ATI 600 USB stuttering PAL VHS capture?
 

Hi All, I'm in the UK. I've just bought an ATI 600 USB (from LordSmurf) for a WinXP PC, connected to a PAL JVC HR-S7600 VCR via S-Video. I've installed the drivers LordSmurf recommended, then the USB stick, and it works, I can see the VHS image in virtualdub though s-video.

Upon testing it today, the ATI 600 USB seems to be set to default to NTSC when I open Vdub, so when I switch it over to PAL-I using the Vdub menus > capture filter, it seems to have the right settings; capturing at 25fps and the image stretches out to 576px, but I notice a 'step/jump' in the virtualdub overview/preview window of the VHS playing, as if the USB stick is still outputting NTSC but Vdub is trying to interpret it as PAL. When I try and capture it, I'm getting a dropped frame every second or so, a regular dropped frame like I'm capturing at the wrong framerate.

I've had a quick look at the ATI media centre in case there is something I needed to change there, and while it's not exactly 'technical', I've set the country to the UK and there doesn't seem to be a step in the small ATI capture preview window. I can't access the stream while the media centre is running, but when I close it and go back to Vdub, it defaults back to NTSC again, with the same problem.

Is there some separate settings for the card I haven't spotted? I know my blackmagic capture card has an icon in the windows control panel which you use to switch from PAL to NTSC, separately to Vdub?

Using SSD's ?

Try AmarecTV.

SSDs doesn't matter.

Amarec is inferior software. The issue here is simply correct setup of VirtualDub. (Even Amarec needs some setup, it doesn't just magically work perfectly once installed.)

Main capture screen bottom corner:

Attachment 11983

and then Video > Set custom format.
Use YUY2, 720x576

Attachment 11984

And use Preview, not Overlay

Does that fix it? :hmm:

No, I had tried setting the custom format anyway.

If I leave the ATI USB as-is when I open Vdub, the VHS is squashed at 720x480 and there is a step in the preview.

If I change those specific settings as you mentioned above, it makes no difference. the step is still there, plus there is a few inches of garbled screen at the bottom of the playing image. If I change the ATI USB to PAL-I using the Vdub menus > capture filter, then the VHS image fills the screen properly as it should, but again the step is still there.

It does say on the box that this uses and NTSC signal. If can definitely capture 25fps PAL?

The tuner is NTSC.
The card is NTSC, PAL, and some others, maybe SECAM.

Did you set the card in Video > Crossbars, Capture pins
Review those for PAL.

What you're seeing is a settings issue, and is a PAL/NTSC mismatch in settings. I've seen it, I've done it.

Everything has to be 720x576, PAL, and 25fps everywhere. Cannot overlook anything.

Actually, I tried a NTSC capture using an NTSC tape & VCR. I'm still seeing a step in the image and regular dropped frames every second with a capture, so that would more likely be something related to the USB element, as if my PC is struggling to get the data from the USB fast enough. I've checked and my capture PC has USB2. I've tried it in the ports on the front, the ports on the back, and I have a PCI USB2/Firewire card and that gives the same result. My PC can capture from my ASUS MyCinema 650 & BlackMagic cards using Huffy/Largath without dropped frames, so it's not the processing speed.

I've tried the ATI USB with my Win10 machine but it doesn't seem to recognise that it's plugged in even though the drivers for Vista64 install okay. I do have an newer win7 PC in my loft, which was my gaming PC before my current PC. That has USB3. I might try and reformat that to WinXP and make that my capture PC.

Did you remember to disable Audio Preview?
Uncheck 'Enable audio while capturing'

That was the setting causing the problem, it's running smoothly now thanks!