the situation; I hope I didn't come across as being that way with you because I appreciate the input. In addition to AVI capturing I'm going to give skier-hughes' suggestions about RAM and HDD tests a try too.

Take care my friends,
Big Al Mintaka

[skier-hughes]

What canopus card is it?
It probably does do real time mpeg2 encoding, in which case WS would only be capturing an mpeg.

Graham

[Alan Mintaka]

Hi skier-hughes,

It's the Canopus ADVC-1394. According to the specs it does do MPEG-2 capturing.

I looked at some of the other capture settings and was wondering if maybe something was going wrong there. Here's what I found:

**Device Controls**

MS 1394 Device Control (selected)
MicroMV Device Control
TI 1394 Device Control

** Capture Plug-In **

Ulead DSW MPEG Capture Plug-In (selected)
Ulead Directshow Capture Plug-In
MicroMV MPEG Capture Plug-In
Windows Media Format Capture Plug-In

I've never paid much attention to those settings before but they're the only ones left that I haven't tried to experiment with. I'm also way out of my depth on this stuff already. Do those device controls and plug-ins look OK? Are they typical when MPEG capturing is done?

I notice that some of the Device Controls have apparently come with the Canopus card ("1394"). I have no idea where the MicroMV one came from or how it's different from the others.

Does anything here look awry?

Thanks once again for your attention to this thread!

Big Al Mintaka

[Devil]

OK, I see clearer now. The AVDC-1394 was essentially an analogue>DV converter, combining the ADVC-50 and an IEEE-1394 converter into the one card. It does not capture in MPEG but uses software to transcode (it was supplied with its own software).

You should capture in DV type 1 with it for the best results, using MS-1394 Device Control and the Ulead DirectShow Capture Plug-in. You can then edit and encode to MPEG-2 in WS-2 or other software.

The Device Controls are nothing to do with your card: they are standard Ulead controls. The IEEE-1394 spec is an international one used, inter alia, for the transfer of DV to and from a computer, for external hard disks etc. It is also called by trade names like Firewire, i-Link etc.

FYI, most Hollywood blockbusters are encoded at ~4000-5000 kbit/s. If you are getting artefacts at that bitrate, it's a question of the MPEG-2 settings. There is a whole load of trash quoted about bitrates on the forums. Faster is not always better!

BTW, another advantage of encoding from DV is that you can use AC-3 (Dolby Digital) sound, which is much more economical in disk space than you will get by transcoding.

Where poss, I use 6000 kbit/s CBR video, 192 kbit/s AC-3 audio from DV. It gives excellent results, considering the compression of the original DV.

[skier-hughes]

I'd second Devils thoughts, apart from the Hollywood bitrates.

They tend to use encoders costing ¢G100,000's and make 20 passes or more in order to get a low bitrate and superb quality.

A bitrate of 4,000 on decent material should give a reasonable result though, but as with anything if you want quality you need space

[Devil]

I'm just finishing an enormous project where I was forced to use a DL DVD at 5000 kbit/s/192 kbit/s CBR and the video results are excellent.

The point I was trying to make is that there is little or nothing to be gained from a DV source at high bitrates and one should never forget that many DVD players cannot cope with combined A/V bitrates above about 7000 kbit/s when playing from DVD¡ÓR/RW because of the poor contrast compared with pressed discs. As I have repeated many times, don't be more royalist than the king.

[skier-hughes]

I agree, the quality of the encoder makes more difference than the bitrate, and as you said, higher bitrate isn't always best, the most expensive encoder isn't always the best either

It worked then?

[Alan Mintaka]

Thanks to both of you again! I'll give that capturing recipe a try.

As to the Hollywood bitrates and multiple passes, when you folks talk about bitrates in the range 4000 - 6000, would those be done with VBR and two passes?

I never had any luck with VBR/two passes and since have stuck to high bitrates at CBR.

After all this I'm kind of embarrassed to say what sort of rates I've been using, but here goes anyway. BTW keep in mind that even though these rates seem a tad high, I've never had capturing problems with them until now.

Capture with WS2: 9500 kbit/s

Capture with Hauppage PVR 350 + WinTV: 10000 kbit/s

I no longer have the Hauppage card hence am using the WS2 rate with the Canopus.

In both cases I would render the DVD as CBR/one-pass at rates in the range 8000 - 9000+ (forget what the max is, but that's where I went).

As far as players go, I never had a problem playing those DVDs on a number of sets of varying brand and age; neither has anyone to whom I've been, eh, donating DVDs.

This is why the recent problems took me by surprise. After having consistently good results with those high-end rates, I didn't expect to be shut down this way. I still think there's a new issue on my system that's causing the problem. Since I can't find it (yet), I've got to give that DV type 1 capturing a try.

I'm interested in seeing the results anyway. I'll keep you posted on the results!

Big Al Mintaka

[Alan Mintaka]

Hello again,

I forgot to pose a question about a tangential issue here.

With the future of WS2 continuing to be pretty vague, I was wondering if the WS2 pros have any preferences about other products. I know we're not supposed to talk about competitors here so I figured I'd stick to Ulead/Corel alternatives for now.

MF is a subset of WS2 that doesn't interest me much. Studio, as far as I can see, is something like WS2 plus MediaStudio.

If WS2 goes legacy I'd like to have some overlap so I can transition to something else. If I were to stick with Ulead/Corel, would a jump to Studio make sense?

Have a good one,
Big Al Mintak

[sjj1805]

The ultimate Ulead/Corel programs are of course MediaStudio and DVD Workshop but as you've pointed out their future remains unknown.

VideoStudio is the next nearest Ulead/Corel program to MediaStudio.
MovieFactory is the next nearest thing to DVD Workshop.

Although the DVD Burning module of VideoStudio is very similar to MovieFactory there are a few subtle differences where MovieFactory is able to do a few more things than VideoStudio. Currently the most noticeable is the ability to burn Blue Ray discs, though both do of course support the HD format.

Another difference is the way they handle subtitle tracks. MovieFactory will enable you to import a srt subtitle file or even a utf subtitle file with the ability to turn these on/off with the DVD remote control. It also has a routine to import (as a subtitle track) exif information from slides, filename, time, date from videos.

MovieFactory will also enable you to create other disc formats such as a DATA disc, Audio DVD, Copy disc and other utilities.

VideoStudio uses its Title track as a means of providing a subtitle stream.
However these are not true subtitles, they are normal titles - the same as used in the opening screens of your video or the end credits. They are hard burned into the video and so cannot be turned on/off with the DVD remote.

VideoStudio is a Video Editing program. You use it to cut out unwanted stuff - such as adverts from a TV Program. Join things back together again with or without transitions, Multiple Window / Picture in Picture effects and so on.

Ideally you would own both programs but if you had to choose one or the other this would depend upon whether you intend to edit your video or not. If the answer is yes then VideoStudio is the way to go, if the answer is no then MovieFactory is your best option.

[Alan Mintaka]

For sjj1805: thanks for that background info on the products. I take it from your description that both Moviefactory and VideoStudio look as though they'll be around and supported with version upgrades for some time to come. Do I have that right?

For Devil and skier-hughes: yet another issue I forgot to address is AVI file size. When I'm done with a TV or old VHS vidcap I'm reluctant to throw away the raw video file. In the case of a rare TV show, the opportunity to record and capture it again may never happen. In the case of an old VHS tape, the thing is liable to crap out any second for a whole host of reasons!

The end result is that I quickly build up a library of monstrous AVI files and no place to put them. I could render them to MPEG-2 and gain a lot of space, but that would defeat the purpose of retaining the raw data by losing some quality during compression.

I suppose other considerations could include redesign of the DVD, or moving a lot of old DVD projects onto Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. I'd like to have the raw input around for those sorts of things to, do that I could make new menus, chapter points, and whatever other design features will be available on Blu-ray/HD-DVD.

What do you folks do with raw video files? Do you consider the rendered DVDs the only necessary storage option?

I'm just trolling for ideas while my gigantic DVD-1 AVI test file quickly consumes my hard drive.

PS: I took a look at the bitrate it's using. It's down around 3500! Is that typical? I assume there's no way (or reason) to control that?

Thanks to all yet again for your time and patience in this thread!

Big Al Mintaka

[Devil]

DV does not, strictly speaking, have a bit rate because it is not captured but transferred from the source. The space take n is fixed and runs at about 13 Gb/hour, That means that you can archive about 23 hours of video on a 300 Gb drive, which is common today. Is that enough?

I always use CBR down to 5000 kbit/s. There is little advantage for VBR above that for reasons I've explained elsewhere in these forums.

9500 kbit/s and above are certainly not recommended. Firstly, there is a limit in the DVD specs of combined A and V of ~9800 kbit/s (forget the exact figure!), so 10000 kbit/s is out of spec. As I said, many DVD players don't like A+V of >~7000 kbit/s so I recommend this as your absolute maximum. You will see little or no difference between that and 9000 from a DV source.