Capture Error

[santosh@metroweb.co.za]

I am using VideoStudio V8 SE and just downloaded trial version of Version 9.

I am capturing vhs from a vcr using "video in" on my vga card. Problem with both versions is that capturing just stops before capture is complete. Does not stop after a specific time. Capture stops after anything from 2 minutes upwards.

My Capture Settings are:
MPEG: 352 x 576, Bit Rate 4000 kbps variable.
MPEG Audio Layer 2, 48000 Hz, 224 Kbps stereo

System Configuration
Acer Desktop P4 2.8 Hyperthreading
Windows XP
1.2 G of Ram
ATI Radeon 9200 VIVO capture / VGA card. Latest drivers.
Sound Blaster Live 24
40 gig ata drive used for OS. Free Space = 25 gig
160 gig drive used for capture. Free Space.

What am i doing wrong???

TIA

Santosh

[THoff]

Can you try capturing in AVI format (possibly using the Huffyuv codec if you need to conserve disk space)? It may be that the MPEG encoding is just too much for UVS to do in real-time.

Also, are you able to capture continuously using ATI's Media Center application? If that works, you could use it to capture, and then use UVS to edit.

[Blue Canary]

Your system looks pretty high spec. It should certainly be able to cope with MPEG capturing. Check there are no unncessary processes runnning in the background by bringing up Windows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del). BUT Ensure Task Manager is CLOSED (not just minimised to Systray) BEFORE starting the capture. I had a similar capturing problem to you which appeared to be directly connected to having Task Manager running in Systray. (This doesn't make sense as Task Manager does not take much resources itself but seeing was believing for me. Possibly a positive feedback loop got triggered by Task Manager?)

[THoff]

The problem with Task Manager is that it calls APIs which require the Virtual Memory Manager to briefly lock down all open processes and memory pages so that Task Manager can enumerate them.

If you play games, leaving Task Manager open can result in brief freezes and not-so-smooth gameplay. Video playback can experience stuttering, and video capture can drop frames.

[santosh]

Hi

Thanks for the replies.

I have tried capturing avi's and with lots of dropped frames.

I have also used the ati multimedia centre (with ati, u don't know if its their software thats buggy or whether u are doing something incorrectly). But I have managed to capture using ATI. There capture software is a mess. U cannot save your capture settings....

I also do not have task manager running at all.

However, I did have Trend Micro running and tried capture again after terminating the app. Now I have succeeded in capturing just over 2 hours of video without VideoStudio stopping the capture. Will try capture again today and hopefully this would have been the problem.


Thanks Again

Santosh

[THoff]

With AV software, it's generally a good idea to exclude the capture directory from scans -- there's nothing worth scanning in there, and the constant I/O and huge files create a huge overhead.