Q. re: "Flushing DV Transcode Buffer" message

[ppost]

Using VS9, when capturing from my digital camcorder directly to a DVD .mpg file, I changed the Quality slider to 100%. At various points in the capture, the audio begins to lag behind the video and then a pop-up displaying the message "Flushing DV Transcode Buffer" appears. The capture process is paused while a counter is decremented to zero, at which point the capture continues. When playing the resulting .mpg, the audio is in synch with the video. My assumption is that at a Quality setting of 100%, my computer does not have enough power to keep up with the digital capture, and the software simply pauses from time to time to catch up. Is my assumption correct, and can I trust that the resulting .mpg files will always be in synch?

Peter

[Ken Berry]

Your assumption is roughly correct, except that it is not your computer not keeping up with the capture as such, but not being able to do both the high quality capture AND, more importantly, being able to convert the initial DV format signal to DVD-compatible mpeg-2 on the fly. Hence the pauses while the buffer flushes and gets ready to be filled by another load of signal for conversion to mpeg-2. As for the second part of your question, I cannot answer specifically. It may depend exactly on how powerful your computer is. It might depend on whether you continue to try to capture very large chunks of video with the quality slider set at 100%. There are so many factors that come into play. WILL the audio and video always stay in synch? I don't know. Is there a *possibility* they might get out of synch. Maybe. VS9 is certainly very much better than VS8 in this regard, but we do get the occasional report of out of synch video and audio in VS9 in differing circumstances, so anything is possible.

This is principally why we always recommend that people avoid if possible capturing direct to mpeg format, and instead capture to the native DV format of your mini-DV digital camera (if that is what you've got). This capture is in effect simply a transfer of the video with exactly the same quality as the original. No conversion is done on the fly. You do your editing on the DV video, and only then go to Share > Create Video File > DVD to create your DVD-compliant mpeg-2 file which you can then burn. In the end, you really don't lose all that much time following this procedure. The camera will not stop and start, and the transcode buffer simply does not enter into the equation. Captures are thus much smoother, the computer is not stressed, and you get top quality DV for editing; and finally, hopefully your final mpeg-2 has a better chance of working well and smoothly.

[bop]

Peter

The main problem is that your/alot of computers are not powerful/fast enough to convert to .mpeg in real time most problems can be avoided if you capture your video to .avi via firewire/ilink/ieee1394 then edit in the same format have a look at this thread
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... =transcode

Brian

[ppost]

Thanks. I will capture to DV format from now on.

Peter