dv transcoding msg

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 10:50 am

Hi all,
Capturing from my digital 8 camcorder and converting to mpeg2 on the fly:
settings are
mpeg2, pal
lower field first
4:3, cbr 7000
audio 44.1
224kbps

also quality for speed set 100%
and
project options quality 100%

after 2 minutes (bit less) i get a pop up message
dv transcoding
press ESC to stop transcoding
flushing dv transcode buffer
frames in buffer = (pic of a box)

seems to halt at this stage.

I tried capturing to DV/AVI the same length no problem. Can anyone explain....maybe my system is not power enough (have never really bothered to captured to mpeg2 on the fly..this is first time)

My specs= pent4 1.8Ghz, 512MB ram, Win xp pro.,

cheers
froggy

bop · Post by **bop** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 11:18 am

Froggy

you hit the nail on the head your system is not powerful enough for converting on the fly better to stick to capure and edit in dv/avi convert to mpeg when edits transitions etc are all complete

Brian

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 12:16 pm

Hi Froggy,

I agree with Brian.

What's happening is this -- your computer is transferring the dv stream into a buffer that is getting transcoded to mpeg2. When your machine isn't fast enough to transcode what's in the buffer, the buffer gets filled up and then the dv transfer stops until the buffer is fully transcoded (flushed).

This would work ok as long as you can control playback of the source video (i.e. a dv camcorder), because when transfer stops, a signal to stop playback is sent to your source device to also pause. Then everything is supposed to pick up where it left off once the buffer is flushed out.

It doesn't work when the program cannot stop the source device, like in the case of an analog-to-dv convertor -- there's no way to stop the analog source video when needed.

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 4:45 pm

thanks for that interpretation.....
ah well...suppose no great issue

cheers
froggy

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 10:42 pm

Hi again,
Interesting...i can use my Winfast tuner card to change analog tv reception shows on the fly to mpeg2....just did about 10 min worth...
Is this the same path used by system for above problem?

cheers
froggy

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 11:30 pm

Which WinFast card is that? Some have a hardware MPEG-encoder -- if you bring up Task Manager, you'll notice minimal CPU utilization while the card captures.

peacefrog · Post by **peacefrog** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 11:18 am

Hi Thoff,
AT the risk of sounding dumb, here is a link to my tuner card specs

http://www.leadtek.com/multimedia/winfa ... prm_1.html

i'm not really sure whether hardware MPEG-encoder
is stated there although there is support for various formats...
how can i tell apart from your suggestion...

cheers
froggy

[/b]

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:23 pm

It's not clear from that page, but many of their other boards definitely have hardware MPEG encoding capability. Try capturing in MPEG2 format using the software that comes with the card, and check the CPU utilization -- if it is less than 25% or so, then the card is doing the encoding and the PC is merely writing the encoded data to disk.

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:13 pm

I have a 3.06 Gig Processor and 1 Gig memory and get the same info, flushing buffer.

It depends on how long the video you are capturing is, my transcode buffer fills up after about 8 or 9 minutes on a long capture.

I have since installed a Hauppauge PVR-250 to capture video and am very happy with the results.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 6:01 pm

I have three systems, one P4M 1.5GHz laptop with 768MB RAM, a 3.06GHz desktop with 1GB RAM, and a P4D EE 3.2GHz desktop with 1GB RAM.

The first two don't have a snowball's chance in hell of keeping up with the transcoding. The last system hovers at around 15 to 20% CPU utilization and happily lets me do other things while it captures to MPEG2 format.