MF4SE fiasco? Soft/Hardware or OS issues?

[wguru]

I find many issues while USB dongle capturing DVD movies and burning disks w/ULead's MF4SE, captured in this manner as MF4SE disables its ability to process Dolby or AC3 audio.

What with MF's persistant inherant slowness and even its susceptability to all but inexplicably crash (frequently also losing many many hrs of prep work), add to that the lack of any reasonable users guide to avoid freezing the program and losing all the time and labor of capturing, when burns are actually successful, I'm finding the resulting DVD-R disk's playbacks almost always display band like and/or blocks of apparrently corrupted video imagery.

The exact same 'corrupted' frames are seen also during the capture process. Also seen in the monitoring capture preview window, are frequent freezes and resulting skipped segments lasting usually about 5 to 10 seconds throughout the entire capture process, and while burned disk's don't display the as monitored freezes and skipped segments, the
monitored random occurring corrupted bands and blocks of imagery all but ruin the viewing experience.

I use quality disks (tried many different brands too) and a high quality external read-writer and have even used the laptop's onboard writer, not that the writer is suspected of causing the imagery issues, but as for my os, it has plenty of resources available, disabling my av makes no difference and not that I ever read that anti-adware could cause ripppng.burning issues, I only run SpyBot S&D.

As such, if the monitoring freezes and skipping isn't a result of MF4SE's own software shortcomings, that leaves but two other possibilities for the monitoring and resulting corrupted imagery.

In that neither the use of S-Video cable or the dongle's RCA jacks make any difference, potentially my dongle's software is affecting MF4SE's ability to handle the converted data, but in that MF4SE's capture source window auto-matically detects the capture source as "USB 2820 Video"), and I don't suspect any issue between the dongle's software settings (YUY2 input format and bit rates of either 5000 and/or 8000 kbps, tried both w/o improvement), I can only surmize the cause of corrupted imagery may be related to my os's rather meager 512MB (actually 448) RAM.

As I am ruling out both source power, EMI and/or a lack of os resources as possible causes for the issues, the last conceivable cause for my two yr old laptop is it's rather meager RAM.

As I've more and more noticed a lot times when my desktop icons all disappear and slowly fill back in (shell re-starts?), hopefully more RAM will improve things as increasing virtual memory had no effect on shell re-starts, processing ability and/or capture issues.

I've even tried changing my working folder location, storing captured in-process files to a desktop folder, but still 'shell re-starts' and he capture quality issue persists.

I'm hot on the trial of but one supplier who writes back 'saying' they'll ship USPS, but doesn't advertise and so guaranty USPS shipping (i.e.; UPS/FedEx both 'customer selectively' pretend they can't deliver to location), so until I finally get ahold of the two 512GB RAM modules, I can't tell if that alone will make any difference.

If adding RAM doesn't resolve what seems soley a issues w/MF4SE and/or my capture dongle, sadly it looks like (aside from wasting countless hrs the past two yrs fighting w/MF4SE and beong the shameful owner of a lot of very poor DVD movie backups) I'm now left to going with something like Nero's authoring and burning utility.

So in that I use Decrypter and Shrink, I believe any Nero product is compatible, but which one is the simpliest and least costly?

[sjj1805]

SE versions are "Simple Edition" versions that are normally supplied 'free' with some hardware. These versions do not normally support Dolby (AC3) audio due to licensing issues.

You can quickly check if you have insufficient RAM by pressing these 3 keys together
[Ctrl] [Alt] [Del] and looking at the performance tab. This will tell you how much RAM is being used and if you are using more than you have installed you need to do one of two things.

1. Install more RAM
2. Turn off unnecessary programs that are using that RAM.
You will get some ideas for releasing RAM here:
Creating a Video Editing Profile.

[wguru]

Thank you for your helpful reply.

As my commit charge usually runs 253 to 235/1054M (obviously for now due largely in part to my limited RAM), your generously afforded article would seem to offer a light at the end of the tunnel.

But since I use XPH, is it possible to perhaps (when having task manager open) to simply "end task" for all services except those that your photo lists? Or how much might (if any) of your 'profile' article that refers to tweaking might apply to XPH users?

Again, many thanks for your contributions to the forum community.

[DVDDoug]

I find many issues while USB dongle capturing DVD movies

Did the device come with any other capture software? Sometimes, you'll get special capture-software and Movie Factory is thrown-in so you you can make DVDs.

Analog capture is tricky, and I don't trust "cheap" capture devices. Well... almost everything about digital video is tricky. It's best to get a good capture device and use the software that's specially made for it.

Make sure you are using a USB-2 port. USB-1 is not fast enough for real-time video. (Your 2 year-old laptop probably is USB-2.)

It's also possible that your CPU is not fast-enough. Do you know the "system requirements" for the capture device? But, this shouldn't be a problem either. Most of these devices have built-in hardware-MPEG encoders, because USB-2 is not quite fast enough for (less compressed) DV. Since the video sent to the USB port is already compressed, the computer doesn't have to handle as much data.

...There is a down-side to MPEG. I have an MPEG-only capture-card and I've sometimes had trouble when I edited MPEGs. I had to buy a special-purpose MPEG editor. So, I use one program for capture, a 2nd program for editing, and a 3rd program for DVD authoring & burning!

I'm now left to going with something like Nero's authoring and burning utility... I believe any Nero product is compatible, but which one is the simpliest and least costly?

I'm now left to going with something like Nero's authoring and burning utility.

So in that I use Decrypter and Shrink, I believe any Nero product is compatible, but which one is the simpliest and least costly? It doesn't sound like authoring & burning are your current problems... You seem to have a capture problem. Nero starts at $80 USD. Or, you can find the OEM version supplied "free" with many burners. So, buying a cheap (~ $30) burner would be the cheapest way to get Nero. (You probably can't actually use a "cheap" internal burner with your laptop, and you wouldn't be able to try-out the OEM version...)

P.S. You can find also find OEM discs for sale online.

[wguru]

Thanks for the enthusatic and informative reply.

Yes the dongle (DVD Maker USB 2.0) came with software (honestech-e, aka K'World). Nice package set of utilites, such as an MPEG Editor with many features such as Streaming Video File Format Conversion, a "Burn DVD" utility for DVD, VCD, Video CD, SVCD, and DATA (multi-media data CD), an MPEG Encoder which trancodes MPEG 1 (VCD), MPEG 2 (SVCD,DVD), ASF, WMV, DivX, DAT files, DV-AVI & AVI* (for compressed AVI too), and even "TVR" which enables scheduled/streamed TV viewing and recording on the PC.

My CPU is Intel P4 3.06 GHz, and I have latest updates for my RADON IGP 345M Graphic Card=RADON and Realtek AC97 Audio Sound Card. And yes it's USB 2.0 even though I have seen a few unexplained instances of popups advising this device could perform faster if you connect it to a hi-speed USB 2.0 port. Funny because my os has only 3 USB ports, all hi-speed, but I can count the times I've seen that on one hand.

As for system rqmts, anything and nearly everything on my os is up to snuff (except latest SUPER version squalking my RAM low by 50MB and avl RAM low by 16MB). CPU runs 2832MHz and my resources are 50% free, so unless my pending (512MB to) 1GB RAM upgrade doesn't help, I'm at a loss. Try another dongle, but which one? It's almost like like Russian roulette buying one, because only eventually you'll find a bullet in the chamber.

As for ULead's MF4 recording utility, in many ways it pales in comparison to honestech-e as it at least affords a generous GUI as well as user guide AND manual which puts ULead to shame, but there too the end result lacks quality and again is s-l-o-w. So I use SUPER for conversions and Decrypter as much as possible for burning.

Yes, now that you mention it, I do have a three yr old Bero CD-ROM with Nero 6 on it. Used it a few times, but just for burning until I found Decrypter which suits my needs in that I don;t require menu's, just chapters. So I agree, capturing is my problem. We'll see when the RAM is upgraded. But still I hear good things about Nero, even if I have to pop for the 80 skins, it likely would be worth it, but I really am not looking for whistles and bells, just the authoring and burning aspects of current software.

Thanks again for the reply. Members like you are what its all about.

[sjj1805]

Thank you for your helpful reply.

As my commit charge usually runs 253 to 235/1054M (obviously for now due largely in part to my limited RAM), your generously afforded article would seem to offer a light at the end of the tunnel.

But since I use XPH, is it possible to perhaps (when having task manager open) to simply "end task" for all services except those that your photo lists? Or how much might (if any) of your 'profile' article that refers to tweaking might apply to XPH users?

Again, many thanks for your contributions to the forum community.

You can end various running programs with EndItAll

[wguru]

You are the man.

Best wishes and happ-e-trails,

wguru