Dropped frames? Ditch your high end PC!
 

This is more an FYI to anyone who is just getting started with VHS to digital transfer and has lots of dropped frames in VirtualDub. After a year or more of playing with a Sony VCR and Hauppauge DVR PCI card in my i7 Desktop (and WinTV8 mpg capture) I ran across this forum and decided I needed to improve my workflow. I bought a JVC-HR-S9800U VCR, ATI 600 USB stick, TBC-3000, S-Video cables and dedicated a higher end i7 laptop to the task and started playing with VirtualDub. And guess what that got me? Nothing. Tons and tons of dropped frames and out of sync audio. I ruled out the VHS tapes, VCR, cables and brought it right down to the TBC generating color bars into the ATI 600 which still gave lots of dropped frames (about 5%).

I've kept a once top of the line Compaq W6000 XP workstation (4 core Xeon, SCSI 10k HDD's, once high end graphics card) in the basement for transferring DV over firewire from a 15 year old Sony DV camera. I dragged it out from the basement (WOW XP runs fast with nothing on it!), loaded up the ATI CD drivers and software, copied over VirtualDub and plugged in the ATI USB 600 (luckily I added a USB2 PCI board years ago). Set the basics in VirtualDub, TBC color bars, Capture Video and guess what.... ZERO Dropped Frames!

I can sleep good tonight, tomorrow we can start to experiment with actual video capture!

Update:

I tried a 10 year old IBM laptop running Windows 7 and it also works fine with no dropped frames. The only problem with this was that the Catalyst Media Center install hung and wouldn't install. I simply chose Custom install and removed it from the install options and the drivers and codecs installed fine.

The main issue isn't the age of the hardware, but rather the constant activity by the newer OS. For example, if the system is online, odds are you all sorts of things connecting online constantly.

Ge the portable version of the Sphinx Firewall: http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/order.html
You may be surprised to see what all is talking/listening.

The best capture systems are not online, don't even have a LAN cable plugged in.

My post was a big premature. I have since found that I get dropped frames on the old XP workstation, the less older Windows 7 laptop and on my newer i7 laptop and desktop running Windows 10. Now here's what I don't understand... in VirtualDub if I uncheck Audio/Enable Audio Playback (which now results in having video while capturing but no audio heard through the speakers) and start a capture the dropped frames is zero! With the volume meter turned on I can see the audio levels but again, no sound is heard, obviously because I told VD to not enable it. What's more is the recorded AVI looks good - video AND audio are recorded. So is this correct, VD should be used with Audio Enable unchecked??? It seems odd to me that simply enabling or disabling the audio while recording makes the difference between dropped and not dropped frames.

You can't preview audio in VirtualDub.

Well that explains it! Splitting RCA audio to my stereo now should get me "preview audio" and no dropped frames. OK, next roadblock to overcome ;-)

As a very late answer - don't use VirtualDub for capture.
I use NextPVR with an ATI card. It feels much more stable, has a built-in preview, and I can just open the file with VLC outside the recording software to see how well it's going.

It's nice that this other software works for you, but VirtualDub is the recommended analog video capture software across DigitalFAQ, VideoHelp, and Doom9.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

The speed of your PC does not matter. I have a 3900x lifht years ahead of an i7 laptop and have 0 issues with dropped frames...

PVR software was made to record/time-shift TV, nothing else. The intention was to temporarily record for later viewing, not to archive. So if the video had errors ... oh well. For digitizing VHS, this is not acceptable. That software lacks a dropped frames counter, and is therefore useless for this task.

PVR was a late 2000s activity that stopped in the early 2010s, thanks to Netflix. Most PVR software is no longer made, freeware not really maintained.

I think NextPVR has changed a lot over the years, and is now geared more towards HD recording, maybe even screen recording now. I've not used it lately, no interest in it. Why? Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. Or I'll buy DVDs/BDs, or use my DVD recorder for the odd SD show (usually B&W movies/shows) that I want to keep, as it's not yet released (examples = Dragnet 50s, Blondie movies, Roy Rogers Show episodes).