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  #21  
01-03-2021, 03:29 AM
Runrunsparrow Runrunsparrow is offline
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Is the Datavideo 3000's proc amp really that useful?

Controls
Brightness +/-10%
Contrast +/-3dB
Color +/-3dBp

From where I come one would want separate black and white levels, hue/white balance. Suggestion on a good proc amp to throw in between?

I've now got my old HP Pavilion going after 5 yrs of rest. I was thinking it could do for SD capture. Used to have an SSD disk in it for saving down HD in VirtualDub, but that shouldn't be necessary in this case.

So I should go look for an All In Wonder PCI on the second hand market? What model? And would it require me to rollback to Windows 7 (right now the HP is on Windows 10).

Thank you in advance guys ��
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  #22  
01-03-2021, 07:01 AM
pcourtney pcourtney is offline
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if you are determined to roll back to win 7 - then you need one of the very latest PCIe cards from ATI ( around the time they were bought by AMD in 2006 for 5 billion) - the X600 below in post 7 is one success story to investigate :-)

see post number 7 below and good luck - it would be great to have more AIW success with Win 7 64 bit machines
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...er-9600xt.html

The last PCIe cards with Theatre 200 chip on them were :
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X600 Pro
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X800 XL
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1300 ( aka 2006 Edition )
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1800 XL
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon X1900

NB https://www.cnet.com/products/ati-al...256-mb-series/

not sure how many people on the forum have got any more these cards working with Win 7 ??

https://drivers.eu/Video/ATI/All-in-...s%207%2064-bit

John Willis wrote this piece back in Nov 2019 ( I hope he does not mind me pasting it here)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Historically, video capture buses went ISA then PCI then AGP then USB then PCIe !

XP SP2 was at its prime when using AGP cards, that is its device drivers were the most stable and least problematic. USB2.0 was required for Uncompressed capture speeds but USB 2.0 support was "added on" to XP after the OS was launched and device drivers went through some instability periods, both for the USB Host controllers OHCI and UHCI and the devices that attached to those Host controllers. When Vista and 64 bit system like Vista and Windows 7, Windows 10 came along the device driver models were re-invented and many companies did not update or offer 64 bit versions of their device drivers.

But until the AVI is on the disk.. you still have to play by the rules of engagement dictated by the hardware and operating system that must run the device drivers.. so an optimal system captures Uncompressed AVI on a second hard disk separate from the operating system and running Windows XP SP2

They also chose not to certify or sign many of their driver releases and Microsoft slowly but firmly stopped loading them on later 64 bit systems, choking USB2.0 device driver support for those capture devices off. There are only a very few USB2.0 video capture devices that work on Windows 7 and Windows 10 without issues.

When AGP was dropped by hardware manufacturers for PCIe, the video capture devices were transitioning away from Uncompressed video capture towards hardware MPEG compressed (only) video capture cards. At the same time ATI was in decline and about to be sold to AMD. Also the PCIe spec was very unstable and subject to motherboard maker "interpretation" the BIOS for managing Interrupt lines on the new PCI express bus often "collided" or put too many things on the same Interrupt lines and caused recurrent latency problems for both sound and video capture devices. It was a mess.. the few video capture cards that could do Uncompressed video capture on PCIe during that time are very few and far between, and totally depended upon the grace of the motherboard manufacturer and the stability of their BIOS and pure luck to run without dropped frames.

When AMD finished acquiring ATI towards late 2006, they released the last AGP and PCIe card set, the x800 XL and x800 XT and then quit producing AGP8x cards.

All AMD/ATI made after that were PCIe only, with inherent motherboard compatibility issues. The ATI X1300, X1800 and X1900 were the last of the ATI Theatre 200 capture cards. All AMD cards after that relied on hardware compression chips so uncompressed capture was no longer an optionm, and they had various reported issues with their gain control, or further PCIe and USB issues.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the above may be why capturing uncompressed SD is not advised on computers with post Win XP SP2 operating systems

more really good info below

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...html#post64685

Last edited by pcourtney; 01-03-2021 at 07:49 AM.
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  #23  
01-03-2021, 08:34 AM
Runrunsparrow Runrunsparrow is offline
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Bear with me since I haven’t touched a Windows machine in years. But to shortlist my options and path ahead look like this?:

° Best way to success is with a AIW card

° AIW only runs on Windows XP, with a few exceptions where computer geniuses have made VirtualDub capture from AIW in Windows 7

° The HP Pavilion from 2011 that I just dug out is a 64 bit machine and therefore to modern to run XP

°So I either
1. Try to get hold of an old PC with Windows XP or …
2. Buy a PCI capture card that runs on Windows 7 or even 10 and that is almost as good as an AWI for capturing S-video. Which one do I buy?

Note that the above are questions, not assertion. I’m very happy to straighten out any misunderstandings.
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  #24  
01-03-2021, 09:10 AM
pcourtney pcourtney is offline
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if you are risk averse, then a solid mid 2000 computer ( Pentium 4 ) like the Dell Dimension 8300 with AGP8x, install Windows XP Home on it - bear in mind that windows XP 32-bit only supports HDD's up to 2TB because MBR format tops out at 2TB, use a different smaller size SATA drive for the C: boot drive ( not SSD because of trim issues)

Get one of the AGP cards from ATI that has the Theatre 200 chipset and install in the above machine

if you want to, you can just hack the registry to turn a Windows XP Home machine to Professional - I really cannot fathom out the reasoning behind using Professional, especially since you want this just to be a dedicated video capture machine DISCONNECTED from the internet, but some people on this forum feel that XP SP2 PRO is the answer, I do not.

Windows XP hack to Pro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71IW...el=AvoidErrors

What does Windows XP PRO give you that you can't do without - lets see ???
1) Dual Processor CPU recognition - can use the resources of two CPUs if installed on the motherboard

Not Needed for Video Capture using ATI cards with a single Pentium 4 CPU machine and 2GB or RAM minimum

2) Remote Desktop - your computer can be controlled from a remote location over the internet or on the LAN

Definately not needed for Video Capture !

3) Remote Software Installation - your OS and software can be upgraded or installed from a remote computer

Definately not needed for Video Capture !

4) Centralized Control - your computer can be maintained by system management tools over a Microsoft Server based network.

Not Needed

5) User Group Control - users can be clustered under groups and rights and privileges can be assigned to groups of users. This allows system administrators ease of control and maintenances of users.

Not needed

6) Roving User Facility - a user can recreate the exact same environment in his System in another System under the same Windows server network. This is like the user carrying the PC settings and environment wherever he works in a network

Not needed

7) File encryption and restrictions - keep files and resources private from another user of the system. One user’s files and folders cannot be viewed by another user. This is achieved by activating local system security policies

Not Needed

8) Application Control - Not only can files can be restricted on a per-user basis, but applications can be restricted, certain applications or programs can be made available only to certain users and access or ability of the user to run or execute certain programs can be blocked.

Not needed

9) Offline File Access And Synchronizing - Certain files available on the network can be made available and usable even after disconnecting from the network on a Windows XP Professional based computer. This feature is called File Synchronization wherein the changes or updations made in the network files are synchronized once the computer is connected back into the network.

Not Needed

10) Easy Localization and Switching - gives its user the ability to change the display and input languages anytime and switching of languages is done on the fly.

Not Needed - but was a major reason to have Windows Professional in Europe, because of this feature !

maybe everyone thinks using XP Professional makes for better Video Capture, but it does not make any difference whatsover, but if you want to change from Home to Pro, just do the registry tweak below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71IW...el=AvoidErrors
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  #25  
01-03-2021, 09:44 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by latreche34 View Post
but if I have to choose between a BM analog capture card and an easycrap I will go for BM before I even blink my eye.
Not much of a choice there. "Would you prefer cat turds or dog turds?"

Quote:
Originally Posted by hodgey View Post
I use a blackmagic card myself to capture from the HDMI output of a DVR, and the card itself doesn't drop any frames when doing that
It works well on HD sources. (Actual HD sources, not shoddy SD>HD sources. The BM cards isn't to blame in SD>HD, but it still looks terrible due to the rotten conversion quality of whatever the other device was. Dumb deinterlacing quality, mostly.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Runrunsparrow View Post
Is the Datavideo 3000's proc amp really that useful?
Yes.

Quote:
From where I come one would want separate black and white levels, hue/white balance. Suggestion on a good proc amp to throw in between?
The best units were SignVideo, but most/all of those were NTSC.

Most of those unfortunately have NOT aged well in the past decade, I've seen numerous units with all kinds of issues. I've repaired several back into working condition, but you still had to baby it (mostly be excessive gentle and slow with knobs).

I use the TBC-3000 proc amp myself quite often.

Quote:
I've now got my old HP Pavilion going after 5 yrs of rest. I was thinking it could do for SD capture. Used to have an SSD disk in it for saving down HD in VirtualDub, but that shouldn't be necessary in this case.
XP does not have TRIM, do not use SSD in XP.

Quote:
So I should go look for an All In Wonder PCI on the second hand market?
I have on in the marketplace. The PCI models are rare, low production, single good model exists. You do not want any random PCI AIW, only the 7200 is good. The wrong AIW will have horrible graphics performance, and video will therefore not work well eithe.r

Quote:
And would it require me to rollback to Windows 7
AIW is XP only.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pcourtney View Post
if you are determined to roll back to win 7 - then you need one of the very latest PCIe cards from ATI
No, not Win7. AIW is XP only.

All post-XP attempts have been unreliable, including mine. I tried this multiple times in 2012 before giving up, with a few sparse attempts in years since (mostly due to new ideas from new forum members, none of which ever panned out). The closest we ever came was jwillis looking to rewrite drivers himself, but ETA on that is unknown (vaporware?).

[QUOTE=Runrunsparrow;73967]° Best way to success is with a AIW cardIt is a way -- one of the highest quality options that ever existed. But not the only way, others just lack in various areas (mostly in color handling, inability to grab illegal super-black/white values)

Quote:
° The HP Pavilion from 2011 that I just dug out is a 64 bit machine and therefore to modern to run XP
This should run XP just fine. I see no reason why it would not.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pcourtney View Post
if you are risk averse, then a solid mid 2000 computer ( Pentium 4 )
I do not suggest any IDE systems in 2020. Yuck. At minimum SATA, and with dual-core (for MPEG 15-20mbps capturing option on AIW in MMC). AIW works great at AVI, but it does hybrid MPEG capturing as well that looks excellent for certain uses (like my hobby cartoon tapes).

Quote:
Get one of the AGP cards from ATI that has the Theatre 200 chipset and install in the above machine
There is almost no different in Theatre 200 and Theatre 100/Rage, aside from 5% more hardware in the MPEG processing. Some bad cards have Rage/100, but that's it. (I actually consider some 200 cards to be undesirable, mostly certain PCIe.)

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  #26  
01-03-2021, 09:54 AM
Runrunsparrow Runrunsparrow is offline
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Thank you lordsmuef and pccourtney for your extensive replies. I'll try and take the HP to my all-in-one guy on the corner (tobacco-iPhonerepair-computer help) and ask him to install a legit XP. Just a pondering. I was thinking I would use a NAS disk in order to get quick access to the captured material from a hotter processing unit (maybe even a Mac ). Would my PC on XP 1. even connect to a modern NAS and 2. be able 2 write SD capture to the NAS drive over Ethernet?
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  #27  
01-03-2021, 10:07 AM
pcourtney pcourtney is offline
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what model HP Pavilion is it ?? is it a big desktop machine with 5.25" drive bays at the top ?? if it is then you can have a second XP machine with 5.25" removeable SATA Hard Drive bays, and move the captured SD video from your XP computer to your super fast HP Pavilion 64bit with 8GB ram, that's what I do - probably much better for so many reasons to do it that way anyway, use a simple 2 computer KVM if you want (then you only need 1 Mouse, Keyboard, Monitor) , and you can go from one to the other

NB its always best to do post processing/restoration of uncompressed SD video on a super fast more modern computer
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  #28  
01-03-2021, 10:23 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Runrunsparrow View Post
and ask him to install a legit XP.
Feel free to own a legit copy of XP, but for the actual install I suggest XP Integral edition. The official XP edition is more than 10-15 yars outdated, while Integrals was last updated in 2020. It contains backports and updated from other Win OS, to give more modern access to HDDs, thumb drives, ACPI, etc.

Quote:
Just a pondering. I was thinking I would use a NAS disk in order to get quick access to the captured material from a hotter processing unit (maybe even a Mac ). Would my PC on XP 1. even connect to a modern NAS and 2. be able 2 write SD capture to the NAS drive over Ethernet?
You cannot capture to the NAS. You need to capture to a dedicated internal SATA drive (not OS drive). Then copy it over to NAS, preferably using 10gbe if possible.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pcourtney View Post
if it is then you can have a second XP machine with 5.25" removeable SATA Hard Drive bays, and move the captured SD video from your XP computer to your super fast HP Pavilion 64bit with 8GB ram, that's what I do
Same here. Removeable SATA on capture systems.

Quote:
use a simple 2 computer KVM if you want
Be careful. Most KVMs mess up capture, cause dropped frames.

Quote:
NB its always best to do post processing/restoration of uncompressed SD video on a super fast more modern computer
Yes, my main system is an i7 from 2015, chews through video quite easily compared to trying it on those old capture boxes. Use a capture box for capture, nothing else (for your own sanity, not because it's not possible).

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  #29  
01-03-2021, 10:44 AM
pcourtney pcourtney is offline
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never had that using our Belkin KVM ( switches computers using simple hotkey sequence and requires no software for installation) , so does not need the OS to work - so no interrupts going on with the Belkin

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Belkin-2-...oAAOSw8XRfsmj5

what KVM's have you had trouble with LS, were they USB types ?

anyway, it is all a bit moot, given that old monitors, mice and keyboards are so cheap now, you don't have to bother with KVM unless desk space is in short supply - like mine !
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  #30  
01-03-2021, 10:55 AM
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Mine also did not need OS, had no software. The problem is that graphics cards often "sense" when a monitor is not present. Same for USB, both mouse and keyboard. Sometimes when KVM was switched, it detected missing device, and that detection caused dropped frames. I had this problem on multiple systems, multiple ATI cards, multiple monitors/mice/keyboards, going back 15+ years now. So I've always suggested multiple monitors for capturing.

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  #31  
01-03-2021, 11:22 AM
pcourtney pcourtney is offline
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Quote:
>problem is that graphics cards often "sense" when a monitor is not present
- eek good to know LS - thx !

Is that a known ATI "All In Wonder" Radeon issue that besets the whole family of ATI cards ?

a quick question, is there a fairly simple visual way to view dropped frames whilst capturing in real time ?
maybe a small dedicated XP application in the taskbar at the bottom of the XP screen (not VirtualDub)

or what do you suggest to keep on eye on this and any other dropped frames that may be happening during capture ?
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  #32  
01-03-2021, 11:34 AM
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No.

There are visual ways to see dropped frames post-capture, but it's tedious, requires actually watching the video. The biggest tell-tale is audio sync loss.

Watch the dropped frames counters:
- in VirtualDub
- in ATI MMC in version 7.5.x+, 8.x, 9.0.x -- but NOT 9.1.x versions. That's why PCIe cards are not good, cannot be used with MMC, no MPEG capturing is trusted with no counter

This is also why Blackmagic cards are bad. The cards drop frames, but do not report the drops. So even a "good" capture (no black insert frames) is bad due to frame dropping/duping. The BM doesn't always insert black. It's almost random in how is (mis)treats SD video sources, especially VHS.

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  #33  
01-03-2021, 12:55 PM
cbehr91 cbehr91 is offline
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Yes, DON'T use a KVM on your capture PC. It also took using separate drives for boot and capture for me to not get dropped frames (Windows boot on C, capture to D). The boot drive can be an SSD. It is on my capture system, but my capture drive is SATA.
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  #34  
01-05-2021, 10:33 AM
Runrunsparrow Runrunsparrow is offline
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Boys, you're swell! I'm so thankful for all support this far.

I paid a visit to a PC repair shop today that offered me:

Acer M670G Tower:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93 GHz (
4 GB DDR3 ram (8GB option)
320 GB S-ATA drive
Intel HD VGA
DVDRW
1 GB network cars
8 USB 2.0
Seriall port (RS232)
1 x16 PCI-Express
1 x1 PCI-Express
2st PCI

I asked about a way to easily switch SATA drives and they suggested a desktop docking bay. When I asked them how to connect it into the eSATA port of the motherboard, they suggested removing the Wifi module and use its slot for a USB 3.0 card instead. However, considering all the culprits and bottlenecks I've learned about this far, writing to a USB drive of any sort wouldn't appeal to Virtualdub or whichever program I'll use, even to the bandwidth of USB3 would be more than sufficient. So how does a solution for easily removable SATA drives look, that does not go via USB?
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  #35  
01-05-2021, 10:49 AM
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All I care about is the motherboard specs. You need 2 PCI minimum (not PCIe/PCI-Express, but plain PCI).

CPU, RAM, etc ... that's all secondary (and mostly determined by the motherboard). 2gb minimum, 4gb is gravy, 8gb does nothing for XP.

ATI AIW is graphics + video, so it's the graphics card. Whatever graphics is onboard isn't used. Whatever is carded inside will be pulled and replaced.

HDD needs be SATA, large (2tb max for XP) for capturing drive, and any size separate OS drive (320gb is fine)

USB3 can be added as PCIe card, USB2 worthless.

XP Integral should be the XP version used in 2020. Feel free to own an official license, but it goes in a drawer with the original XP install discs. Integral is unofficial, but it adds and backports stuff, MS has abandoned the OS while users have not.

Self-building the system isn't too hard once the hardware is acquired. Acquiring hardware is the hardest part. The software setup is more of a challenge yet, but not with the forum here to guide you.

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