AmarecTV causing Win10 to stutter when tape plays?
 

I installed AmarecTV using the following guide: https://iotku.pw/gvusb2-guide/

After installing and following all setup instructions on Windows 10 (win10) the computer will stutter everyone 1 second, meaning not even the mouse on the desktop will move whenever the VCR is playing. It will then work again for 1 second and repeat this process until I stop the tape. The audio will work without interruption though. If I stop the VCR the computer will function again as normal. I've tried this with two separate capture cards and it performs the same for both. I have also tried using AMV4, LAGS and Huffyuv codecs - same issue. Using OBS I don't have this problem. Any idea what may be causing this?

AmaRecTV is not suggested software, nor is the GV-USB2 a suggested card. There are literally 2-3 vocal people on the entire internet suggesting this pairing of card and software. When it works, they take credit. When not, they disappear, or shrug their shoulders.

OBS is digital streaming recording software, essentially screencap in display layers (which causes quality and signal problems), not analog recording software.

Have you tried VirtualDub yet?
The fallback is VirtualDub2.
Capture cards require tweaks to setting. VirtualDub's default may not work, so do not give up at failure. I know most settings for many cards, but not GV-USB, you're on your own. But I can take a few blind stabs at it.

Yes, I tried both last night with vastly different results.

VirtualDub crashes the entire system! It puts big horizontal lines across the entire screen that slowly fade to black that you can't recover from. The only solution is to restart the computer.

VirtualDub2 works great! I did two sample tapes with the GV-USB2 and they both turned out awesome. Zero dropped frames. Obviously I have a lot more to do but it's looking very promising right now.

I would still like to know why both VirtualDub and Amarectv are behaving so poorly though. My computer does use nvidia and I read on here that can be troublesome so maybe the issue is there.

Analog video capture is a legacy task from the late 90s into the early 2010s. The best hardware existed in the mid/late 00s. It's now the 2020s. (Note: 90s methods, hardware are bad; 10s mostly cheap knockoff Chinese junk.)

Using modern hardware to capture video is sort of like repairing a phone booth by using a cell phone. The tech is sort-of the same, but in many ways not at all compatible.

So current OS (Win10, Win11), modern M1/M2 Macs, new Nvidia cards, etc -- not compatible. It doesn't care about legacy tasks. New hardware only cares about the now, mostly streaming Youtube, playing video games, and using Facebook. Youtube is the current video trend, and it needs HD/4K, which is wildly different from analog video (especially capture).

The fact that anything works is a miracle.

This is why a dedicated system for capture is best. You don't have noisy internet causing issues, capture systems are offline. And then you can use whatever legacy hardware and OS needed. It's not meant for your daily use, just capture.

So the problem is trying to use your daily computer for video capture. Don't do that. But if you must, it'll be tedious to find the perfect setting. Like holding rabbit ears, standing on one foot, during a full moon.

You are clearly referring to me here. I have NEVER taken credit, or bragged, or sledged, anybody for using that combo. You don't even own a GV-USB2 so you are in no position to criticise it.

I am not into waffling, rambling and generalising and so don't post if I have nothing to meaningful to contribute. I suppose I could have posted "gee sorry to hear about that, it works OK here". I also don't suggest a course of action unless I am prepared to back it up with help if the person doesn't understand or has trouble. I'm not prepared to do that with Virtual Dub. It's just too complicated to explain. That is the reason I have remained silent on this thread.

In my experience, NVidia has no effect on video capture with Win 11.

If the internet bothers you when capturing, pull out the network cable.

No, I am not referring to you. :)

You've always discussed multiple cards, multiple software, multiple other devices. I don't recall an instance where I've had issues with your advice. It tends to be more nuanced, noting details and exclusions. Not a generic "use this, best ever!!!" and then the person toddles off. At most, maybe I added some clarifications, to help the readers, in my follow-ups to some of yuor posts.

A person that owns/uses the GV-USB2/AmaRecTV (ie, you) is quite a bit different than cheerleaders that blindly recommend it en masse without regard to factors.

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Sometimes it is just the only option... :(
AmarecTV can crash depending on codec, standard, dimensions, and your software version(version 2, version 3).

In most cases where vdub 1.9 crashed for me, vdub 2 saved the day on win 10, even on 11. So vdub2 is always my fallback on win 10 (along with amarec when/if needed)

> In my experience, NVidia has no effect on video capture with Win 11.
It is highly variable.
I have a computer with nvidia + win 10, nightmare to capture on. ofc there are many factors so not 100% blaming the nvidia GPU, but cannot confirm it is innocent neither. I wonder if a different OS on the same machine (11 as you mentioned or even 7) may work better...

I ended up getting AmarecTV working and I've captured pretty much everything. After the fact I noticed that the LAGS Mode is get to RGB as default, which was not in the guide I followed above.

Using mediainfo to look at the file parameters doesn't list what colorspace the file is, it just says the file is Lagarith.

From my limited knowledge of colorspace I think I should be using 4:2:2 for captures, which i believe is YUY2.

How do I check the colorspace of all of these captures and should I redo them if they're RGB?