Dropped frames only with compression?

[Idocinthebox]

I am using a Sony TRV-85 which has a TBC built in connected to a VC500 to VEEDUB64 to capture only using the proc amp to adjust brightness and contrast. I have zero frame drops uncompressed UYUV interleaved AVI. I only get the frame drops when I try to use huffyuv or lagraith compression. The resulting uncompressed AVI is very large and I would like to use lossless compression. I can compress after the fact but that eats disk space and adds digital manipulation to the workflow. I think this is more software related. I have a Panasonic E10 DVR that I could use in passthrough mode but leave it out because of the TBC in the camcorder. I do not have a full frame TBC. Does anybody have a recommendation for my workflow that may work better?

My computer is a Ryzen9 5950x, 32gb ram, NVME and Sata drives, Nvidia 3080ti 12gb, Diamond VC500 USB capture device. Windows 11. I use Davinci resolve for color correction, sometimes neat plugin for noise, Davinci Neural engine deinterlacing (can't get QMTG to work it does not like the vid format and have not tried to covert) I have used Topaz VAI for upscaling clean color corrected deinterlaced captures, not really pleased with their deinterlacing yet.

[aramkolt]

My guess is what will be recommended is to invest in a full frame TBC. Looks like you have invested in everything else, so might as well not skimp there.

There are sub-$300 rack mount TBCs out there that likely will work better than not having one at all, especially if you're having frame drops. Certainly doesn't look to be your PC is causing the drops given how advanced the specs are, so that would suggest that the frames are not coming in at a stable enough rate and the capture card is most likely choking due to non-tolerance of timebase errors. I haven't seen a great head-to-head comparison of recommended vs non-recommended TBCs though to really suggest which one to go with though if you're on a budget.

You could also try a more timebase error tolerant capture card, others may have some suggestions on those.

[mbassiouny]

Quote:

> There are sub-$300 rack mount TBCs out there that likely will work better than not having one at all, especially if you're having frame drops

Not always, some (many?) of these are defective, which means they may add extra noise, dot crawl, or other issues that were never there to begin with. I took a shot on a random one of these from eBay and returned it (it was from store, so luckily they had a return policy).

My personal guess is that since you only get the dropped frames when using lossless compression, but no issues if capturing uncompressed, then it might be something related to the PC side/settings/vdub, not the analog workflow (card/camcorder).

Increase the chunk size and number of buffers under Capture> disk IO (in virtualDub), this may help, also sth else might be using the CPU while you are capturing therefore resulting in dropped frames. Disable the internet during capture.

I have not tested Windows 11 enough to say the OS side is innocent, check the task manager while capturing to see the resources' usage and try to find the bottleneck.

> (can't get QMTG to work it does not like the vid format and have not tried to covert)

probably sth as trivial as :

ConvertToyv12()
qtgmc()

will work (if color space is your issue)

[lordsmurf]

I found this reply still open in a browser tab.

But it may help future readers, so posting...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Idocinthebox

connected to a VC500

Realize this is not a recommended card, due to AGC issues, among others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Idocinthebox

only using the proc amp to adjust brightness and contrast. I have zero frame drops uncompressed UYUV interleaved AVI. I only get the frame drops when I try to use huffyuv or lagraith compression.

Software proc amps are not necessarily zero resource use, and in theory it could be responsible for the drops. That would suggest the per-core of the CPU is underpowered, or that it's being run in an efficiency type core by the CPU.

Quote:

I have a Panasonic E10 DVR that I could use in passthrough mode but leave it out because of the TBC in the camcorder.

Correct, the line TBC overlaps (thus the second/ES10 has zero effect), amd you also get all the artifacts and noise of the ES10 DVD recorder. Not ideal.

Quote:

Davinci Neural engine deinterlacing (can't get QMTG to work it does not like the vid format and have not tried to covert) I have used Topaz VAI for upscaling clean color corrected deinterlaced captures, not really pleased with their deinterlacing yet.

Yuck. Lossy, lossy, lossy! QTGMC first with Avsyinth or Hybrid first, before anything else. This assumes to video is not damaged, in need of advanced restoration, which can cause chicken/egg issues (order considerations). But you'd still do all that before DaVinci anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

My guess is what will be recommended is to invest in a full frame TBC. Looks like you have invested in everything else, so might as well not skimp there.

Yep.

Quote:

There are sub-$300 rack mount TBCs out there that likely will work better than not having one at all,

No, and for this reason:

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbassiouny

Not always, some (many?) of these are defective, which means they may add extra noise, dot crawl, or other issues that were never there to begin with. I took a shot on a random one of these from eBay and returned it (it was from store, so luckily they had a return policy).

^ That and more. Being OEM defective (like the black AVT-8710) is not the issue, but rather "defective" because it's an abused item that was never intended for consumer analog sources like Hi8 or VHS.

Quote:

Increase the chunk size and number of buffers under Capture> disk IO (in virtualDub), this may help, also sth else might be using the CPU while you are capturing therefore resulting in dropped frames.

Maybe.

Quote:

Disable the internet during capture.

Always disable/unplug.

Quote:

I have not tested Windows 11 enough to say the OS side is innocent, check the task manager while capturing to see the resources' usage and try to find the bottleneck.

For capturing analog video, Win11 is not innocent.

[Idocinthebox]

What is the best format for QMTG or hybrid. If format conversion is required is handbreak or virtualdub the best to use? Please post settings or links to guidesfor each to get the best output. I have a WinXp machine w tutle beach TB400 sound card and ATI All in wonder 8500dv. I have not built yet totally I am still hunting a MB with Sata2. This should help with hybrid and QMTG as well as raw captures.

[Hushpower]

Quote:

I have a Panasonic E10 DVR that I could use in passthrough mode but leave it out because of the TBC in the camcorder.

Try turning off the cam TBC and use the ES10. HUFF or LAGS on your Win11 computer should be a doddle. I won't mention what capture software I'd use but for capture, DigitalFAQ recommends VDub version 1.9.11, which is 32bit, from here.

[aramkolt]

Hmm. I still think it's odd that you only get frame drops when you use Lagarith or Huffyuv as these are rather light in terms of compression and your system is quite well specced compared to the typical XP machine that won't drop frames that's 15 years older.

A frame TBC (or even a capture card) is a mild form of "generation loss" - by definition an "imperfect copy" of what you feed it. Luckily, the medium here is not more mechanical media that will cause errors to compound more and more even with simple playback (it's just stored in a memory buffer temporarily before being converted back to analog) - so it isn't to the degree the loss you'll see copying a VHS tape over and over. The imperfections it adds could be an improvement in the sync signal or reduction (or addition) of image noise - but that's not a perfect copy of the original, it's been modified.

Dot crawl should never be an issue with an SVHS VCR using S-Video out unless the TBC is somehow combining chroma and luma inappropriately. Dot crawl can (and commonly does) happen with composite though. I know the Leitch DPS series has gotten some flack for dot crawl, but I believe the examples cited were for the composite input.

I'm not sure if there is a particular advantage to a SATA2 motherboard for capture purposes - regular SATA is plenty fast for lossless capture. The bigger annoyance is that I'm not aware of a motherboard that has XP support, USB 3, and AGP if you're going the All In Wonder route - though you might find one that also has PCI express that you might be able to put a USB3 card into for pulling data. USB3 was kind of after the XP era, but I have seen a few different PCIE cards- one from Startech at least that supports XP I think. Point of USB3 is to assist in getting the files off onto your more modern computer for deinterlacing etc. Other route would just be to physically unplug the Sata drive and attach it a USB 3 adapter or directly to a SATA port on your editing computer.