Using sound card with ATI 600 USB?

[Schlockmaster]

Howdy y'all. I've been lurking the forums for a while and decided to start piecing together a workflow for digitizing VHS, which is now almost complete. For the record, nearly all the tapes I plan to capture are Japanese NTSC.

I have a JVC HR-S9800U, no external TBC (yet), an ATI 600 USB, and a Windows XP machine pieced together from my graveyard of old components. The PC has an AMD Athlon II X2 270 dual core, 3 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB HDD. I've done a fresh install of XP integral edition, installed drivers for the ATI 600 USB, and got VirtualDub and Huffyuv set up.

I planned on getting a sound card (specifically a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) and secondary HDD for the video files, but thought I should ask here first before pulling the trigger on anything. My apologies if these are stupid questions, I just want to make absolutely sure I'm on the right path.

Is it required/worth using a separate sound card instead of the audio inputs on the ATI 600 USB? I'm guessing at the very least it will be a significant improvement in sound quality. Would the proper way to connect it be a RCA-to-3.5mm stereo cable going from the VCR to the sound card? Will this cause latency/sync issues?

As for the hard drive, I remember reading that XP can only use a maximum of 2 TB. Is there any harm in using a drive larger than this? Will it be flat-out incompatible or detrimental to the capture process?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[lordsmurf]

With ATI 600 USB, audio capture must be from the card, nothing external.

Preview in VirtualDub is usually a simple alteration of the timing settings. For that advice, you'll need to screen cap what you have now, and I can make suggestions to alter. The defaults rarely work for this card, and disabling preview is never a good option to me (but it has been for many others).

For TBCs, remember the marketplace subforum here.

[Schlockmaster]

Thanks lordsmurf. I'm glad I trusted my gut feeling to ask here before buying a Santa Cruz. That's one extra step I can cut out and a little money saved.

I haven't actually tried any capturing yet, but I'll post a screenshot of my settings later. I went through the VirtualDub setup guide and used most of sanlyn's recommended settings (almost all were already set this way by default) and changed some of the 'timing' settings based on what you and others suggested for USB capture devices. I was going to do some short test captures to practice and get familiar with everything while I wait on getting a new HDD.

As for my question about hard drive size, I guess I'll go ahead and order 2 TB just to play it safe.

[Schlockmaster]

Ok, here are my current timing settings:
https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/att...1&d=1689012125

Yesterday I successfully captured 2 tapes, a total of about 1 hour and 15 mins., and am very pleased with the results so far. 0 dropped/inserted frames. Picture looks good, audio sounds good, no noticeable sync issues. I've been using overlay instead of preview, since I think you've said before that it uses less CPU. But honestly, there is no visual difference between the two that I can see. The video in the capture window plays smoothly and with practically no latency.

Oh, and for the S9800U I'm using your recommended settings from this post:
https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...commended.html

[Schlockmaster]

lordsmurf, I'd like to add that I was skimming through the settings guide again and realized I neglected your first post where you said turning off drop/insert frames will also disable reporting. I re-enabled drop/insert frames and have left the other timing settings the same.
I captured 2 or 3 tapes since making those changes and have only had a total of 2 dropped frames. There are 7 or 8 frames inserted at the start of each capture when VirtualDub lags momentarily, but no other inserts besides those.
I have yet to notice any a/v desyncing, so hopefully these settings are good.

[lordsmurf]

Correct, do not uncheck those 1st two boxes.

Disable timestamps for preview.
Does that address the initial drops?

[Schlockmaster]

The drops aren't happening initially. They always seem to happen around halfway through the capture, and I've never had more than 1 dropped frame per tape. Inserted frames are happening initially, but I'm not worried about that since it occurs on a black screen before the actual contents of the VHS start playing.

I disabled timestamps and did another capture, still got 1 dropped frame. I can live with that, it's just a little annoying...